Mountains: Vital to world water supply and a climate change ?Hotspot?

Mountains are important for the world’s water supply. But mountain systems are both disaster and water hotspots which climate change will exacerbate, and the HKH region – being the largest, highest mountain systems in the world providing essential ecosystems services for humankind – deserves global attention and concern.

ICIMOD’S participation in the World Water Forum highlighted the mountain perspective on water and climate change and brought attention to ICIMOD’s work, and there are now efforts to bring mountain systems into the category of ‘Hotspots of Climate Change’. (This category used to include only small island-states and coastal areas, as identified during the Bali conference in 2008). Seven of the 10 major global disasters in the last five years, including the big earthquake in Pakistan in 2005, have occurred in the region. Climate change will aggravate water hazards in the mountain regions, and mountain people are the first to pay the price with loss of their lives and livelihoods.