The Hindu Kush Himalaya (HKH) region known as the Himalayan water tower is a life line to nearly 1.3 billion people living upstream and downstream. Environmentally, this region is a biodiversity hotspot, but one that is undergoing changes and degradation at an alarming rate. In the past, governments in the HKH region have developed numerous policies for managing and conserving the fragile mountain environment. However the mountain environmental resources continue to degrade unabated because many of such policies relied on regulatory instruments that did not consider the contextual and local realities. For instance, upstream communities that are stewards of water, watersheds, forests, biodiversity and highland pastures were not recognized by the lowland populations. In fact, much of the ecosystem services provided by the HKH region are either under-valued or not recognised by its users. In realization of this problem, there is now a new paradigm emerging in conservation and management of environmental resources by adopting innovative mechanisms that are tied with incentive, is flexible, is voluntary and contextualizes the socioeconomic reality. This shift in paradigm calls for institutions to develop incentive based mechanisms that are fair, equitable and where benefit flows from the users to the service providers.
