In rapidly warming high-mountain environments, extreme precipitation events commonly generate extensive slope failures, flash floods and glacier-related hazards, which can be devastating to resident communities. This interdisciplinary work seeks to holistically understand human engagement with the severe risks arising from such geohazards in the wake of recent climatic change and also contemporaneous processes of social change. Focusing on remote rural communities in two monsoon-affected river basins in the Indian Himalaya, the study uses extended ethnographic fieldwork, qualitative local-scale geomorphological observations, and quantitative hydroclimatological analyses to assess current and future environmental risks as well as local understandings and cultural models of those risks, community resilience, and adaptive/transformative capacity. The findings are synthesised to devise a blueprint for culturally sensitive action to protect and improve lives and livelihoods.
The work places ontologically disparate local/traditional and Western/modern scientific understandings of climate-related geohazards into the context of each other, allowing the unique insights offered by each to be appreciated against the backdrop of the other. It uses shared geographies to integrate the seemingly irreconcilable knowledge systems, both spatially and conceptually. The practical outcome of this epistemic synthesis is that it enriches earth science-based hazard assessments with ethnographically robust emic perspectives on geomorphic processes, providing external development practitioners, planners and policymakers with a genuine sense of lived experiences of change and extremes in the physical environment.

Engaging with indigenous understandings of climate-related geohazards to strengthen adaptation and transformation in high-mountain environments in the Global South
Based on ethnographic work with traditional but rapidly modernising communities in two rapidly warming monsoon-affected periglacial environments in the Indian Himalaya, the poster examines the fascinating dimension of indigenous geographical knowledges that transcends the materiality of those environments and the climate-related geohazards present in them. This includes explorations of folkloristic models of landscape dynamics that lend form and spatiality to traditional metaphysical convictions, spiritualities, moralities, and emotionalities associated with geohazards operating within certain social change contexts. By engaging with these commonly overlooked but behaviourally potent aspects of human-environment relationships, the epistemology of climate-related hazards developed in the work can aid in developing more culturally compatible, and therefore potentially more efficacious, strategies for climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction in remote high-mountain settings across the Himalaya and elsewhere in the Global South.

Rural communities in the Koshi River basin, a trans-boundary river basin in the Hindu Kush-Himalayas, have been experiencing unprecedented challenges for adapting with the livelihood challenges arising from floods, droughts and other climatic, environmental and socio-economic stresses. The single purpose adaptation approach often fails to address the multiple challenges arises from cascading effects of climate change at different scales and time. To fill this gap, we developed a multi-dimensional flexible adaptation framework looking at the four dimensions of adaptation - structure, issue, time, and space (SITS). The SITS framework provides a comprehensive approach for cascading adaptation at trans-boundary river basin level and it could effectively enhance the adaptive capacity and transform livelihood outcome if properly implemented. Following the SITS framework, we examined four cascading adaptation pathways for: i) reducing disaster stressors on livelihoods, ii) enhancing access to crucial livelihood capitals, iii) improving equal rights to livelihood, and iv) strengthening synergies and exploiting complementarities at trans-boundary river basin level. This framework is triangulated by collecting information from 130 household questionnaires and 15 in-depth interviews in Koshi basin in 2017. The findings revealed that in the context of changing climate, it is necessary to employ different livelihood adaptation strategies and multiple responses simultaneously or sequentially to successfully adapt to the cascading effects of changing climate. While this integrated approach is appealing conceptually, its implementation has remained a challenge particularly in trans-boundary scale where reconciling diversity of perspectives, managing transnational trade-offs and harness spatial synergies are critically important.

Identifying and implementing climate adaptation strategies to sustain water resources presents one of the most critical environmental and societal challenges of the 21st century. Researchers, practitioners, and public funders recognize the complexities of this challenge and the need for new ways to think, discover, exchange, and co-produce knowledge that directly impacts adaptation decisions and surpasses the limited social, economic, and environmental impacts of traditional top-down, siloed research. Diverse types of knowledge and input are necessary to identify and implement innovative solutions and produce research outcomes that are implementable while also academically robust. As a workshop participant, I will describe a framework for conducting transformational climate adaptation research focused on mountain systems in the arid western United States. I will share evidence from three publicly funded multi-year transdisciplinary research programs that feature collaborative or participatory approaches to co-investigate climate change impacts on snow-fed dependent high desert communities, enhance adaptation thinking and capacity, and co-produce new knowledge to transform climate adaptation. Each program involves diverse knowledge holders including sovereign indigenous nations who employ protected Traditional Ecological Knowledge to manage tribal lands; agricultural producers with institutionalized private property and water rights; irrigation districts responsible for water deliveries to producers and tribal nations; local, state, and federal water regulators who enforce and shape water policy; non-governmental environmental groups that prioritize in-stream flows and habitat restoration; and private water utilities and purveyors that provide water for municipal and industrial uses. I will describe challenges that impede transformational adaptation research and methods for overcoming these challenges. Through workshop discussion, I look forward to working with others to co-identify formal and informal transformational learning approaches to mobilize co-produced knowledge to sustain mountain snow-fed river systems and communities.

In particular in alpine regions with restricted capacity for settlement and other certain land uses as well as changing availability of natural resources, conflicts of interest and objectives are likely to increase in combination with the need to respond to challenging climate change impacts. Several national adaptation strategies in the D-A-CH region point out a number of sectors (thematic areas), where conflicts of interest and objectives could arise through climate change impacts or through adaptation to them. Biesbrook et al. (2010) mention the importance of coordination between departments responsible for national adaptation strategies (NAS) in order to avoid conflicting interests and to tackle them by regulations, instruments or incentives. Heidrich et al. (2013) and Aguiar et al. (2018) point out the advantages by cross-sectoral adaptation in order to avoid maladaptation and conflicts.

Whereas the NAS provide a valuable overview of potential conflicts at a superior level without particular spatial references, the identification of concrete existing or potential conflicts related to climate change impacts or adaptation is possible only at the level of the Federal state respectively at regional level.

Results from content analysis of adaptation and mitigation strategies at Federal state level in Austria and neighbouring Federal states in Germany (Bavaria and Baden Württemberg) as well as accompanying interviews with actors from sectoral and cross-sectoral planning authorities show a strong diversity in the consideration of potential conflicts related to climate change mitigation and adaptation so far. The analyis emphasizes the strong need to focus on the combination of voluntary and mandatory approaches to prevent and tackle these future conflicting interests and objectives. First attempts to cope with conflicts in a precautionary and strategic approach can add new perspectives to the workshop discussion.

Climate-related changes in glacierized watersheds are widely documented, stimulating adaptive responses among the 370 million people living in glacier-influenced watersheds as well as aquatic and riparian ecosystems. The situation denotes important interdependencies between science, society, and ecosystems, yet integrative approaches to the study of adaptation to such changes remain scarce in both the mountain- and non-mountain-focused adaptation literature. Using the example of glacio-hydrological change, it is argued here that this analytical limitation impedes the identification, development, and implementation of “successful” adaptations. In response, the presentation introduces three guiding principles for robust adaptation research in glaciated mountain regions. Principle 1: Adaptation research should integrate detailed analyses of watershed-specific glaciological and hydro-meteorological conditions; glacio-hydrological changes are context-specific and therefore cannot be assumed to follow idealized trajectories of “peak water”. Principle 2: Adaptation research should consider the complex interplay between glacio-hydrological changes and socio-economic, cultural, and political conditions; responses to environmental changes are non-deterministic and therefore not deducible from hydrological changes alone. Principle 3: Adaptation research should be attentive to interdependencies, feedbacks, and tradeoffs between human and ecological responses to glacio-hydrological change; research that does not evaluate these socio-ecological dynamics may lead to maladaptive adaptation plans. These principles call attention to the linked scientific, social, and ecological dimensions of adaptation, and offer a point of departure for future climate change adaptation research in rapidly changing high mountain watersheds.

The Center for Resilient Communities (CRC) at the University of Idaho uses social-ecological systems (SES) approaches to understand adaptation to climate change and support community resilience in mountain landscapes. There are significant challenges to conducting this type of research in the Western US, where rural communities can be reluctant to work with government institutions and resistant to the science of climate change. To address these challenges, CRC research programs utilize interdisciplinary research methods and two community-engagement approaches: co-production of knowledge and community oversight of research. Active collaboration with communities who have local and place-based knowledge of mountain systems helps to address reluctance by some rural communities to work with university and government institutions through trust building and co-produces insights into environmental and social phenomena affecting the resilience of mountain communities. Community oversight is achieved through the establishment of Stakeholder Advisory Groups (SAGs), which are partners throughout the life of research projects from conception to co-production of tools and results.

Current CRC research efforts use biophysical and social science methods to identify social-ecological problems and solutions. The RCN:EyesNorth establishes Community-Based Observing Networks which support collaborations between ranchers, native communities, government agencies, and NGOs to adapt to climate change effects in rangelands. The Social-Ecological Systems Training and Education Program is a legacy of the Mountain Social-Ecological Observatory Network (MtnSEON) and supports agency land managers in the use of SES concepts and tools to effect change in complex mountain landscapes ranging from state forests to national parks. The Innovations at the Nexus of Food, Energy, and Water Systems (INFEWS) relies on stakeholder involvement to understand complex systems in the Upper Snake River Basin and propose integrated solutions to nutrient, water-supply, and socio-metabolism issues. Each of these efforts is focused on enabling mountain communities to anticipate and adapt to the effects of climate change.

Co-production of knowledge in the complex mountain landscapes of the American West

The poster will highlight recent and/or preliminary results from Community-Based Observing efforts in rangelands, the SESTEP educational program, and the INFEWS/T3 project focused on the Upper Snake River Basin. These efforts have generated ongoing collaborations with community members which have elucidated structural and feedback elements of the complex mountain systems of the western United States.

As threats from interactive global changes continue to mount, creative and novel approaches to addressing these threats are needed. Transdisciplinary approaches have been increasingly draw upon to build resilience of mountain environments and societies and to catalyze transformations to sustainability. In this flash talk, we will present results from a survey that was developed in a workshop focused on transdisciplinary approaches to mountain sustainability worldwide. Based on the case studies presented and discussed at the workshop, we developed a survey asking about the extent to which various steps in the process of transdisciplinary research and practice occurred; which steps were most important to the success of the project; what were the greatest opportunities and challenges experienced throughout the transdisciplinary process. In this flash talk, we will present the results from this survey, which had 136 respondents of researchers and practitioners. Our results will directly address Question #2 of this panel (barriers and opportunities). Our survey results and case studies can also provide insight into how transdisciplinary approaches can foster system understanding (Question #1) and operationalize insights into action (Question #3).

The Ouranos AuRA intermediation structure (https://plateforme-ouranos.fr), inspired by the Quebec consortium Ouranos, was created in 2012 in the Rhône-Alpes region of France. It aims to facilitate interactions between science and society in order to provide knowledge and support territories in their adaptation to climate change. Our contribution to the Innsbruck Mountain Conference 2019 aims to present the activities of Ouranos AuRA and to share the current difficulties of this type of border organisation, which are essential for the optimal use of academic knowledge on climate change by local stakeholders in mountain territories.

The structuring phase of Ouranos-AuRA, based on the elicitation of the needs of researchers and local stakeholders in 2012-2013, has converged towards 4 mains objectives:

(i) To provide better access to academic and non-academic data. To this end, a metadata portal is being developed that provides an overview of the multidisciplinary data available at the regional level and links directly to specific platforms to download the data identified there (https://panorama.plateforme-ouranos.fr).

(ii) To facilitate exchanges between academic and operational stakeholders on specific issues related to climate change. To achieve these objectives, Ouranos AuRA proposes climat-DataLabs, meetings between researchers and local actors on a specific theme related to climate change (e.g. climate data; remote sensing data Kalideos-Alps).

(iii) To train local stakeholders to climate change and adaptation. A reflection is underway on the pedagogical forms to be mobilized (such as video, field trip or serious games) for this particular audience.

iv) To be an entry point to the academic world to co-construct relevant solutions to climate change. Ouranos AuRA is involved in three partnership research projects promoting inter and transdisciplinary research with stakeholders in the Alpine region (INTERREG Artaclim; CDP Trajectories; Climat-Métro) that could be presented during the conference.

Climate change will progressively have increasing impact on environmental degradation with potential to cause population displacement. Environmental drivers stressing access to water, food resources, and a liveable environment, are increasingly contributing to (albeit context-specific and multi-causal) decisions to migrate. Coastal population growth rates are currently outstripping the hinterlands, while sea level rise is one factor that will render low-elevation coastal zone (LECZ) less habitable; by some forecasts a rise in 2100 up to 1 meter, others more should future CG-emissions exceed 2⁰ C -target. 32.4 million is by some scenarios living in LECZ zones in Europe in 2060. Risk management is needed to support the millions exposed to potential displacement, raising the question of managed retreat as a response.

Transformational (rather than and if incremental is insufficient) adaptation as managed retreat from coast to (mountain) hinterland, may prove necessary – not only within Europe, but also through global migratory processes from more LECZ-vulnerable regions (e.g. Asia) to less (e.g. Europe). On 2⁰ C-target scenarios, the Scandinavian (mountainous) Peninsula become comparatively more attractive as an available habitable zone (ecosystem services, space, food (esp. marine sources), political and societal system resilience). The result may well be a net climate driven in-migration to mountainous north.

Our contribution aim to develop discussions, especially with relevance to demographic adaptation processes (incremental or transformational) unfolding as 21^st century progress. Adaptation brings its own set of challenges, whether political, social, or legal, not least because these processes will have to play out as pan-European and multilateral.

The integration of scientific disciplines and lay knowledge in governance networks spanning across scales has been stressed as crucial for a transformation to sustainability. However, despite decades of inter- and trans-disciplinary research in this domain, environmental problems show no sign of improvement. Mountain regions are becoming increasingly vulnerable to climate and global changes, with negative consequences for socio-ecosystems far beyond the immediate mountain setting. Research has indeed pointed out that the methods currently used to foster sustainable decisions and behaviours by stakeholders (researchers, decision-makers, the private sector) are not effective enough. Reward systems, knowledge sharing, adaptive co-management or knowledge co-production do not seem to be sufficient to unleash the transformation in practices and values necessary to adapt to change. New, effective learning processes are needed.

The Interdisciplinary Centre for Mountain Research (ICMR) is a 4-year pilot project of the University of Lausanne (UNIL) launched in 2018. Its goal is to better understand the specific problems of mountain regions while contributing to their sustainable development through interdisciplinary research. With about 70 researchers from 5 faculties, and 8 associated institutions engaged in Alpine research, the ICMR is steered by a council composed of UNIL’s researchers and the communities of two Swiss cantons. Research focuses on a set of topics related to climate and global change impacts on mountains and potential solutions.

We will present the efforts of ICMR to contribute to sustainable mountain development through transformative research. We will focus on the learning processes occurring within the centre’s members network, how they affect key neuro-psychological antecedents to sustainable behaviour (cooperativeness, time-horizon of decisions, collective awareness) and how these can be related to concrete socio-ecosystemic changes on the ground. By reporting on the first year of the ICMR, we hope to shed some light on how to operationalize transformative research in mountain regions.

The Interdisciplinary Centre for Mountain Research (University of Lausanne)

The Interdisciplinary Centre for Mountain Research (ICMR) is a 4-year pilot project of the University of Lausanne (UNIL) launched in 2018. Its goal is to better understand the specific problems of mountain regions while contributing to their sustainable development through interdisciplinary research. With about 70 researchers from 5 faculties, and 8 associated institutions engaged in Alpine research, the ICMR is steered by a council composed of UNIL’s researchers and the Alpine communities of two Swiss cantons. Research focuses on a set of topics related to climate and global change impacts on mountains and potential solutions.

In this discussion, I would like to share my personal experience of integrative adaptation and transformation research. I am a PhD student working on a transdisciplinary project on mountain social-ecological system adaptation to future climate change. The MountainPaths project aims to increase understanding of adaptation and transformation capacity of mountain communities, with a specific focus on ecosystem based adaptation. For this, we implement a place-based participatory process involving a wide range of local and regional stakeholders in the Pays de la Meije (French Alps) to co-produce adaptation pathways towards sustainability. We first used a normative scenario approach for engaging stakeholders about their desired vision for their region in 2040. Second, to understand and test the region’s adaptive capacity we studied past and present system dynamics and responses to changes. Third, we developed a serious game to analyze with stakeholders the decisional levers and barriers associated with the adaptation actions needed to reach the vision. This decision context perspective addresses combined shifts in values, institutions and knowledge required for transformative decisions and actions.

Our project was designed as a continuous process of knowledge co-production and collaboration with stakeholders. Reflexive analysis through the process highlights nevertheless risks when working on social adaptation and transformation with actors. For instance, involvement and representativeness of actors but also the place and legitimacy of researchers in such a process are key issues. A mismatch between research objectives and those of civil society could also become an obstacle and frustration for both parties.

Finally, this project has highlighted how involving people via a bottom-up and comprehensive process could increase the understanding of processes underpinning sustainable responses to climate change in mountain systems. As a young researcher I am particularly interested to discuss and learn from fellow mountain scientists about progress in adaptation and transformation.

To support my contribution to this workshop the poster will outline main project steps and results. Mountain social-ecological systems (SES) like Pays de la Meije (Central French Alps) contribute to society’s quality of life by providing a variety of material and immaterial contributions to people on a local and wider scale. However, today mountain areas face multiple anthropogenic pressures (e.g. climate and socio-economic change) that require future societal adaptations for maintaining ecosystem services. MountainPaths implements a three-step participatory process involving a wide range of local and regional stakeholders. With this it aims to inform the capacity of natural and social systems to co-produce ecosystem services in an adaptive way. First, we have analysed to what extent ecosystems contribute to quality of life and influence the functioning of the area. Second, before co-designing adaptation pathways, it is necessary to co-design with stakeholders a vision of a desirable future for the area. During workshops and interviews, we used a normative scenario approach for questioning stakeholders about their visions for Pays de la Meije in 2040. Visions were structured as desirable values, components of quality of life and multiple economic activities under climate change constraints. As a third step we use a serious game to identify critical issues on which we will co-construct adaptation pathways and identify windows of agency for the SES’s adaptation based on ecosystems. Finally, based on the knowledge co-production and identified decisional levers and barriers toward adaptation we will lead a reflection with stakeholders on relevant decision tools for local communities and policy makers.

To face climate and global change, territorial communities most often set up sectoral adaptations. The communication presents a global approach of adaptation management to global changes and particularly to climate changes, and its implementation for a case study in mid-altitude mountain range in Vercors, France, in the framework of the AdaMont project, carried out from 2015 to 2017 in a partnership involving the National Institute of Science and Technologies for Environnement and Agriculture (IRSTEA), the National Center for Meteorological Research (CNRM), and French Prealps regional natural parks, and funded by the French Ministry of Environment.

The project attempted to carry out an exhaustive characterization of climate change consequences for mid-mountain territories, from climate hazards, local perturbations and associated impacts, to adaptation practices, combining multidisciplinary state-of-the-art synthesis, field participative workshops (information), and modeling. In the same time, it aimed to provide a concrete and innovative conceptual framework to help local communities to meet adaptation requirements and to define and implement their own adaptation strategies in an integrated, operational and efficient way, considering implications and synergies between all activity sectors over a given territory and referring to proven common benchmarks internationally recognized (particularly from the International Organization for Standardization - ISO).

Besides this formal framework, the participatory working remains the first and fundamental basis of this AdaMont project, fitting to approaches of learning organisations. The project brought together more than 150 people during field workshops, from project and territorial managers, to farmers, forestry experts, tourism professionals, energy managers, water or natural risk administrators, a large part of local activity sectors were represented.

Glacier-related hazards have always threated the Central Andes population; over the recent years climate change have intensified these risks in the Cordillera Blanca, Peru. In light of this situation, this study aims to identify and analyze the main Peruvian public policies elaborated to face changes in the frequency of such hazards and to verify how the territory is thought in the proposition of such policies. This study focuses in the Cordillera Blanca region. The main public policies are coordinated at the regional level by the Estrategia Regional de Cambio Climático en el Departamento de Ancash [Regional Strategy for Climate Change in the Department of Ancash], and at national level by the Plan de acción de adaptación y mitigación frente al cambio climático [Climate change adaptation and mitigation action plan], by Ministry of Environment. The territorial question in these policies appears closely bound to the state administrative units, i.e., they are elaborated for the national territory and departments. These policies only apply for a large spatial scale and they disregard socio-environmental specificities existing in the country. These public policies generally present a sectorial focus, not an integral view of the territory relations. Despite this shortcomings, there are positive points in the adaptation plans, such as the proposal for synergy between the different actors involved, but in practice not yet effective. Adaptation plans and research should considerate territorial and cultural factors of the involved population, beyond physical changes of the environment. In addition, it is relevant to consider the ethno-knowledge from peasant communities in Cordillera Blanca and how the socio-cryosphere denotes the ancestry of a culture, since it refers to a long and continuous human occupation in a glacial and periglacial Andean region, and which was able to develop a culture and cognition typical for this region.

 The importance of water management in Iran is reinforced through the recently published World Bank report on Water Security in the MENA which states that “A fundamental development challenge for the region is to take the actions necessary to navigate sustainable pathways toward water security. Sustainable pathways would anticipate and manage the inevitable increases in water scarcity and water-related risks—against a backdrop of climate change, urbanization, growing fiscal constraints, and widespread fragility and conflict. Planning and action are needed to strengthen the resilience of economies and societies to protect them from water-related disasters”.

This project aims to bring these issues into focus, within the context of climate change, in the mountainous Bakhtegan Basin in Fars Province in southern Iran. The recent study on the relative effects of climate variability and human activities on runoff in the Bakhtegan Basin showed a trend of decreased annual runoff over the 40 year period from 1972-2011. Climate variability accounted for 62.45 % of this decrease whereas human activities accounted for 37.55 %. Climate change is already manifesting in the Bakhtegan Basin with evidence of increasing temperatures and below average rainfall over the last decade. The objective of the project is increase the resilience of communities and the natural environment of the Bakhtegan Basin to climate variability and change through integrated landscape management.

The effects of climate change on high mountain environments are seriously affecting summer Alpine climbing. Summer mountaineering in the Alps has become progressively more dangerous and technically difficult in recent years because of more frequent and intense climate related geomorphological processes. For the Mont-Blanc massif (France), our study led to the identification of 25 climate related processes affecting mountaineering routes. On average a route is affected by 9 processes. As a result, good periods for mountaineering tend to be unpredictable in summer and have shifted towards spring, autumn and even winter for some routes and mountaineers have to adapt their practices accordingly.

In this context, we examined how French Alpine guides are affected by climate change and how they adapt accordingly. This study enabled us to identify 35 methods of adaptation which we grouped in 5 main strategies. Two categories of Alpine guides were distinguished; one seems to have difficulty in adapting to the effects of climate change while the other seems to face the challenge with greater ease. This difference depends on the activities which an Alpine guide chooses to practice. In summer, those guides who mainly practice traditional mountaineering are less adaptable than those who have diversified, offering activities which can be done outside the high mountain environment. Thus, alpine guides have the possibility to adapt through the diversification of their activities; however, this implies a redefinition of their job that does not always correspond to their preferred vision of the profession.

Finally, by offering a vulnerability and adaptability assessment, this study is used by guides’ representative bodies (such as the French National Union of Mountain Guides) to support and lead them in their adaptation to climate change.