Mountain biodiversity and climate change – EnviroNews Archives

India ranks 10th in the list of most forested nations in the world with 76.87 million ha of forest and tree cover. Like other forests of the world, our forests also provide critical ecosystem goods and services. However, the significant role of forests in carbon storage and sequestration has increased their importance manifold and brought them to the centre-stage of climate change mitigation strategies. India’s forest and tree cover accounts for about 23.4% of the total geographical area of the country. Over the past decades, national policies of India aimed at conservation and sustainable management of forests have transformed India’s forests into a net sink of CO2. […]

Why should India be concerned about climate change?

Indians should be concerned about climate change since this phenomenon might have substantial adverse impacts on them. […]

Mountain biodiversity and climate change

Mountains are amongst the most vulnerable and hazardous environments in the world: they also harbour rich repositories of biodiversity. Some of the world’s most threatened and endemic species are found in mountain areas. Mountains have been recognised as important ecosystems by the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and its special programme on ‘mountain biodiversity’ which aims to reduce the loss of biological diversity in the mountains at global, regional, and national levels. […]

There is a critical role for scientific institutions in regard to policy formulation concerning natural resource management, livelihood support, and climate change. Policy makers require authentic data inputs and, more often than not, these are not available or not in a comprehensible form. Scientific institutions need to fill this gap so that policy making can be based on scientific findings.

*Scientist, CSIR-National Botanical Research Institute, Lucknow (India), <[email protected]>

Source: EnviroNews Archives – Impact of Climate Change on Mountain Ecosystems of India: Special Reference to the Eastern Himalayas
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Date Visited: 12 December 2022

“The Hindu Kush-Himalayan region holds the third largest body of frozen water in the world, and is warming at double the global average. It stands to lose one third of its glaciers by 2100 – creating huge risk to mountain communities, ecosystems and nature and the quarter of humanity downstream.” – Deepshikha Sharma (climate and environment specialist at the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development, ICIMOD) quoted by BBC Podcast “The Climate Question” | Learn more | Biodiversity and development – Himalaya >>

How much does biodiversity matter to climate change? The ecosystems of the land and ocean absorb around half our our planet warming emissions. But these are being destroyed by human activity. At the same time, climate change is a primary driver of the destruction of these habitats and biodiversity loss. If biodiversity is our strongest natural defence against climate change (as it’s been described), what’s stopping us from doing more to protect it? | For up-to-date reports listen to The Climate Question (BBC) | United Nations on climate change >>