Many of us celebrated Mountain Day on 11 December 2010. Our congratulations to all of you on this occasion, with the hope that we all could highlight the vital and omni-connectedness of Mountains around the world. We feel that, mountains and its communities will be recognized important as well as vulnerable on various fronts.  We have covered the ongoing events around the world on this occasion at: http://chimalaya.org/2010/11/23/international-mountain-day-2010/

It has been recognized that Himalayan Mountains are important in context to climatic changes, and various research studies have revealed that there is on an average increase of 1-1.6c annual mean temperature in Western Himalayan region of India, leading to decrease in average annual precipitation. The declining pattern of snow fall in last 30 years, average increase in rainfall and decrease in river discharge among others show the changing climatic pattern leading to vulnerabilities. Studies have shown that, though there is no uniform pattern of temperature variation, but, cooling in high altitudes and warm temperature in lower altitudes has been recorded.

Given the scenario of observed changes in Himalayas, there is the need of comprehensive research on water, forestry, agriculture and glacier related aspects and consideration to traditional ecological knowledge in various mountain development and climatic adaptation strategies. There is also felt need that- the public, private and civil society institutions should come together on various research, knowledge sharing and capacity building aspects, to address the knowledge gap, disconnectedness, poor governance and capacity building needs. More coordinated efforts and synergies among local and regional institutions, better networking and linkages, knowledge sharing mechanism in place on research findings, better communication will help the mountain communities to be resilient and adaptive towards upcoming climatic vulnerabilities changes.

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