Climate change and biocultural adaptation in mountain communities
This report provides a record of recent climatic changes experienced by 21 indigenous mountain communities in 10 countries, and of the solutions they have developed based on traditional knowledge and experimentation. It also shows the potential of mobilising traditional knowledge for enriching the evidence on climate change impacts on local livelihoods and food security, and for designing effective adaptation responses that support biological and cultural diversity. Traditional knowledge provides empirical, place-based evidence that can complement and add clarity to scientific assessments, research, decision-making and reporting processes. Such a multiple evidence-based approach is already encouraged by the Convention on Biological Diversity in its monitoring of the Aichi Targets, and the Inter-governmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), the biodiversity equivalent to the IPCC, is developing procedures for working with indigenous and local knowledge. This report also aims to support the sharing of traditional knowledge for adaptation amongst communities in the International Network of Mountain Indigenous Peoples (INMIP) and beyond.