{"id":48052,"date":"2023-12-12T12:37:15","date_gmt":"2023-12-12T06:52:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nepallivetoday.com\/?p=48052"},"modified":"2023-12-12T12:37:16","modified_gmt":"2023-12-12T06:52:16","slug":"restoring-mountain-ecosystems","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nepallivetoday.com\/2023\/12\/12\/restoring-mountain-ecosystems\/","title":{"rendered":"Restoring mountain ecosystems"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Mountains are famously cradles of biodiversity \u2013their steep slopes giving rise to\u00a0a dizzying variety of life forms. They\u00a0have grown increasingly crucial as refuges for nature: covering just one quarter of the planet, they hold 85 percent of Earth\u2019s amphibians, birds, and mammals.\u00a0This wealth of nature is reflected in the fact that of UNESCO\u2019s 738 global biosphere reserves, significantly more than half\u00a0are mountainous.\u202f

Worryingly,\u00a0however,\u00a0these retreats for\u00a0such an\u00a0extraordinary abundance of nature\u00a0\u2013long protected from human interference by\u00a0their\u00a0remoteness or\u00a0difficult terrain \u2013are shrinking.\u00a0 Nature\u2019s\u00a0erstwhile\u00a0cradles, and refuges, are\u00a0now\u00a0becoming graveyards. In the Hindu Kush Himalaya, 70 percent of biodiversity has vanished over the last century.\u00a0These losses, including species extinctions, are now accelerating,\u00a0as\u00a0evidenced\u00a0in\u00a0ICIMOD\u2019s major assessment report,\u00a0Water, Ice, Society, and Ecosystems in the Hindu Kush Himalaya<\/a>.
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0
Recognition that nature is one of the biggest\u00a0solutions to the crisis we now face\u00a0growing \u2013at the public, political, and diplomatic level.\u00a0The United Nations declared 2021\u20132030 as the\u00a0Decade on Ecosystem Restoration<\/a>\u00a0and last year, under the Kunming Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, more than 100 governments worldwide pledged to set aside 30 percent of land and sea for nature by 2030\u00a0\u2013including all the countries of the HKH.\u00a0And for the first time this year, nature was put at the\u00a0centre\u00a0of discussions at the\u00a0United Nations global climate conference, COP28.\u00a0\u00a0
\u00a0
These efforts, and the \u2018ecosystem restoration\u2019 theme for this year\u2019s International Mountain Day,\u00a0provide\u00a0an\u00a0urgently needed\u00a0impetus to revive and protect mountain landscapes.\u00a0So how close are the\u00a0eight countries of the Hindu Kush Himalayas to meeting the \u201830×30\u2019 target? So far Bhutan is the only country to\u00a0actually exceed\u00a0the target, with 51.4 percent of its land area already under various protected area categories.\u00a0\u00a0

Nepal has just under 24 percent of its land under protection. China is just over halfway to the target, with 16 percent. Pakistan is at 12 percent; India at 8 percent; Myanmar at 7 percent; Bangladesh at 5 percent, and Afghanistan at 4 percent.\u00a0\u00a0

Worryingly, across the Hindu Kush Himalaya, critical spaces where nature is still abundant remain outside protection: 67 percent of ecoregions, 39 percent of biodiversity hotspots, 69 percent of key biodiversity areas and 76 percent of important bird and biodiversity areas all\u00a0remain\u00a0unprotected.\u00a0\u00a0

Those protected areas that do exist are \u2018islands\u2019 in a sea of human modified landscapes, lacking corridor connectivity with other protected sites, insufficient for wide ranging species, and under pressure from poaching, encroachment, and extraction.\u00a0Existing protected areas are insufficient to ensure the successful conservation of our region\u2019s flagship species including the Asian elephant, the one-horned rhinoceros,\u00a0and the Royal Bengal Tiger.\u00a0
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One solution, not yet\u00a0attempted, would be to\u00a0establish\u00a0transboundary biosphere reserves, which would\u00a0allow for conservation at landscape scale. This would take a shared political commitment across nation state boundaries to cooperate on the management of a shared ecosystem. It is a solution ICIMOD will encourage our regional member countries to embrace.\u00a0\u00a0
\u00a0
The bottom line, however, is that to reverse nature\u2019s loss we must value and fund it.\u00a0As long as\u00a0economists continue to place its value at zero, it will\u00a0not be\u00a0considered.\u00a0Until it is valued, countries with vast natural capital but less developed economies will lack the Triple A Credit Rating\u00a0required\u00a0to borrow at lower rates of lending.\u00a0Cheaper capital to restore nature must be made available for the countries in this region: and this is something ICIMOD will work with our members, multilateral development banks and others to urgently advance. Because\u00a0it has never been more\u00a0evident\u00a0that to prevent Earth systems from completely collapsing, we must give nature a home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pema Gyamtsho is Director General at International Center for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD).<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Mountains are famously cradles of biodiversity \u2013their steep slopes giving rise to\u00a0a dizzying variety of life forms. They\u00a0have grown increasingly crucial as refuges for nature: covering just one quarter of the planet, they hold 85 percent of Earth\u2019s amphibians, birds, and mammals.\u00a0This wealth of nature is reflected in the fact that of UNESCO\u2019s 738 global […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":274,"featured_media":48053,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-48052","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion","category-top-stories"],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.nepallivetoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/unnamed-3.jpg?fit=1430%2C955&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pcWLTd-cv2","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nepallivetoday.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48052","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nepallivetoday.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nepallivetoday.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nepallivetoday.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/274"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nepallivetoday.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48052"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.nepallivetoday.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48052\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48056,"href":"https:\/\/www.nepallivetoday.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48052\/revisions\/48056"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nepallivetoday.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/48053"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nepallivetoday.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48052"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nepallivetoday.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48052"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nepallivetoday.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48052"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}