Mountain futures

The future is increasingly shaped by uncertainty as climate change drives unprecedented and irreversible ecosystem changes. These impacts are felt most acutely by those living at high elevations. Imagination and creativity are crucial to foster new ways to address these challenges. How science is used to envision possible and desirable futures will help set the ambition that shapes who stands to benefit and the trade-offs associated with these processes of rapid transformation. For example, current narratives highlight the loss of glacier mass. However, emerging post-glacial ecosystems are also generating new ecosystems. Subsequent claims for the newly available land resources are often unclear and contested, urgently calling for management strategies to secure future ecosystem services. While many actors recognize the importance of these new ecosystems, new knowledge is needed to steer the development of these new futures towards sustainability. Developing and sharing new narratives and models with diverse stakeholders in mountain-social-ecological systems will be essential to set ambition that shapes equitable transformation. This focus session will collect new narratives and models that can shape responses to the on-going unprecedented climate-driven social-ecological changes in mountain areas around the world. The inputs will be used to draft a global research agenda calling for forward-looking, just, collaborative, long-term approaches to address future impacts and risks across the world’s mountains.