Abstract ID: 3.9641 | Accepted as Talk | Talk | TBA | TBA

The Himalayan range is a critical bio-geographic region with epithets such as the ‘water tower of the world’. Harbouring thousands of plants and avifauna, hundreds of mammals, and millions of inhabitants, it is an important biophysical and socioecological system. Owing to global climate change, the Himalayan region is one of the most vulnerable systems in the world, with manifestations of prolonged droughts and erratic precipitation patterns. Combined with the hardships brought about by topographic complexities, human movement, agrarian activities, and natural resources use are rapidly changing, failing to adapt suitably to the vagaries of climate change. Rural farmland abandonment, declining agropastoral labor, and changes in vegetation and wildlife, led by depopulation of rural mountain areas pose additional risk to the socioecological mountain systems in the Himalaya. One of the important challenges raised in the Himalaya at present is the fundamental shift away from agrarian livelihoods, which are intricately woven with the ecosystems they inhabit. In the S4SSS workshop, we will take inspiration from a curated list of unique ecosystems or components (niche environments, endemic or endangered flora and fauna) of the Himalaya. The expected outcomes include creation of art (drawings, paintings, music or writings), reflection on the importance of our muse, and possibly curiosities and ideas for future research. Another possibility is the compilation of the art and ideas from the workshop into an open-source online publication (in English as well as local languages such as Nepali), hosted at the organizing institution and/or the collaborators.