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As climate change has become a global concern over the last two decades, it has the potential to impact living and non-living components of any ecosystem. This leads to disruption of the various socio-ecological and economic systems. Changes in the climate, as have been predicted for the future, can have disastrous impacts across the globe. The impacts are most severely felt by the sectors that are dependent on the natural resource base such as agriculture, forestry, fisheries, etc. and these impacts in turn have the potential to impact livelihoods of the communities, that are dependent on these climate sensitive factors for sustenance. These impacts can be even more pronounced in the mountain regions such as the Himalayas, which are highly susceptible to variations in climatic factors such as temperature, rainfall, snowfall, etc. In the Himalayan Mountain region, the level of exposure to, and vulnerability to climate change, have been shown to differ across different altitudes. This implies that the threats faced by mountain communities vary, across different altitudinal gradients, thereby leading to variations in adaptation measures. The communities in the low altitude region were found to be impacted the most, as a result of climate stress, while only marginal impacts are being felt in the high-altitude zone. Communities in the middle altitude zone are economically better off in comparison to the low altitude counterparts. The findings of the present study help us conclude that policy measures undertaken, should be devised according to the variations in resource base, livelihoods, and the climate induced threats across altitudes.
Keywords: Climate change, climate sensitive factors, exposure, vulnerability, altitude, threats, adaptation.
