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For mountains and people
The wetlands of the Hindu Kush Himalayas are a global resource. They provide habitat for migratory birds from as far away as Siberia, support rich agricultural and wild biodiversity, and provide key services for communities both upstream and downstream, from flood control to nutrient and sediment retention to regional weather regulation.
These transitional ecosystems between terrestrial and aquatic habitats form the habitats of a wide variety of birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians, fish, invertebrates, plants and other organisms, many of them uniquely adapted to this environment and vulnerable to change.
Peat lands are a type of wetland surrounding water bodies; filled with partly decomposed plant and animal remains, they store about 12 percent of the global soil carbon while using only three percent of the total land surface. Peat lands are a major sink of temporarily sequestered carbon and an archive of evidence about past climate conditions. In the Hindu Kush Himalayas, high-altitude peat lands occur in almost all regional member countries and represent at least a third of the region’s wetland resources. The degradation of peat lands could exacerbate the release of greenhouse gases, adding further challenges to global warming.
The initiative aims to contribute to inclusive poverty reduction in the Koshi basin by evaluating the range of possible water-related development pathways through evidence-based decision making and basin-wide cooperation considering climate change, hazards, and the provision of sustainable freshwater ecosystem services.
The DFAT Brahmaputra and Energy Special Project, supported by the Government of Australia under the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT), is promoting research, and generating and documenting knowledge about the extent of water and equity issues in the Hindu Kush Himalaya (HKH) region.
