Climate science 'needs greater social science input'

The issue raised here about Social Science is crucial, given that the major focus of various national and regional agencies working on mountain issues seems towards a science that just wants to prove mountains as a place where ‘Climate is changing, and they are the region 'Fragile, Remote and Marginal'. This is happening for last 20+ years till now. Time has come that we need to retrospect our strategies towards 'Mountain Development' and ‘Sustainable Mountain Development’ per se. We need to see that whether our ‘science’ is really helpful in overcoming the; disasters, livelihood, natural resource conservation, poverty eradication and education among others. The Climate Himalaya, a Pan Himalayan initiative is running an interesting discussion on such thought called ‘Mountain Perspective’ at (Link: http://goo.gl/mhele ) , that challenges a age old concept. The point here is that whatever science we have in hand, has that reached to the communities in these mountains and if not, why? If not, then what our researchers, scientists, managers and leaders in various institutions across the Mountains of the world are doing on this front. Where the huge chunk of funding is going to? In the welfare of our communities or otherwise! Also, what efforts have gone in the preparatory processes of such conference and that’s too in a country which has a serious political instability? When a country that could not hold a proper and reliable governance system in place, convening such conferences just for the sake of protecting mountains puts more questions on table? In this direction the lead should go to countries those have already developed the models in Social and Environmental sciences and linked them up and then it trickles to the countries in South Asia. We can’t go hay way in just forming coalitions or networks to milk funding.

The issue raised here about Social Science is crucial, given that the major focus of various national and regional agencies working on mountain issues seems towards a science that just wants to prove mountains as a place where ‘Climate is changing, and they are the region ‘Fragile, Remote and Marginal’. This is happening for last 20+ years till now. Time has come that we need to retrospect our strategies towards ‘Mountain Development’ and ‘Sustainable Mountain Development’ per se. We need to see that whether our ‘science’ is really helpful in overcoming the; disasters, livelihood, natural resource conservation, poverty eradication and education among others. The Climate Himalaya, a Pan Himalayan initiative is running an interesting discussion on such thought called ‘Mountain Perspective’ at (Link: http://goo.gl/mhele ) , that challenges a age old concept. The point here is that whatever science we have in hand, has that reached to the communities in these mountains and if not, why? If not, then what our researchers, scientists, managers and leaders in various institutions across the Mountains of the world are doing on this front. Where the huge chunk of funding is going to? In the welfare of our communities or otherwise! Also, what efforts have gone in the preparatory processes of such conference and that’s too in a country which has a serious political instability? In this direction the lead should go to the countries those have already developed the models in Social and Environmental sciences and linked them up and then it trickles to other mountain countries. We can’t go haywire in just forming coalitions or networks to milk funding.

Indeed, climate change is not something that needs to be and could be resolved in a package. The best way to deal with climate change is not to deal directly with climate change.