About the Project


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The National Mission for Sustaining the Himalayan Ecosystem (NMSHE) is one of the eight National missions forming the core of India’s first National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC) launched in 2008 which is headed by the Prime Minister’s Council on Climate Change.

Climate change has become a major driver of ecological patterns and processes, and in determining well-being of human societies across the globe. Himalaya, the highest mountain chain on Earth, is conspicuously sensitive to these on-going climate alterations, owing to nearly six-fold quicker glacial mass retreat, as compared to glaciers elsewhere. The effects of climate change are thus pronounced across the Himalaya and the rich biodiversity it harbours. The NMSHE aims to offer practical adaptation strategies based on primary and secondary data and state-of-the-art analyses. NSMHE has six task forces, involving specialized institutions for each task. These institutions are Wildlife Institute of India (Micro flora and fauna and wildlife & animal populations), Wadia Institute of Himalayan Geology (Natural & geological wealth), National Institute of Hydrology (Water, ice. Snow, including glaciers), G B Pant Institute of Himalayan Environment and Development (Forest resources & plant biodiversity), Jawaharlal Nehru University (Traditional Knowledge Systems) and Indian Council of Agricultural Research (Himalayan Agriculture).

The NMSHE Task Force-IV was commissioned to the Wildlife Institute of India (WII) with an idiosyncratic emphasis on climate change impacts on the wild fauna and microflora aiming at ‘Assessment and Monitoring of Climate Change Effects on Wildlife Species and Ecosystems for Developing Adaptation Strategies in the Indian Himalayan Region (IHR)’. Monitoring the climate impacts on the Himalayan wildlife was a complete lacuna and the TF-4 was put forth to conduct research with the objectives of; (a) identifying landscape change drivers (b) conducting field research on wildlife aspects (terrestrial, aquatic, microflora and habitats) (c) Developing monitoring and Decision Support Systems (DSS) for indicator species in the IHR (d) Model building and visualization for climate change impacts on Himalayan wildlife (e) Spatial and inter-operable database generation and (f) Capacity building and sensitization.

The extensive monitoring and research work was primarily focused on three major river basins- Beas (Himachal Pradesh) in North-western Himalaya, Bhagirathi (Uttarakhand) in Western Himalaya, and Teesta (Sikkim) in Eastern Himalaya which provided a strong basis to understand the climate-related impact and vulnerabilities. Indicator based assessment of adaptive capacity and socio-economic vulnerability was assessed across these three basins. The NMSHE phase I further resulted in delineation of critical climate refugia across the IHR for two terrestrial (musk deer, Himalayan pit viper) and an aquatic species (snow trout) species under the future climate simulations. These robust climate envelope models were generated based on different predictive algorithms. The project also pioneered a long-term monitoring of data-logger based air-temperature and humidity trends in the three selected river basins. More than 200 climate data-loggers have been deployed for fine-scale climate data generation across the three study basins. Based on rigorous fieldwork by the research personnel and dedicated team efforts, a large-scale baseline data related to the distribution of many cryptic and abundant species apart from several new records, seasonal phenological trends, species-habitat requirements, potential climatic drivers, and socio-economic vulnerabilities was collected and analysed.

While the first phase of the project ended in the year 2020, the NMSHE-phase II has been initiated in April 2022 representing a necessitated and logical progression from Phase I, i.e., to apply, and expand the research conducted along all the project’s core themes.