The Resilient Mountain Solutions (RMS) initiative tests simple and affordable resilience-building tools and approaches that community members in rural parts of the HKH can replicate. It trains and networks with governments, local institutions, and other stakeholders to ensure that these solutions are scaled up and scaled out to reach as many communities as possible.

The initiative builds on research and solutions developed and tested by ICIMOD and its partners to identify a range of options that have proven effective and applicable in the diverse mountain context of the HKH.

RMS will contribute to three strategic impact areas:

• Poverty reduction
• Reduced physical and social vulnerability
• Improved ecosystem services

RMS contributes to the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals by providing relevant knowledge to ensure their successful implementation in the mountain context.

Climate change and other environmental and socioeconomic drivers of change are testing the resilience of ecosystems and communities in the Hindu Kush Himalaya (HKH). These changes affect biodiversity, ecosystem services, the livelihoods of people in the mountains, and have consequences for downstream communities who depend on these services.

Temperatures in the mountains are rising faster than the global average. It is predicted that mountain areas will be up to two degrees hotter (1.8 ± 0.4˚C) by the end of the present century, even if global temperature change remains under 1.5˚C, as outlined in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Paris Agreement.

Social and economic changes in mountain communities – high outmigration of men, labour shortages, and decreasing cultivation on arable land – pose challenges for agricultural productivity and natural resource management, and create additional responsibilities for women.

The International Centre for Integrated Development (ICIMOD) and its partners have made significant progress in testing solutions and filling critical knowledge gaps on climate change, adaptation, and resilience in the HKH. Building the capacity of local institutions and forming dynamic, multi-stakeholder partnerships with governments, communities, and the private sector can help communities use this knowledge and enhance their long-term resilience and capacity to adapt to change.

Goal

Enhance the resilience of women and men in the HKH to socio-economic and environmental changes, including climate change, by scaling up and scaling out existing resilient solutions and developing new knowledge and solutions through pilots, collaborative research, field demonstrations, and strategic outreach and engagement.

Objectives

• Generate and promote the use of new knowledge on resilience-building solutions in response to climate and other changes in the HKH and globally through action research and pilot studies
• Develop, test, and promote ‘resilient solution packages’ that are gender and socially inclusive and tailored to the HKH context
• Build capacities of national and local government and regional institutions to plan and implement programmes that support resilience to climate change and other changes