A major transboundary project for conservation and sustainable development of the Greater Mt Kailash Region, involving India, Nepal and China has been launched under the guidance of the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD). The project is titled ‘Mount Kailash Sacred Landscape Conservation Initiative: Developing a Transboundary Framework for Conservation and Sustainable Development in the Greater Mt. Kailash Region of Nepal, India & China’. The Minister for Environment & Forests, Shri Jairam Ramesh said: “This is a first of its kind trans-boundary project in the region. It is hoped that this would set the tone for more transboundary collaboration between countries in the region on science, culture and capacity building in the greater Himalayan region. I commend the institutions involved and look forward to the results of the project”. A workshop is being organized by ICIMOD at the GB Pant Institute of Himalayan Environment & Development (GBPIHED) in Almora, Uttarakhand, India on April 11-13, 2010 to facilitate development of compatibility of approaches in information generation and analysis and use of standard protocols for the project. The project, proposes, in collaboration with UNEP and other partners, to engage regional, national, local partners and other stakeholders in India, Nepal, and China, in attempting to establish a transboundary cultural and biodiversity conservation landscape – the Mt Kailash Sacred Landscape (KSL) – in its first phase, which will run for 18 months. The involved Institutions from Indian side - G. B. Pant Institute of Himalayan Environment & Development (GBPIHED; Lead Institute); Wildlife Institute of India (WII; Partner Institute) and Forest Department Uttarakhand (Partner Organization), with their wide ranging expertise and skills, are well suited to execute the project activities in the target landscape in Indian part. The nodal institution from Nepal is Ministry of Forests, and the nodal institution from China is the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The target Landscape; which spans widely over the southwestern portions of Tibetan Autonomous Region of China (TAR), and adjacent Himalayan regions in India and Nepal is highly diverse and environmentally fragile. It represents a sacred geography significant to hundreds of millions of people in Asia, and around the globe. The landscape, under accelerated change scenario accompanied by poverty and limited livelihood opportunities, is experiencing increasingly high pressure on fragile natural resource base that includes globally significant biodiversity and medicinal plant resources, vital ecosystem goods and services of the vast region. Therefore, the project with its envisaged goal to promote transboundary biodiversity and cultural conservation, ecosystem management, sustainable development, and climate change adaptations within the Mt. Kailash Sacred Landscape (KSL), is timely and has potential of becoming a model project for replication across the globe. It is hoped that the project, with its aim to promote long-term ecological, climatic, and biodiversity datasets within the KSL would contribute to alleviating knowledge gaps that have emerged as a serious impediment to improved understanding, modeling, and prediction of climate change impacts (locally, regionally, and globally). Specific objectives of the project are: • Enhancing cooperation among the regional member countries through establishment of a Regional Cooperation Framework (RCF), development of a strategy for conservation of Mt. Kailash Sacred Landscape (KSL), and developing a transboundary regional knowledge base; • Facilitating coordination among the various actors and stakeholders within the KSL landscape through enhancing cross-boundary collaboration in ecological and climate change monitoring and information exchange networks, and• Recognize, and strengthen local capacity efforts for community-based participation in conservation and sustainable development, and enhance cultural-socio-ecological resilience. The expected outcomes of the project are a regional dialog and forum created for RMCs and partner institutions, based on an improved knowledge base, to promote and facilitate transboundary cultural and environmental conservation through sustainable development , a consultative process aimed at developing a Regional Transboundary Framework facilitating the establishment and implementation of the KSL transboundary conservation landscape, strengthened policy at regional and national level that encourages and facilitates regional cooperation and transboundary management approaches and local capacity for community-based participation in conservation and sustainable development efforts within the KSL recognized and strengthened.
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