India’s Eastern Himalayas are one of the country’s richest biodiversity hotspots, holding nearly a quarter of India’s carbon stock and home to over 150 endangered species. Today this region is reeling under immense pressure from forest loss, desertification and climate change linked to large-scale land use change and development projects. Climate change is warming the region faster than the rest of the world – already reaching 1.3 degrees of warming against 1.1 degrees average elsewhere. This has led to accelerated glacial melt, altering precipitation patterns and affecting the systems that support biodiversity, soil regeneration and water-cycling ecosystem services.
As a result, rural communities are dealing with increasing displacement, loss of lives and livelihoods, human-wildlife conflict, declining agricultural productivity, damaged infrastructure affecting access to basic services etc and more. In turn, this has led to higher regional outmigration of youth and to a shrinking rural economy. Combatting this requires systematic efforts at scale. The complexity of this challenges calls for comprehensive solutions – Nature-based Solutions (NbS) that can help build both ecological and human resilience.
What are Nature-based Solutions (NbS)?
The World Bank has defined NbS as “actions to protect, sustainably manage, or restore natural ecosystems, that address societal challenges such as climate change, human health, food and water security, and disaster risk reduction effectively and adaptively, simultaneously providing human well-being and biodiversity benefits.” IUCN calls it “a powerful way to address societal challenges, such as climate change, biodiversity loss, and food security.”
It is a framework which uses nature and its elements to build solutions to issues such as water security threat, disaster risks, or climate change. By protecting, restoring and sustainably managing critical ecosystems, their overall resilience is enhanced, increasing their ability to diffuse external shocks and thus reduce impacts not only on communities, but also on business supply chains. Some of the common methods include afforestation, landscape restoration, wetland management and more.
Data suggests that NbS could provide 37% of the mitigation needed by 2030 to meet the Paris Agreement targets. This could be done by restoring degraded lands into forests which could help sequester carbon from air. In the context of the Eastern Himalayas, NbS grounded in local ecosystems and indigenous practices like Community Conserved Areas (CCAs) in Arunachal Pradesh or the restoration of wetlands in Kaziranga National Park, Assam could help build climate resilience, promote conservation and enhance community well-being.
Importance of NbS in the Eastern Himalayan Region
The ecological vulnerability of India’s Eastern Himalaya makes NbS an imperative for the region which is abundant in natural resources and hosts diverse communities that have adapted to the changing environment using NbS in some or the other forms. More systematic investment in these practices are needed, to take them from piecemeal community solutions to large-scale landscape interventions that can truly help mitigate some of the biggest challenges facing India’s Eastern Himalaya: declining agricultural productivity, increasing extreme weather events and desertification.
The region has a rich body of traditional ecosystem and conservation practices that can be leveraged to transform its trajectory. Community forest management systems in Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland and Meghalaya, for example, have the potential to create both food and ecological security when designed in balance. The Apatani community in Arunachal Pradesh, for example, demonstrate how an integrated land management approach with forests and agri-systems designed together can provide for both livelihoods while regenerating soils.
Leveraging agroforestry traditionally practiced in jhum (shifting cultivation) lands, while moving away from the shifting cultivation method, could allow time for soil in farmlands in these areas to regenerate. Similarly scientific restoration and conservation of critical wetland ecosystems and forests alongside riverine ecosystems could mitigate the increasing flood damage faced by Assam every year, by selecting native trees that bind soil and reduce erosion - while enhancing the capacity of wetlands to absorb and percolate rain and floodwater into the water table, rather than facing immense run-off as is the current situation.
Challenges and Opportunities
Implementing NbS in India’s Eastern Himalayas is easier said than done. The region faces some key challenges in its adoption across the region. For one, limited evidence exists to indicate how large-scale investments in NbS can provide downstream outcomes for communities and businesses. While investment is needed to scale up these solutions, investment is simultaneously needed in the research to establish the benchmarks for NbS impacts and standards. The current framework, created by the IUCN is an important step in the right direction, but more work needs to be done on a regional level to set metrics to identify successes.
The second challenge is leveraging investments. While there has been some traction from businesses and private funders, more evidence is needed to support the financing decisions. In the context of the Eastern Himalayas, one peculiar challenge that exists is the anticipated conflicting land-use priorities. With community-managed resources and economic aspirations, it is difficult to imagine a standard approach to implementing NbS in the region.
It would therefore require a community-driven approach to leveraging NbS which could be achieved by tailoring localized policies which integrate NbS into their framework. These could range from forest management policies to rural as well as urban development programs. This will help the capacity building of local communities and stakeholders in understanding and implementing NbS. Further governments could work with communities to develop NbS and encourage private investments to help scale up these solutions.
If tapped well, NbS could be a great solution for Eastern Himalayas regional challenges. With great resource expanse and diversity, the region could draw from local knowledge and long-standing ecosystem-based conservation approaches to restore degraded landscape, enhance community resilience and create socio-economic opportunities. With successful examples from the region, NbS could be deployed at scale and speed to help it build a much-needed buffer against the accelerating climate crises.
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