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Symposium title: Nature and livelihoods: Leveraging social systems for sustainability among the mountain people

Mountains are a part of the global biodiversity repository and play a vital role in maintaining the global ecosystem and supporting millions of people. Mountains possess a large variation in landscape features and also act as global water towers. Similarly, mountains offer a ‘niche or comparative advantage’ at operational levels such as medicinal herbs, tourism, and hydropower. In the meantime, they are the most vulnerable to the effect of global change. Data suggest that mountain communities are among the poorest and most affected by development programs that are not tailor-made for mountain conditions.

From social perspectives, mountains are not just a bio-physical object, but they are cultural constructs, evolved through thousands of years ‘doing by learning’ to adapt in mountain hardships and maximizing the use of mountain resources sustainably. This is not well acknowledged in policy sectors although needed urgently to strengthen resilience to climate change and promote sustainable development.

This symposium focuses on the human-nature relationship in the mountain environment.

• Adaptation or livelihood in the mountain region
• Language, culture, and environment
• Nexus between nature/environment and religious belief and cultural practices
• Human dimensions of climate change
• Meanings, symbols, and environment
• Indigenous knowledge and practices
• Social mechanism of resource management
• Nexus between social-ecological system
• Power and policies and environment
• Ethno-perspectives on environment

There will be an online oral presentation session as a part of the 5^th International Conference on “Mountains in the Channing World”. An abstract should be no more than 250 words and should contain the information about the data, methodology, and findings of the research (but no separate headings). The title should be followed by the name of the author/authors, author’s affiliation, address, email, and phone number (mobile phone number preferred).

 The accepted abstracts will be included in the abstracts and program booklet after the registration process has been completed. The notice regarding the details of registration fees and further processes will be published in the website later.

The presenters will be asked to submit their full presentation when their abstracts are accepted.

Important dates:

Submission deadline: 30 September 2020
Notification of acceptance: 01 October 2020
Conference: 8-9th October 2020

Please submit abstracts to conference@kias.org.np and jmpo483@gmail.com.

For further details, please contact:

Jiban Mani Poudel, PhD
Symposium Host, Central Department of Anthropology, Tribhuvan University
Email: +(977) 9841302522