An important new public interest booklet relating to linking landscapes, transboundary connectivity conservation, and climate change is now available in hard copy and online from ICIMOD (International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development). This valuable and visually-stunning booklet, Mountain Biodiversity and Climate Change, was developed from the presentations and other contributions made at the International Mountain Biodiversity Conference in November 2008 at the ICIMOD headquarters in Kathmandu, Nepal. Several of our Mountains Biome Network members attended the conference and contributed material for this book.

I recently received a review copy of this booklet and was extremely impressed with its format, style, and substance. I believe it will be very useful for connecting diverse mountain stakeholders and the general public to the complex issues of climate change and mountain biodiversity and how they affect people and places.

The publication effectively draws the reader through these complex topics by using powerful images and an intuitive conversational "question and answer" style. This is particularly effective because the book quickly informs the reader then points out actions that people can take to respond to climate change and loss of biodiversity.

For the Himalaya, the actions urgently needed are long-term help with both data collection (particularly in very remote and inaccessible areas) and with mountain research to better understand and respond to negative impacts of climate change on this mountain system. The sense of urgency is bolstered by discussions of the threats from climate change to the Himalaya's four global biodiversity hotspots and its rapidly-melting glaciers.

The complete conference proceedings are loaded on a CD-ROM which is included with the hard copy of the booklet. Online versions of these documents are available from the ICIMOD publications site:

Mountain Biodiversity and Climate Change (booklet)

Proceedings of the International Mountain Biodiversity Conference: Kathmandu, 16-18 November 2008 (2009)

Please note that some of the articles in the Proceedings (above) are presented in summary form in the ICIMOD periodical  Sustainable Mountain Development, No. 55 (2009)

--Linda McMillan