Quo vadis HKH? ‘Sustainable development’ as a horror scenario while climate change, human population increase and global conservation decay are on the rise further

Abstract

The future climate models show dramatic decay of the status quo (see Xenarios et al. 2019 for Central Asia and its mountain regions). This is not only true in all relevant weather metrics (e.g. http://worldclim.org/CMIP5v1) but also in terms of glacier loss (https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jun/19/himalayan-glacier-melting-doubled-since-2000-scientists-reveal), habitat transition and wilderness loss (Huettmann 2017), as well as water problems (Karar 2017; Singh et al. 2018; World Water Council 2018; Craymer 2019) which reach far outside of localized problems promoting conflicts and wars elsewhere. And it links directly with many human-related statistics such as population rise, consumption and loss of language, society and culture (Xu et al. 2018 for the Hindu-Kush Himalaya region; see Hinze 2019 for remote monastries shutting down, lack of young people and missing lifestyle). The classic concept of ‘Sustainable Development’ is not sustainable at all and a new governance scheme is to be found serving humans and the earth better.