A multi-part expert dialogue on mountains and climate change was held the first week of the SBs. Mountain ecosystems are home to over 1 billion people and unique natural resources and biodiversity. They are suffering impacts including substantial glacier retreat that decreases access to freshwater and increases extreme events including floods, landslides, wildfires, and heat waves. If these areas become uninhabitable, people currently living there will need to relocate to other areas, leaving behind ancestral homes and livelihoods and possibly encountering conflicts for space and resources. It was noted that mountains are indicators of what the rest of the world will face and that impacts to mountains don’t stay in mountains as there are significant downstream impacts. The presentations and key messages from breakout groups are available at the following link: expert-dialogue-on-mountains-and-climate-change. At the end of the session, there was a call to include a dialogue on mountains and climate change as a permanent part of the SB agenda as was done recently for oceans.
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