Collaborative Research Belmont Forum: Ecological Calendars and Climate Adaptation in the Pamirs

Cornell University, Ithaca NY

Investigators

Abstract

This award provides support to U.S. researchers participating in a project competitively selected by a six-country initiative on global change research through the Belmont Forum. The Belmont Forum is a group of the world?s major and emerging funders of global environmental change research. It aims to accelerate delivery of the international environmental research most urgently needed to remove critical barriers to sustainability by aligning and mobilizing international resources. Each partner organization provides funding for researchers from their country to alleviate the need for funds to cross international borders. This approach facilitates effective leveraging of national resources to support excellent research on topics of global relevance best tackled through a multinational approach, recognizing that global challenges need global solutions. Working together in a Collaborative Research Action, the six partner organizations have provided support for research projects that utilize a strong inter- and trans-disciplinary approach to examine climate, environmental, and related societal change in mountain regions. This award provides support for the U.S. researchers to cooperate in a consortium of partners from at least three of the participating countries and that brings together natural scientists, social scientists and research users (e.g., policy makers, regulators, NGOs, communities and industry). Ecological Calendars and Climate Adaptation in the Pamirs (ECCAP) unites researchers from the United States, Italy, China, Germany, and the Kyrgyz Republic. The goal of the project is to recalibrate historical and existing ecological calendars from the Pamir Mountains by integrating indigenous knowledge with scientific analyses of climate and phenological data. By doing this, the project will contribute to the capacity of Pamiri communities to anticipate and respond to increasingly inconsistent weather patterns. ECCAP will conduct participatory action research with indigenous communities in the Pamir Mountains, and develop and test new ecological calendars by integrating indigenous ecological knowledge with science. New knowledge will be disseminated through the development of a curriculum for inter-generational transfer and adaptation of calendars, as well as an international conference on the use of ecological calendars for building anticipatory capacity for climate change at local scales.