 Test, test, test, test, test, test, test, test, test, test, test, test. Hello everyone and good afternoon here from COP27 Challenge Shake. My name is Christoph Henrich and I have the honour to moderate this concluding first week side event of the IEA at its Atoms for Climate Parillion. Focusing on climate change, impact in mountains. How the melting price fear affects local communities and ecosystems. When I moved here in 1974 with my family the glacier came down as far as there and the ice was blue. Everything has changed. Now we have lots of caterpillars of a kind I've never seen before. My llamas swallow them and it makes them sick. Guillermo Aroquipa a 73 year old farmer from Bolivia. I spend 3 to 4 hours a day fetching water and my neighbours do the same. I'm experiencing body pain and backache as a result of water fetching workload. I'm here, Peru, from Nepal. There's less water now. Seven of my eight children have left the region because there is no way for them to make a living. Most of the men of the village have also gone, heading to the conjoined urban sprawl of nearby La Pazenal Alto in search of work. Returning just once or twice a month to see their wives and families. The Guida, Quispe, a 60 year old mother, grandmother and farmer. Between 1980 and 2010 25% of glacier area decreased in Nepal. At least one third of the glaciers in the Hindu Kushimalaya region will be gone by 2100. This will have a serious implications for downstream water availability and dependent sectors. As these quotes show, climate change in mountain regions is already a reality. It has a severe impact on the local biodiversity, on the ecosystems, the communities and the farmers living in these areas. Globally an estimated one billion people are living in mountainous regions. And these are not the only people affected by climate change. Several billion more are actually dependent on the water resources or natural resources as a whole that are provided by mountains. And these resources such as water for example flowing downstream, being used for industry, agriculture or energy generation. What does nuclear and isotopic techniques have to do with this? Well these techniques can be used as a very effective and precise tool to assess the impacts of climate change in mountainous regions. And can answer questions like what is happening with my wetlands, what is the impact of the wetlands if the glacier is retreating. Or analyzing the sediments that are released from glacier retreat. And see whether they have an impact on post a potential risk for glacier lakes such as glacier outburst floods from these retreating glaciers. These questions we are looking in an inter-regional project on assessing the impact of climate change in the International Atomic Energy Agency. And we are working mainly with two mountain regions which is the Himalaya and the Andes. And I'm very glad to have two of the dear counterparts from these projects here. Can we have the introduction side quick? Thank you. First of all Mr. Bino Teyuyu from Trivon University, Pokhara in Nepal and Mr. Eds and Brahminas from University of San Andres in Bolivia. Of course we want to ensure that the scientific evidence that we are generating by these projects is being picked up by policy makers. And hence I'm very very glad to have Ms. Satnam Shiva Koti here who is a joint secretary of the Ministry of Agriculture in the Government of Nepal. And last but not least we are not doing this project alone. We are working with our friends and partners from the international community because it is utmost important that we work as many stakeholders as possible to transfer the scientific evidence into effective policy. And hence I'm very glad to also welcome here Ms. Diane Kopansky who is a program management officer at the United Nations Environment Program. Now we'll be listening to three presentations first by Bino followed by Edson and then Diana. And then I'm glad to have a panel discussion to discuss a few questions afterwards. So having said this I hand over to Bino who will go to the podium to present. Thank you. Thank you very much Kristoff. Distinguished participants, panelists. Having said the scene about the whole story what we are going to talk today let me start with my own story. As you can see in the slides that isn't this amazing. What you can see is that's the piece where I work and moreover I would like to show you the backdrop which is the Annapurna Himalaya Ranch. And this is this spectacular scene which we can see from our doorsteps that is partly the reason why I could not leave my job. And beside that being a professional from the civil engineering background while I joined the Forestry Institute and I came to know that forest basically is a potential for the mitigation of the climate change. That's another reason why I would like to continue as a faculty in a forestry institute. And Pokhara being one of the top 10 actually tourist destinations in the world and the Annapurna Tech which has been listed by the Lonely Planet as one of the top 10 trekking destinations. So we can imagine but as I said the mountains is not only for the recreational area and the tourism. And as I said beside the tourism activities as well as the recreational it has a lot of to do actually mountains and you know mountains globally is the home for about a million people. And they do provide wide range of the ecosystem service and the products. So as you can see in the slides there we can see a number of goods and the ecosystem services that provide. So in brief if I just point in kind of biodiversity is host around 25% of the biodiversity of the land. And in terms of the forest it goes above the 28%. And when we see the crops six out of the 20 important crops they are grown in a mountain area. So this is what shows how significant is the mountains. And in particular next when we talk about the water services from the mountains it's phenomenal. Like about half of the world's populations they depend upon the water from the mountains for their kind of the drinking irrigation project industry project and under the energy sectors. So and when we see the irrigations I mean the mountain is the one that supplies 40% of the water worldwide to the irrigation sectors. And globally when we see like in Latin America the hydropower is the one which accounts 85% that produces the energy. And similarly in Africa East Africa in Kenya as well like 7 million people that depends upon the fresh water from the Kenya mountain. So this really highlights globally as well how significant is the mountains in terms of the water resources as well. And when we come to the Hindustan Himalayan region where I belong to it's incredible. If you see there like the Hindustan Himalayan we call it as a third full of the planet or of the earth as well. So that means it holds the massive amount of the water in the form of the ice and snow. And in a way it is also called as the water tower of the ocean because I mean it supplies the water nearly to the 3 billion people through it's 10 major river systems. So this is how if something goes wrong in the Himalaya region then we can you know imagine that the catastrophic. And unfortunately this is what happening because of the climate change. So and I mean due to the climate change we have been observing a scientific study that shows that there have been quite a lot of changes in terms of the retreating of this snow in the mountains. And it's not the only sciences but the local people have also clearly observed things. And this is a video that I'm going to show which was prepared by our student and the students from the University of George Masons which is purely educational materials. But in this material the Tendi Sherpa who is a Everest climber as well as he is a trainer expedition leader and he has also witnessed. Let us hear him what he says. At every year because it changed so much just from day to the day it changed a lot. Some of the place the glacier wind back 200 meters in 20 years you can imagine 200 meters and the glacier were during 97 98 those glacier was like 80 meters deep. But now they are down to 30 35. So as I said I mean this is what happening not only in Nepal but if you see along the Hindustan Himalayan range and this kind of changes rather decreased in the snow caps and the ISIS that we can observe. This is one of the pictures that I'm showing you from the north and east of the Mount Everest which clearly shows over the period of the 1980 years the changes. So I mean this kind of things really will be detrimental to the whole planet as we have already come to know that the billions of people. They are livelihood the ecosystem services that has been provided they all will be jeopardizes. So that's why I mean we have to really think about the seriousness of the impacts. And when we see the impacts well as I said along the Hindustan river only so it's around 3 billion people they will be shortage of the water. And the water crisis issue has been emerging a lot actually when we see particularly in the Hindustan Himalayan as well and not only in Himalayan but in other mountainous area say for the Andes say for the Alps. This is what is happening. So this kind of the crisis in Nepal too I mean we have many examples whereby there has been we have to relocate the whole the village from one place to another place. And I would like to show you again another video clips where a country representative Dr. Ghanaguru. He is the WLF country representative and he is also from the Himalayan region and he can say from his own experience and as a professional on this background. So please I would like to request to play the video. This is Dr. Ghanaguru an Nepal country representative for the World Wildlife Fund. Dr. Gurung grew up in the high mountains of Nepal. Mustang region is a beautiful place a nice landscape where most of the people from Nepal see mountains to the north where we see mountains to the south. People begin to see ground water source is not anymore source and many cities are actually getting dried up and water tables getting dropped and dropped and dropped. What is not recharging anymore? Nepal many villages are running out of water and that's why some places in Mumbai Mustang where few villages have need to relocate it. They are actually displaced because they are running out of water and that's the beginning of the impact being felt by ordinary people farmers, livestock herders. So I mean given this scenario now we all have to collectively respond how we are going to deal with this kind of the problem and as from the academic field I mean I prioritize to the research. As the new tools and technologies are emerging so I mean which can add the value not only in terms of the cost but in terms of the efficiency effectiveness as well. And here we have to really employ these kind of the instrumentations because we have to treat mountain as a once of the planet. We cannot of course neglect it so here our this project as Christophe mentions before now we are trying our best to understand the climate impact by installing a very well sophisticated Neurons and sensors, cosmic CRNS, cosmic strain neutron sensors which will basically be one step ahead and that will enable us to do quite a good research and here as we are talking about the installation of this kind of the high good instrumentations and we have to have a good collaborations among all of us be that the government, be that the academic institution, be that the local stakeholders and that's what we are aiming. And as per our plan the sensors will be set up something in March or April and we will have a kind of the meetings among our stakeholders for effective operations of that machine. And luckily the instrument has already been used in my fellows country in Bolivia and I hope my friend will explain about its applicability and that will help at least to us acknowledge this kind of the instrumentations. With this I would like to stop my remarks. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you so much dear Binot for giving us this shocking well but very important and insightful overview of how the situation looks in the Himalaya and what are the plans that you're having under this project. And now I'm very excited to announce Etzin as the next speaker because as Binot has said Etzin has something to present on that device that Binot had mentioned because he has installed it already a year ago. Etzin, the floor is yours. Thank you very much, Kristoff. I want to thank IAA to give us this opportunity to present our inter-regional project and the first results of our project. This is a nice picture that we have with our new device is the Cosmic Ray Neutron Sensor. And this is the place where we're working now. So the Bolivian anti-plano is located at 3,500 meters above the sea level and comprise around one third of the Bolivian land area. It's located within the Andes and enclosed about two mountain ranges and adjacent to the cities of La Paz and El Alto, this is the Cordillera de los Andes. It's an extensive mountain range about approximately 120 kilometers with the snow-capped peaks that can exceed even 6,000 meters above the sea level. This is the Himalaya of the Huayna Potosi mountain with the altitude of 6,000 meters. And it contributes with melt water along with rainfall to supply water for Tunidama. It's an old glacier lake and in the right side toward the Amazon basin, its water is also used for generation for hydropower. This is the city of El Alto and the city of La Paz and in this case Tunidama with a capacity of around 26 million cubic meters. It supplies water for human consumption to the city of El Alto. It's located at 4,000 meters and part of the city of La Paz located at 3,600 meters. One important thing is that about one part of the Bolivian population is concentrated in those cities. However, at the lower part of the snow-capped Huayna Potosi mountain, there are also small communities that use water from glaciers and extensive wetlands for their property activities. In the case of Tunibilash, this is a glacier, Tunibilash is located at 4,400 meters above the sea level. It bases its economy on rising camelids and growing potatoes in a small scale. Above the Tunibilash, in the bottom part of the glacier, there are still a group of families that are settling in this place. They are supposed to be more extreme where they have used glaciers and wetlands for a long time. This is my friend Guillermo. He is an 80 years old resident who was born in this place. I have seen with great concern how the climate changes over time, his environment. Guillermo, with great concern, showed us the current state of the glacier. He told me some stories about his grandparents and he told me that in this period he has even reached the place where he is standing. Locally, I am discussing the glacier retreat drastically in the last decade. This is the case for example of the glacier Chacaltaya in the upper part. We can see how the glacier disappeared or the case of Uyakaya glacier in the bottom part. If you can see on the right side there is a small circle where it is my colleague. We are surveying the front of the glacier and you can see the difference of how the glacier retreated in the last decade. Guillermo knows Guillermo to better understand what is happening with the climate and how he could prepare to face this impact that has hit his quality life. With Guillermo, he asked science, he asked the academic sector to help hoping to have some tools that will help him to detect, for example, extreme events, that means, fruits, frosts. However, the challenge is complex because the relationship between the Andean glaciers and wetlands has not been fully studied in this altitude. Those are some pictures of previous projects conducted also with the International Atomic Energy Agency. The previous use of conventional metals, like isotopes for example, and other techniques have already reached their limits of applicability and more precise and less labor intensive methods are needed now. And thanks to the joint effort between the law and science and the mission together with our policy experts of the International Atomic Energy Agency. In December 21, the first cosmic radiation sensor in the Andean region was started at an altitude of 4,500 meters above the slurry. And this novel instrument will make it possible to accurately quantify the moisture content of the soil in wetlands and landscape scale with a representativeness of about 30 hectares. So now Guillermo is finally happy to see the equipment already assembled but also my colleague Fabiana, who is an Olivier engineer from the Ministry of Environment and Water. And even for my colleague Trenton Franz, the expert of the International Atomic Energy Agency, he has also a new experience to work at this altitude and this very particular ecosystem. And now this picture, the great day has arrived, the equipment is working, and it starts meeting with its satellite antenna to a data reception center. Guillermo is very proud to have this important device located very close to his home and he's sure that with this new information he will be able to complement his local knowledge and better adapt to impacts to climate change. But it's not only Guillermo and the residents of the Tunis village who will benefit from this information, but also the inhabitants of cities of La Paz and El Alto will also benefit from this information because this instrument will be part of a more ambitious project that is the development of an early warning system that will help to detect and characterize the arrival of extreme events in this region. And after about a year of observation, the results are very promising, a comparison made between the moisture content of the soil at the foot of the Waian Potosi mountain and the rainfall measured at a meteorological station located 24 kilometers from this point compared with the weather station located at the airport. And as you can see in this figure, there is a clear correspondence and representative thickness between the moisture content in the soil and precipitation. And the best experience of its experts from the International Automation Agency has also allowed it to develop a virtual platform to quantify the soil moisture content in the entire area considering all the catchments because the cost-efficiency of data will make it possible to calibrate data from satellite Sentinel-1 with which the monitoring coverage area can be extended. And this effort currently provides two very valuable tools for real-time monitoring of soil moisture content in the study area. And there is a real-time reception of the cost-efficiency and sensual measurements. And on the other hand, there is a virtual platform based on the data from Sentinel-1 satellite. And soon we will be able to real-time soil moisture measurements. We will be able to obtain these measurements in this site. This is the Tunibilesh. And we will use the Abolyan Communication Satellite, the MS-3PAK attack, as part of the early warning system at the community level. And Guillermo and the residents of the Tunibilesh will have also two satellite antennas to receive this information in order to complement the early warning systems. So this device will allow them to have internet connectivity to obtain all the information. And finally, we think that the more important thing, the main objective is not necessary to understand what is the characteristics of the scientific basis of the technologies that we are using. As the case, for example, the Cosmic Racial Sensor. The most important thing is how can we use the results of these devices to provide more information to local residents and how can we adapt face-to-the-impact to climate change. This is what I want to thank you. We are very excited and motivated to learn more about how can we translate science into policies. The importance of partnerships. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. First of all, I want to congratulate you on the work that you have achieved so far on that project. But second of all, I could not have done a better transition to hand over to the next speaker, Diana, who will now give us an overview on what UNEP is doing in the area of climate adaptation and exactly how you set up the importance to translate this data into policy. Diana, the floor is yours. Thank you. We should be able to share some of the incredible also felt regionally. For example, you can see here the high Tatras of the Kopratian Mountains, which run through Poland and Slovakia. Climate changes led to much higher temperatures. Temperature changes in the tree types are showing this. You can see some dead spruce trees here. And of course, this is giving challenges for the people that live in this area, and also affecting tourism, especially ski season in the winter. We know as well that Lake Titicaca is closer. We know that Lake Titicaca is also suffering from higher temperatures, changes in precipitation and loss of water volume. This is obviously going to be affecting people's livelihoods and the health of the ecosystems upon which we depend. And at UNEP, together with the collaboration of the government, we work with academia, civil society organizations to try to find regional solutions to abate climate change, to support climate change adaptation and mitigation measures in the mountains. This can include data sharing, as we're seeing here, also working with expert visits and transfers, as well as helping to define modes, methods and guidelines for restoration techniques. The challenges are regional in nature, but they also need to be solved by many. So I wanted to just emphasize this transboundary element of working across mountains. UNEP's work on tackling the climate crisis in mountains focuses on, first of all, strengthening resilience and adaptive capacity by working across and with many partners. We're also supporting the national adaptation plans and adaptation policy processes and fostering these important science policy platforms for regional as well as global exchanges to happen, where science is available to inform the best possible outcome for decisions. And you may have heard it. We're working on the adaptation at Altitude. It's a collaborative global program. It's funded by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation. And its main objective is to increase the resilience and adaptive capacity of mountain communities and the ecosystem across which we depend to climate change. And we're doing that by gathering data, information and knowledge on effective climate change adaptation. We're also facilitating evidence-based decision making for strengthening mountain adaptation in national, also regional and global policy processes. And this program has four components. In data, and we're doing informing and monitoring, we aim to improve the availability and the use of mountain observation data and information services. In the regional exchange and collaboration area, we facilitate science policy dialogues in four mountain regions and have supported inter-regional collaboration and sharing of experience. In the area of knowledge and sharing, we support community of practice on climate change adaptation in mountains and we have a global database on adaptation solutions, especially for mountain regions. And in the global policy mainstreaming, we foster global advocacy for inclusion of mountain adaptation relevance in policy processes. From the UNFCCCC, where we're here today, to the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, we're also working on the Convention of Biological Diversity and supporting the upcoming Global Biodiversity Framework and the Sustainable Development Goals. Mountain targets, mountain specific...