Living with uncertainty in South Asia Mountains

Living conditions in the mountains of South Asia are characterized by poverty and increasing climate change. The people there live in conditions where uncertainty characterizes their lives. We believe that it is important to distinguish between uncertainty and risk. Risk is a similar concept, but when you work with risks, you start from 'probabilities' and 'action plans'. The term uncertainty instead describes a spectrum of the diffuse vagueness, uncertainty and ignorance that many families experience, and which can be both a threat and an opportunity. The challenge is to understand how households navigate through various kinds of uncertainty. What is it that enables some to recover from crises, while others become increasingly poor? This is an area where both research and good research methods are lacking.

This project aims to generate research and practice around local resilience, as well as to promote a debate on policy strategies to deal with insecurity for the poorest. Such new understandings are also important for starting to think anew about how we should live with uncertainty and climate change in the future.

We focus on climate change and land and forest management. Partner countries are Bhutan, India and Nepal. The collaboration is designed to promote debate, joint learning and the development of new methods for understanding uncertainty and its sources in different mountain landscapes.