Vulnerability of Himalayan transhumant communities to climate change Suman Aryal & Geoff Cockfield & Tek Narayan Maraseni Received: 15 November 2013 /Accepted: 22 May 2014 /Published online: 6 June 2014 # Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014 Abstract Climate change vulnerability depends on who you are, where you are and what you do. The indigenous communities who primarily depend on natural resources for subsistence livelihoods are among the first and most affected by climate change. Climate models have predicted pronounced warming in high altitude regions of the Himalayas. The transhumant communities of the Himalayas follow traditional lifestyles based on seasonal livestock rearing and subsistence agriculture. There is however, no information on how vulnerable transhumant communities are to climate change, and how vulnerability of transhumant herders differs across the mountainous areas of Nepal. Based on semi-structured interviews with transhumant herders and using the IPCC climate change vulnerability framework, this study assessed and compared the vulnerability of transhumant communities from three districts representing Eastern, Central and Western mountainous region of Nepal. The results showed that the livelihood vulnerability and the climate change vulnerability differ across sites; both of them having lowest index values in the Central region. The vulnerability dimensions viz. exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity are largely influenced by diversity in livelihood strategies, income sources and crops, and access to food, water and health facilities. The findings will inform the design of policies and programmes to reduce vulnerability and enhance adaptive capacity of indigenous communities in general and the transhumant communities of the Himalayas in particular. 1 Introduction Global climate change has adversely affected many sectors in different ways (Bellard et al. 2012; Lejeusne et al. 2010; Mearns and Norton 2010; Wagener et al. 2010; Xu et al. 2009). International communities have focused on two major policy responses to climate change; reducing emission of greenhouse gases (GHGs) to slow down the rate of change and increasing the ability of nations, sectors and communities to cope with climate change through Climatic Change (2014) 125:193–208 DOI 10.1007/s10584-014-1157-5 S. Aryal (*) : G. Cockfield Faculty of Business, Education, Law and Arts, and Australian Centre for Sustainable Catchments, University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba, QLD 4350, Australia e-mail: Suman.Aryal@usq.edu.au T. N. Maraseni Australian Centre for Sustainable Catchments, University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba, QLD 4350, Australia