Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) can be a source of resilience, mitigation, and adaptation to the impacts of emerging climatic changes. We propose to present a themed session focused on how TEK could be properly utilized to help communities in adaptions to the climate change, with special focus on the regions more vulnerable to such changes. We are ethnobiologists from high elevations’ regions; Dr. Villar from Andes of Colombia and Dr. Abdullah and Prof. Shujual Mulk Khan from the Hindukush-Himalayas of Pakistan, which are the climate sensitive and fragile ecosystems. We intend to organise the workshop self-possessing six presentations of 15 minutes each. We intend to give one presentation ‘how cultural evolutionary models can illustrate climate change influences the transmission of TEK over longer timescales’ and the second on ‘TEK utilization for adaptations and mitigation against climate change caused flooding in the Hindukush-Himalayas"

In addition we will consider abstracts submitted by other presenters to the ISE conference, and encourage the following people to submit abstracts and join the to the session/symposium:

1) Fausto Sarmiento – University of Georgia, specialist in the ethnobiology of the Andes.
2) José Tomás Ibarra – Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, specialist in socio-ecology of the Southern Andes.
3) Henrik Balslev, Aarhus University, Denmark, specialist in the Amazonian ethnobiology.
4) Rodrigo Cámara-Leret, University of Zurich, a specialist in TEK.
5) Christoph Schunko, University of Boku, Austria, expert in knowledge systems and innovation.
6) Jie Liu, Kunming Institute of Botany, Yunan China, expert of Himalayas and Tibetan Plateau in the scenario of climate change.

Following this workshop, we intend to collaborate with all participants, presenters, and interested participants to write a perspective paper on the role of TEK in biocultural adaptation to climate change. We aim to submit this article to Nature Sustainability or PNAS.