ABSTRACT
This chapter takes a discursive approach to explore the importance of adaptation to global climate change as a viable strategy in mountain regions. It sets out by trying to understand global change as a process that unfolds between interacting pairs of opposing forces/actors/trends, the reconciliation of which is the aim of recent thought in the study of social ecological systems. It is argued that mitigation and adaptation can be understood as part of this dialectic process. After presenting the particular environmental and societal circumstances in mountain regions, their vulnerability and their importance for lowlands the case is made for a concerted effort on the part of lowland societies to support adaptation in mountain regions if for nothing else but their own self-interest.
