• As the cryosphere changes, serious impacts on biodiversity at the ecosystem, genetic, and species levels mean an overwhelming majority of animal and plant species are negatively affected, sometimes to extinction.
  
• Even if global warming is limited to 1.5°C, HKH likely to face serious impacts in terms of species loss, ecosystem structure, and productivity, resulting in lowered ecosystem services flows.
  
• Ecosystems in HKH are in stress or subject to risks – from a changing climate, changes in precipitation, pollution, land use change, habitat loss, (overexploitation), varying government policies, and expanding markets.
  
• Ecosystem services provide direct services to 240 million people in the HKH region and support a further 1.65 billion people downstream.
  
• The region hosts significant ecoregions and global biodiversity hotspots – 40% under formal protection; however about 67% of ecoregions and 39% of global biodiversity hotspots that are in the HKH are still outside protected areas and exposed to different drivers of change.
  
• As the youngest mountain ecosystem, the HKH region is significant for the history of its formation, which has created geodiversity, multiple elevational gradients, and micro-climates.
  
• HKH cryosphere and adjacent ecosystems – high-elevation rangelands, wetlands, and peatlands – are sources of ecosystem services to some of the world’s most marginalised communities. The region’s plant and animal habitats host fragile ecosystems that also support the livelihoods of age-old cultures of highland herding communities and the water and energy (hydropower) needs of lowland communities.
  
• Degradation of vulnerable ecosystems includes changes to a wide range of plant and animal community structures and productivity, including the productivity of medicinal plants.
  
• Cryosphere changes affect the subsistence livelihoods of HKH communities and are detrimental to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals. They have wide-ranging and cascading effects on nature-based trade and tourism, health, and culture.
  

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