Special Issue

People and Plants in Transition: Balancing Livelihoods and Conservation across the Himalayan Region

Submission Deadline: March 31, 2027 (Open) Submit Now

Guest Editors

About This Topic

The Himalayan region is one of the world’s most biologically and culturally diverse mountain systems, where human livelihoods are intricately linked with plant resources such as food crops, medicinal and aromatic plants, non-timber forest products, pasturelands and agroforestry systems. However, these long-standing people-plant relationships are undergoing rapid transformation due to climate change, land-use change, market pressures, infrastructure development and socio-cultural transitions. These shifts are simultaneously altering plant distribution, productivity and ecosystem resilience, while reshaping livelihood strategies and traditional knowledge systems across Himalayan communities.

This Special Issue, ‘People and Plants in Transition: Balancing Livelihoods and Conservation across the Himalayan Region’, aims to provide an interdisciplinary platform to examine these dynamic interactions at local, national and transboundary scales. It invites contributions that explore livelihood transitions, conservation trade-offs and adaptive strategies across different Himalayan countries, integrating ecological science, ethnobotany, socio-ecological research and advanced tools such as remote sensing, ecological modelling, genomics and data analytics. By bridging traditional knowledge with modern scientific approaches, the Special Issue seeks to generate actionable insights that support biodiversity conservation, community resilience, and sustainable development, while contributing to regional policy dialogue and global sustainability goals in one of the world’s most fragile mountain ecosystems.

Core Themes of the Special Issue

1. People-Plant Interactions in Transition (Traditional uses of plants for food, medicine, fodder, and culture under changing socio-economic and climatic conditions).

2. Medicinal and Aromatic Plants in the Himalaya (Documentation, sustainable harvesting, commercialization, and conservation challenges of medicinal and aromatic plants (MAPs).

3. Agroforestry and Mountain Farming Systems (Role of indigenous farming practices, agroforestry, and crop-plant diversity in sustaining Himalayan livelihoods).

4. Forest Ecosystem Dynamics and Biodiversity Conservation (Forest fragmentation, regeneration, and habitat change, with implications for plant diversity and ecosystem services).

5. Climate Change and Plant Distribution Shifts (Species distribution modeling, phenology changes, and vulnerability assessments of Himalayan plants under future scenarios).

6. Transboundary and Comparative Perspectives (Cross-country analyses of policies, community practices, and conservation livelihood trade-offs across the Himalayan arc).

7. Integrating Traditional Knowledge with Modern Science (Ethnobotanical knowledge systems and their role in climate adaptation, conservation, and sustainable use of plants).

8. Cutting-edge Tools for Monitoring and Management (Applications of remote sensing, GIS, genomics, machine learning and citizen science in people-plant studies).

9. Governance, Policies, and SDGs (National and regional governance mechanisms, policy integration, and contributions to global targets such as the SDGs and Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework).

10. Community Resilience and Sustainable Livelihood Pathways (Innovative strategies for balancing conservation with livelihood security, focusing on community-led approaches and success stories).

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted through the LIDSEN Submission System. Detailed information on manuscript preparation and submission is available in the Instructions for Authors. All submitted articles will be thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process and will be processed following the Editorial Process and Quality Control policy. Upon acceptance, the article will be immediately published in a regular issue of the journal and will be listed together on the special issue website, with a label that the article belongs to the Special Issue. LIDSEN distributes articles under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) License in an open-access model. The authors own the copyright to the article, and the article can be free to access, distribute, and reuse provided that the original work is correctly cited.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). Research articles and review articles are highly invited. Authors are encouraged to send the tentative title and abstract of the planned paper to the Editorial Office (aeer@lidsen.com) for record. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact the Editorial Office.

Welcome your submission!