The Eastern Himalayas in northwestern Yunnan are renowned for its rich biodiversity and cultural diversity. Recently, the impacts of climate change, including natural disasters, have increasingly threatened the livelihoods of local Tibetan communities, affecting their agro-pastoral activities, water resources, and biodiversity, such as mountain pastures, valleys, and forests. Given the fragile natural environment and the deep dependence of livelihoods on these resources, these challenges have seriously jeopardized their sustainable development and well-being. Agro-pastoralism is crucial to the local Tibetan people, not only as a livelihood strategy but also for biodiversity management and cultural practices. The system of agro-pastoralism involves a mutual dependence between agriculture and herding. Local Tibetans have developed traditional knowledge concerning plant species and genetic resources within this agro-pastoral system. This traditional knowledge encompasses practices related to the domestication, cultivation, and utilization of crop varieties and other biological resources, and it has been cultivated through the community’s production and daily life processes. This knowledge primarily focuses on the exploitation and preservation of biological and genetic resources, including local crop and pasture varieties, as well as their associated preservation techniques. This paper examines the impacts of climate change and extreme weather events on plant species and genetic resources, and investigates the traditional knowledge of local Tibetan people regarding crop and pasture varieties. Additionally, through action research, the paper explores the value of traditional knowledge related to plant resources in formulating community-level adaptation plans for local people.