move
Dhye villagers were forced to relocate to the nearby Thanchung area. The government claimed that this relocation was illegal and violated national property, thus making Dhye villagers “climate refugees” despite their internal displacement in Nepal.
The Andes have also been affected. In the past three to four years, Peru alone has lost as much as 50% of its glaciers. The glacial lake outburst flood has killed thousands of people.
In 1941, a devastating flood from Lake Palcacocha killed more than 5,000 people and destroyed the city of Huaraz.
Climate change makes this deadly lake even more dangerous for present and future generations.
Although the contributions of countries in these regions to climate change and its effects are minimal, the main development methods and approaches are accelerating the crisis.
The government, driven by its development partners, has built infrastructure in the Himalayas without due consideration of geological and environmental risks.
Hydropower
In the rush to achieve short-term economic growth, hydropower has promoted the affluence of companies that own dams, which has a negative impact on local communities, as the energy generated by water is exported to other regions and countries, many of whom live in energy poverty .
More than 20 million people in Nepal, or 82% of the total population, lack access to clean and safe cooking energy methods, exposing a high proportion of women engaged in this work to toxic air.
Household air pollution caused by unventilated fuelwood and charcoal cooking poses a serious hazard to public health, leading to asthma, acute respiratory infections, tuberculosis, stroke, low birth weight and cataracts, and other medical risks.
The dam has also been displaced, and most of the displaced are indigenous communities who make their homes in the mountainous areas.
Dams also increase the risk of earthquakes (in already vulnerable areas).
develop
A study conducted after the 2015 Nepal earthquake called for an urgent reassessment of hydropower development in the area.
According to reports, approximately 25% of hydropower projects may be damaged by landslides caused by earthquakes.
Similarly, highway projects across the Himalayas pose a threat to fragile ecosystems.
They bypassed the required environmental assessment and management plans and broke into pristine areas protected by indigenous communities for hundreds of years.
silence
All these damages are wrongly regarded as necessary costs of development, but these mainstream views do not answer: For whose benefit is this development? If it takes so many things away, what does development mean?
If development is the story of who we want to be, whose story is improved while silenced others? What do we leave for future generations?
Although the climate crisis and the current Covid-19 pandemic have exposed the meager profits of the global economic order and how it lacks the ability to deal with shocks and uncertainties, it also provides an opportunity to rethink how we solve poverty and economic injustice. And the climate crisis.
A framework for creating a vision to build a healthier, more resilient and sustainable future is the Green New Deal, which is spread mainly from the industry.
transition
We need to examine the value of these proposals from the perspective of the Global South.
This framework by itself cannot promote the fundamental systemic transformation needed to escape our common crisis.
Unless people on the front lines of disaster development, climate change, and marginalization participate meaningfully in discussions and lead our vision of an alternative future, we will always make superficial changes to a system that has historical roots of exploitation, extraction, and displacement.
This author
Sunil Acharya is the regional consultant for the Climate and Resilience Practice Action in Kathmandu, Nepal.
