Stakeholder emphasis on the need for collective awareness and youth activism
Stakeholders have said that collective awareness and youth activism are necessary to minimize the effects of climate change. Speaking on the topic of 'Climate Dialogue' held at Bhairahawa on Thursday organized by Kantipur Media Group's English publication The Kathmandu Post, Yagya Murthy Khanal, the focal person of the climate change program of the Ministry of Forests and Environment of Lumbini Province, said that the impact of climate change is visible at the provincial level, but there are no adequate policies, budgets and programs to mitigate it.
He said that the issue of Lumbini province is becoming complicated due to the global impact of climate change. However, he also said that since there are no separate laws related to climate change at the provincial and local levels, they have to work according to the policies and procedures of the federal government. "Even at the provincial and local levels, there is no separate policy on climate change mitigation and adaptation," he said, "so now we are making some efforts on the basis of the policy prepared by the federal government." Although community awareness and youth activism are important for climate change mitigation and adaptation, he said, the problem is currently increasing due to the lack of youth manpower.
Although there is a lot of budget for forestry programs in the Ministry of Forests, there is always a lack of budget and manpower in the field of climate change, he said. He said that although there is a policy arrangement to form a climate change council under the chairmanship of the prime minister in the union and the chief minister in the province, the meeting has only been held once in the last 5 years in Lumbini province . "Due to lack of budget and manpower, it is not possible to hold meetings and discuss," he said, "So far, only one council meeting has been held."
Muna Sharma, Forest Officer of Division Forest Office, Palpa, said that a single policy covering the topics of forestry, agriculture, tourism and climate change is necessary to reduce the effects of global climate change. "Until now, a single policy has not been made," she said, "From the local level to the state and union, a policy of the same nature is necessary. Only then can the program be conducted in an integrated manner and its effective implementation.'
In Lumbini province, most of the forest areas are community-based and forest management is also being done on the same basis, so agriculture, forestry and private forestry programs should be carried out together for carbon accumulation and climate change adaptation, she said. He claimed that the population in the settlements around the forest area is low, even if there are no young people, there are more elderly people, women and children, and the climate change is starting to affect them. "Due to the effects of climate change, extreme heat is increasing and as a result of the increase in fire incidents, women and children in rural areas are directly affected," she said. She said that even though the Nepal National Red Strategy is being implemented to reduce the green gas emissions caused by deforestation and forest degradation, Lumbini province has not benefited from it directly. Another speaker of the
program and campaigner against wildlife poaching, Hemant Acharya, a young man from Bardia, said that human-wildlife conflict is increasing due to the effects of climate change. He argued that after the river channel dried up, the wild animals started moving to the settlements and that was increasing the conflict with humans. "Due to climate change, rivers have dried up and turned into rivers, which has increased the number of wild animals that come to settlement areas in search of water to attack people," he said.
Yuvraj Kandel, a scholar of environmental impact, also said that the effects of climate change are increasing due to the lack of coordination between the agriculture and forestry sectors. "Fires are starting to reach high mountain districts," he said, "it is necessary to create agriculture and tourism policies by connecting forests and the environment." The
climate dialogue program was conducted by Vishwas Baral, editor of The Kathmandu Post. He discussed the policy and legal problems from the government level, the role of the stakeholders and the responsibility of the community and the youth and what should be done now. Local youth, environmental engineers and students studying environment participated in the discussion.
