India’s environment secretary Jairam Ramesh recently expressed skepticism as to whether the melting of the Himalayan glaciers is caused by climate change, saying more research was needed.
Meanwhile, three years ago Naina Shahi’s husband left their small village in rural Nepal to seek work in neighboring India, leaving her to bring up their three children alone.
The dry winters and unpredictable monsoons Nepal has experienced in recent years had hit crop production on the couple’s land plot in the foothills of the Himalayas, forcing them to look for other ways to feed their family.
For the past two years, their crop has failed entirely and Shahi now buys rice on credit from a local shopkeeper while she waits for her husband to return to their village with his earnings.
“My husband stopped farming because this place is not good for growing crops. We needed to earn money to feed the children,” Shahi, 35, said in the remote village of Bhattegaun in mid-western Nepal.
“There is not enough rainfall for the crops to grow well and we have to walk for two or three hours every day to get water,” she said.
International aid agency Oxfam says Nepal’s changing weather patterns are threatening the livelihoods of hundreds of desperately poor communities already struggling to produce enough food to survive.
RSS