Any change in climate overtime, whether due to natural variability or as a result of human activities is Climate Change. Nepal is one of the most vulnerable(fourth) countries in terms of climate change especially threatening the biodiversity, water and glaciers, energy and food security. Globally Nepal emits only 0.025% of total GHG emission. Nepal’s agriculture is facing risks due to changes erratic monsoon rainfall and flooding. About 64% of cultivated areas are fully dependent on monsoon rainfall. Decline in rainfall from November to April adversely affects the winter and spacing crops. Rice yields are sensitive to climatic conditions. IPCC 4th Assessment Report estimates that crop yield in South Asia can decrease by up to 30% by 2050.

Extreme climatic events have increased the incidence of landslides, floods, soil erosion and drought in Nepal resulting negative impact on food production and livelihood. Rapid melting of glaciers of mountain region contributes high risk to the agriculture. 20% of loss of snow and glaciated area with 1°C increase in temperature increasing glacial lake outburst and flooding. Increased variability in weather, extreme condition changing crop weed competition dynamics, increase in pests and diseases, decreased biodiversity owing to temperature and climate change affect agricultural productivity resulting in food insecurity. In 2008, 3 hundred thousand people of hill district faced a precarious food situation after crop failure due to drought. Many events of impacts on agriculture due to drought or over and untimely rainfall have been recorded.

Prachi Bista, student of Agriculture at Gokuleshor Campus, Baitadi participated in “Small Act Great Impact” Online Environmental Awareness Campaign sharing her story about her awareness campaign about climate change in her society as My message to my locality about climate change. She said:

“My name is Prachi Bista. Neither I am an expert nor am I a atmospheric scientist but yes I am the student of agriculture and daughter of a farmer. I feel so frustrated with the current greatest environmental problem that our country is facing i.e. “climate change”.

It is so sad when a society like ours can’t see further than bank balance and stumbles blindly into a future when children won’t be able to enjoy the flowing river, green forest, flocks of birds etc. I am rather ashamed of our behavior.

Being the youthful citizen of the country, I knew my voice is my greatest strength.so, I decided to launch a small program about climate change, its impact and the ways to solve it in my locality (Taranagar). I am from town Dhangadhi of Sudurpaschim Province and my province constitutes about 9.63 percentage of the total population of Nepal. It is a cathartic for me to convey information not only about climate change, but also the actions needed to limit global warming to a tolerable level.

Almost hundreds of people attended the program. First, I presented a short introduction about climate change in front of them, that Nepal is already under considerable environment stress and it is the fourth rank for climate change impact in the world. From the last couple of years, Nepal has been experiencing flood, landslide, drought and variability in the occurrence of the regular course of monsoon.

While countries equal to our footing like Rwanda are starting to move in the right direction (they have banned use of plastic) and beginning to show some global role on this issue then why not we Nepalese?

Where there is humanity there is a hope.my generation has power to stop and even reverse this environmental demise so I told them several ways to reduce this burning issue:

First I told them that it is very important to reduce the effect of climate change by restraining activities that produce carbon and other greenhouse gases. Forest provides carbon reservoir as they contain about 60 percentage of all carbon stored in terrestrial ecosystem. And they serves important adaptation buffer. Since the deforestation contributes about the one-fourth of global carbon emissions, the first and most important risk is to curb deforestation and invest in reforestation activities.

 I also told them to use alternative energy sources such as biogas, solar power and hydroelectricity and by adopting better land use management to improve carbon sinks. And in farming use better technologies including drought tolerant crops.

So many people were benefited from that small program and after months drastic changes was seen in my locality:

·        Deforestation has been reduced.

·        People use energy wisely.

·        Recovery of local forest

·        People invest more in renewable energy resources etc.

 It was my first awareness program related to climate change in my locality and hence create great impact to my society.”

Awareness campaign are impactful where we can reach large number of people and create a great impact in our society. Small Act Great Impact is itself an online environmental awareness campaign and I would like to encourage all the fellow amabssadors and ecogeneration to instate awareness campaign in their region because Together We Can Bring A Change. We have to ACT LOCALLY,  ACT NOW and ACT TOGETHER

Reference: www.dhm.gov.np/portal_data/Nepal_Climate_Data_Portal_User_Manualv