Climate Change: A challengeby | 02-03-2013 22:19 |
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![]() Climate Change: A buzz word for rest of the world and a bitter reality for mountainous country like Nepal and other countries located near sea and ocean. Nepal is considered to be the fourth most vulnerable country to climate change due to its dependency on agriculture, high number of glacial lakes(2323) prone to outburst, its dependency on hydroelectricity for energy which are vulnerable to GLOF, and major contribution of tourism in country's GDP which is derived from mountains and biodiversity. Numbers of research are being carried out to develop correlation between climate change and livelihood of people and other associates of environment. A major question is can we really declare climate change is taking place due to irregularities of rainfall, temperature and melting snow?
Whatever be the truth, some of the changes have been seen in the country and livelihood of people is being affected. Since contribution of Nepal to Global warming is negligible it is not very useful to aware people about mitigating climate change. Rather the focus is on adaptation part. Adapting to climate change, how?? Introduction of drought resistant crops, adapting alternative energy, protecting forest, proper research on exotic species destroying indigenous plants, developing early warning system to prevent from GLOF. But where does all the money come from to carry out research and build those infrastructure? MEAs(multilateral environmental agreements), CDM (clean development mechanism), carbon trade, and green economy might be answer to these questions. But to take benefit from these sources country needs to strengthen its policy,its data base, its future strategies to adapt climate change and associated issues. So far donors have contributed lots of resources to develop strategies and to carry out adaptation measures, but no significant outcome has been observed or disseminated, except Climate Change Policy 2011 . For Nepal climate change is not just an environmental challenge, its a challenge for its management and political system, its a challenge to people to develop local measures rather than looking for non affordable international adaptation measures to safeguard themselves from Climate Change. |