Fw: Global Day of Action: Talk Program on Climate Change Impact in Dolpo, Nepal by Gregory Pierce
Dhiraj Pradhananga
From: The Small Earth Nepal <small...@wlink.com.np>
To: dhir...@hotmail.com
Sent: Sun, December 5, 2010 11:52:29 AM
Subject: Global Day of Action: Talk Program on Climate Change Impact in Dolpo by Gregory Pierce
The Small Earth Nepal (SEN), in collaboration with the Consortium for Capacity Building (CCB) at the University of Colorado, Boulder (USA), conducted a program for the Global Day of Action today (Saturday), December 4th at the Nepal Tourism Board’s Conference Hall. The program was meant to encourage people to take action in regard to climate change issues as world leaders meet in Cancun, Mexico for COP 16, the annual United Nations Climate Change Conference. Today, SEN presented a declaration drafted by student participants from the recently held International Graduate Conference on Climate Change and People (Kathmandu, 15-19 November) to the representatives from the Government of Nepal.
The conference declaration is a collaborative statement from the students (voice of 130 participants from 17 countries in greater south Asia and beyond) who attended the conference and calls on world leaders attending COP 16 to hear the voices of the Eco-Generation, which is the younger generation of concerned student-scientists and future policymakers. The declaration is divided into seven Themes of Action—Listen, Understand, Act, Engage, Empower, Embrace, and Impart. It demands that policymakers listen to the voices of youth, to stakeholders at all scales, and to vulnerable and marginalized communities; to understand the urgent action needed to create preventative and mitigation policy; to act to develop and promote programs that encourage more sustainable development; to engage with local communities to better address local needs; to empower marginalized communities and indigenous knowledge systems to help cope with growing change; to embrace intergenerational representation; and finally to impart knowledge to the global community through both informal and formal communication channels.
The conference declaration is available at www.smallearth.org.np for download.
Mr. Dhiraj Pradhananga, President of The Small Earth Nepal, handed the declaration to Mr. Mahendra Bahadur Gurung, Joint Secretary, Ministry of Irrigation, Dr. Maheshwar Dhakal, Ecologist, Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation and Mr. Jagadishwor Karmacharya, Senior Divisional Meteorologist, Department Hydrology and Meteorology, Ministry of Environment, Government of Nepal.
The conference declaration was followed by a presentation by Mr. Gregory Pierce, a Research Fellow at the Center for Collaborative Conservation at Colorado State University, who talked about his recently completed field project in Western Nepal, The Vitality of Ice and Bone: A Cultural Model of Climate Changes and Livelihood Transformations in Dolpo, Nepal. The project explored how ethnically Tibetan agro-pastoralists in Dolpo cognitively model the interconnections between their livelihoods and the high mountain ecosystems upon which they depend, and whether or not those models are being transformed in response to both climate and livelihood changes in the area. Preliminary analyses of data confirm that the Dolpo-pa have witnessed significant changes to their local environments in the past few years. Importantly, the causes of these changes remain inexplicable to inhabitants in the area as they do not fit well into how they see environmental processes, which are scaled to local times and spaces and, therefore, do not provide a framework through which such global changes can be explained.
The program was chaired by Dr. Madan Lall Shrestha, Academician of Nepal Academy of Science and Technology. During the program, Dr. Shrestha also appreciated co-organizers, co-sponsors, organizing committee members, capacity building committee members of the graduate conference with certificates and khada.
The event was attended by over 80 participants from high-level dignitaries representing government and non government institutions along with journalists, students, and participants of the conference.
Dhiraj Pradhananga
President
The Small Earth - Nepal
626 Bhakti Thapa Sadak
Naya Baneshwor
P O Box 20533, Kathmandu
Nepal
Tel: +977-1-4782738
Mob: +977-9841218296
Email: small...@wlink.com.np
URL: http://www.smallearth.org.np