Source: The World Bank.
The World Bank defines a decline of more than 8 percent in household living standards as high or “severe”; four to eight percent as moderate; and zero to four percent as low. Living standards are measured by per capita consumption expenditures. (New York Times, 2018)
The World Bank released a report last week into the impact that global warming will have on living standards in South Asia.
South Asia’s Hotspots, finds that average temperatures in the region have increased in the last sixty years and will continue rising. Eight hundred million South Asians are at risk to see their standards of living and incomes decline as rising temperatures and more erratic rainfalls will cut down crop yields, make water more scare, and push more people away from their homes to seek safer places. (World Bank, 2018)
This has huge implications for the communities we support in Nepal as we explain below. We urgently need donations to enable us to run climate change adaptation projects in some of Nepal's most remote and vulnerable communities.
You can find out more about the World Bank report and what is happening to address this crisis at worldbank.org/southasiahotspots, via this excellent New York Times article, or by watching this short film.
There a several implications for Nepal and the communities we work with:
- Living conditions in the southern Terai region of Nepal are likely to get harder as temperatures rise. We need to enable citizens living there to adapt to the changing climate. We are currently doing this in Nawalparasi and desperately need to expand our reach.
- Extreme temperatures and intolerable heat in India and Bangladesh may force millions of people to migrate north to cooler environments at higher altitudes. The rural Himalayan communities we work face their own climate change challenges, but in the long run they may become net recipients of migrants. We are strengthening the social fabric and economic prospects of mountain communities, most notably in Solukhumbu.
- Climate change is already impacting weather patterns and growing conditions. Nepal and India trade heavily in agriculture, these patterns may become severely disrupted in the coming decades. Our focus on Agro Forestry means that communities are becoming economically and agriculturally self sufficient. With more funding we can help more people to lift themselves out of poverty through our projects.
This is why our work in Nepal is so important, we are enabling people living in remote mountain communities to adapt now to climate change. Thanks to The Glacier Trust projects, that you fund, thousands of Nepalis are prepared for the impacts of climate change. But we urgently need more money to enable even more vulnerable people to adapt.
Please make a donation if you can.