Nepal villagers on climate change frontline
Bhattegaun, Nepal (AFP) Aug 28, 2009 – Three years ago Naina Shahi’s husband left their small village in rural Nepal to seek work in neighbouring 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, told AFP 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.” … The residents of Bhattegaun, a settlement of around 150 mud huts deep in the forest, know little about the science behind climate change. But they say changing weather patterns are already forcing them to change their way of life. “These days, the weather is getting much hotter and the rains don’t fall when they are supposed to,” said 59-year-old Ram Bahadur Himal. …
