Four years ago, Sharvani Regmi trekked through the Himalayan region near her home country of Nepal’s border with Tibet, an area she remembers for its beauty and the warmth of the people who live there.
Now living in Brockport, roughly 7,400 miles away, the recent SUNY Brockport graduate has watched as catastrophic flooding and landslides devastated communities in the region.
“It’s really sad to see those people getting the most hit by these natural disasters,” said Regmi. Her family is from Kathmandu and was not directly affected, she said.
The Aug. 26 disaster was likely triggered by a rapid slope failure involving a glacier in Langtang National Park near Nepal’s border with China, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Scientists say warming temperatures are increasing instability in the Himalayas, although researchers are still studying the precise role that climate change played in this particular collapse.
For Regmi and SUNY Brockport senior Samprada Pradhan, the catastrophe has brought renewed urgency to a larger issue: the climate risks facing their home country.
“I think it is a little bit about climate injustice,” said Pradhan, a computer science and international studies student who was born in Birgunj, Nepal, and later lived in Kathmandu.
Nepal contributes about 0.1% of global greenhouse gas emissions, according to the World Bank, which has identified increased landslides, water stress and glacial lake overflow among the climate risks facing the country’s mountainous north.
“There’s countries like ours that has not contributed a lot to climate change, yet our communities are being washed away and settlements are vanished,” Pradhan said.
Pradhan learned of last week’s disaster after waking up and checking Instagram. As news spread, friends began contacting her because of her volunteer work with Hami Nepal, a nonprofit involved in disaster relief. Some were searching for missing friends.
“You can just see how desperate people are to get any form of information,” said Pradhan.
Rescue efforts are ongoing. As of Monday, at least 903 people had been killed in Nepal and 4,247 remained missing, according to the country’s National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority.
SUNY Brockport has more than 80 Nepali students currently enrolled, according to Keith Davis, director of the university’s Center for Global Education and Engagement.
Davis said International Student Services has contacted Nepali students to check on them and connect those affected with counseling, wellness services and other resources.
Pradhan said the school’s support matters greatly, as do donations and care from the greater community, but she hopes the disaster also prompts a broader conversation about the forces putting Himalayan communities at risk.
Regmi shares that concern.
“It’s also high time we shed light on climate change,” Regmi said. “Now the narrative has shifted from climate change to climate catastrophe.”
Pradhan said the conversation extends beyond Nepal.
“I think we are seeing people come out and say, ‘Hey, these are the consequences of climate change,’ and they’re making substantial conversations around it,” she said. “And I think we need to continue having these conversations, because while today it’s our country, today it’s my country, it’s very close to being all of our homes.”
