Youth‚ migration and climate change

The Himalayan Times: For many youth, migration represents a route to better life — whether in search of employment opportunities or for good education, many youngsters are migrating every day from Nepal. But beside these reasons, could climate change also be affecting the youth migration?

There is no clear answer as the link between youth, climate change and migration yet needs to be discovered. But few experts of climate change and migration attempted to unfold the relation between these three elements on December 18 at an interaction programme on ‘Climate Change, Youth and Migration’ held at Nepal Art Council, Babarmahal.

In the event held on the occasion of International Migrants Day, one of the speakers was water and climate change expert Ajaya Mani Dixit. Giving an instance of Rampur Khadauna, a village in Nawalparasi, he explained, “Almost half of the land area of this village is submerged in water for three months every year”. Due to this condition, “50 per cent of the youth do not stay there. In, fact no one wants to live in this village” and “it could have forced the youth from there to migrate”.

...Meanwhile, various international studies have pointed out the impacts of climate change the world will face in years to come. “Though Nepal will also face the consequences, there is no scientific base to explain how it will affect Nepal, youth and their migration as we lack study,” Dixit stated....

A street scene in Kathmandu, Nepal, shot by DARIO SEVERI, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license