KATHMANDU / RASUWA. It’s been three weeks since the massive floods hit Nepal along the Trishuli and Bhote Koshi rivers. The La Via Campesina Nepal Coordination, working with local allies, is present in the affected valleys, observing, monitoring and delivering relief.
Relief materials have been distributed in Kalika Rural Municipality of Rasuwa, and support has also been extended to the families of the deceased and the missing, with priority given to single women and to children who have lost one or both parents.
Alongside relief, the coordination teams are carrying out a needs assessment among affected peasant households. The losses recorded so far are of a kind that emergency relief alone cannot resolve: cultivated land buried under boulders and sand, irrigation canals erased, livestock and stored seed swept away, and terraces that no longer exist on any map.
The teams are documenting these losses with particular attention to tenant farmers, landless cultivators, unregistered tillers and women farmers.Type your paragraph here
“We are recording these losses to claim reparations. Nepal’s share of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions is 0.027 per cent, and one hundredth of one per cent of all the carbon put into the atmosphere since 1751. Our peasants did not cause this, and they are not asking for charity. They are asking for reparation, grants, not loans,” said Pramesh Pokharel, of ANPFA, who was in the affected area with the teams.
The disaster was not a natural calamity but a climate catastrophe. Nepal submitted a request to the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage on 9 September. The Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage (FRLD) is a global climate finance mechanism set up under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to help developing countries deal with the destructive impacts of climate change that go beyond what adaptation can prevent, things like land washed away, homes destroyed, or ecosystems that won’t recover.
Surendra Kandel, of ANPFA, who took part in the relief, also added:
“This assessment work is being carried out along with many other comrades from ANPFA and allied organizations such as World March of Women National Coordinating Body Nepal, Youth Advocacy Nepal and many others. Observation, monitoring and relief will continue in the coming weeks, and the findings of the peasant needs assessment will help to provide constructive feedback for reconstruction.”
