CA members, climate change experts call for meaningful commitment on climate change related issues

Constituent Assembly (CA) members and climate change experts stressed that there should be a meaningful transformation of the commitments made in the field of climate change and related issues into practice.

Disseminating scientific information to the concerned stakeholders was a challenging task of line agencies to materialize the policies and programmes regarding the climate change issues and its adverse impact in the society, they said at programme on ‘Discussion with Parliamentarians on Climate Change, Agriculture and Food Security in Nepal’ jointly organized by Next Generation Parliamentarians Group, HIMCCA, Climate Change Agriculture and Food Security, CGIAR and the Communicator in Kathmandu on Monday.

CA member and president of CA thematic committee on Fundamental Rights and Directive Principles Binda Pandey said that the experts’ views regarding climate change and food security should be communicated properly to the grassroots level so that the people including farmers could take benefit.

“Jargons and languages of the climate change issues need to be presented in a simplified way for wider consumption of the information,” Pandey said.

CA member Pari Thapa said that the climate change and food security issues should be incorporated in the national security policies of the state.

CA member Sunil Babu Panta said that the government should inform to the public about its investment in tackling with the climate change impact.

CA member Ang Dawa Sherpa said that the policy makers should acknowledge the indigenous knowledge to mitigate the adverse impact of climate change.

Dr. Gopal Bhatta of CGIAR said that the farmers should be made carbon smart, nitrogen smart, energy smart, knowledge smart, water smart to mitigate adverse impact of climate change.

Joint secretary of Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives Dr. Hari Dahal and joint secretary of Ministry of Environment Battu Krishna Upreti presented separate working papers in the programme while former ministers Keshav Badal and Ganesh Shah, experts Dr. Tek Bahadur Gurung, Dr. Jaya Bahadur Gurung and Dr. Ram Mohan Shrestha, among others, expressed their views on the topic.

Climate change poses an immediate and unprecedented threat to the rural livelihoods and food security of the many smallholder farmers who depend on agriculture.

These climatic changes play into a larger set of interdependent processes: while climatic change affects agriculture and food security, food production systems and natural resource management also affect the climate system.

In this way, climate change, agriculture and food security are further shaped by economic policies, institutional frameworks, and demographic change. Nepalnews.com