If the UN can demonstrate a successful example of the global treaty that avoided the calamity at the planetary level, why not the same UN cannot use its convening power to address the global pandemic? writes Rajendra Shende for South Asia Monitor
South Asia’s Renewable Transition: Energy Security, Geopolitics and the BRICS Factor
The regional opportunity is particularly significant in electricity. Nepal and Bhutan can potentially export hydropower; India can provide the scale of demand and investment required to create a regional electricity market; Bangladesh can become an important electricity consumer; and Sri Lanka and Pakistan can expand solar and wind. Greater cross-border electricity trade could allow countries to exploit complementary renewable resources and reduce the need for expensive domestic backup capacity.
The Himalayas Need a Common Language of Warning: Emergency Cooperation Must be Institutionalised Into Durable Regional Architecture
A genuinely regional approach could eventually include - besides Nepal, China and India - Bhutan and, where relevant, downstream institutions in Bangladesh. Organisations with established Himalayan expertise, particularly the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development in Kathmandu, could offer scientific and institutional support.
The Himalayas are Sending a Warning: Need for Timely Trans-Border Sharing of Environmental Information
The Himalayas are not collapsing because humanity exists, but humanity is creating a warmer world in which the Himalayas are becoming less predictable. The real question is no longer whether climate change will alter the mountains. It already is.
When an Entire Village and Bazaar in Nepal Disappeared in an Instant
My eldest aunt was swept away. So was her son, my dai Madhu, and his wife. My other aunt — gone too, they told me. Her grandson Sijan and his wife, caught in the same water. His own son and daughter-in-law, unreachable, unaccounted for. My maternal uncle had gone out that morning to cut grass for the cattle. He never came back.
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