The Southasia Peace Action Network, Sapan, joins hands with our partner organisation, Doyens of Peace of Southasia and many more, to express our deepest condolences and heartfelt solidarity with all those who have lost their lives, homes, livelihoods and loved ones in the devastating floods and related disasters in Nepal and Tibet, including the many foreign pilgrims and tourists caught in this tragedy.
The increasing frequency and intensity of such disasters across Southasia cannot be viewed merely as acts of nature.
Much of the devastation is aggravated by unprecedented and heartless environmental degradation, driven by human greed, reckless development and disregard for ecological balance.
This tragedy must awaken all Southasians to the urgent need for regional cooperation to protect, restore and regenerate our shared environment. Unless we act together, the entire region faces an increasingly dangerous future.
At this hour of heartbreaking calamity, we call upon governments, civil society, communities and citizens across Southasia to come together and extend every possible financial, material and humanitarian assistance to those affected.
As Sapan founder member, journalist Kanak Mani Dixit in Nepal pointed out in his powerful interview with Rajdeep Sardesai who is also a Sapaner, this is “a wake up call not just for the region but for the world”.
“Let’s meet, let’s talk. This is existential, and billions of people are going to be impacted ultimately. So the time to talk is now,” said Kanak Mani Dixit, calling for civil society pressure and academic learning to be “injected into the slipstream in New Delhi, Islamabad and Beijing.”
He also warned about the need “to rise beyond populist governance” and stop massive infrastructure projects like the Char Dham highways that India is building, “cutting into steep slopes and building the kinds of infrastructure that should never be built in such geographies.” Other countries like Nepal are doing the same, he added.
In the final analysis, “there is no choice but for New Delhi and Islamabad and Thimpu and Dhaka and Beijing and Kathmandu to talk… We also have to speak about ocean level rise. So let’s bring in Sri Lanka and Maldives as well. We must all work on it together with seriousness that has not been evident till now.”
- Also read: I watched my village disappear in an instant, by Arjun Poudel in The Kathmandu Post, reproduced in solidarity by Global Southasia syndicated features.
- Sapaner Dr. Ramu Kharel, an emergency physician at Brown University, is appealing for support to help communities facing urgent needs across Nepal through HAPSA Nepal, an organization he founded in 20213.
What you can do: Contribute to the HAPSA Nepal gofundme page to help with urgent post-disaster needs.
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