Her elder brother Dilip Kumar Mahato was allegedly crushed to death for raising voice against unlawful extraction of riverbed materials in Dhanusha some five-and-a-half years ago.
“Your brother was killed for bringing extraction issue to light. You may also face the same fate so limit your expression”, this is how Laxmi has been frequently intimidated for being vocal to climate justice. The threat she said is mounting after she established the Om Prakash Foundation in his brother’s name and amplify the voice for justice.
The case indicates sensitive safety status of environment right defenders which in a big picture is a testimony to the shrinking civic space in the sphere of climate agenda.
Sharing her experience at a ‘National Dialogue on Climate Justice and Civic Space in Nepal' in the federal capital, Mahato said the climate change has affected all population but disproportionately impacted the grassroots people at the margin. “It has battered their lives and livelihoods. The flash flood ruins their life in a minute”, she said, adding, “Drying up of water sources has a direct bearing on the health and education opportunities of the children. It has not only constrained their agency to equally enjoy basic human rights but also pushed their families to an abyss of poverty and inequality”.
Academic activist Pratima Gurung echoed the effects of prevailing multi-dimensional inequality on disadvantaged groups – gender response to climate hazards, gender susceptibility to its damages and less ability to cope with and recover from damages – leading to uneven loss of assets and income and greater injustice.
“Climate justice fundamentally is about paying attention to how change impacts people differently, unevenly, and disproportionately, as well as redressing the resultant injustices in fair and equitable ways”, she said illustrating a story of complications for a disabled girl in changing sanitary pad due to hot wave to show differentiated impacts of climate change on people.
Highlighting the importance of civic space in climate conversation for advancing just transition in view of Nepal’s graduation to developing country, she said it is imperative to explore fair solution to unequal impact, empower local, marginalized and voiceless voices linking climate to human rights and intersectionality.
The demand for climate justice she argued was substantiated by fair shares of emission, no climate debt, meaningful participation of citizens and their groups/organizations and reduction of fossil fuel and corporate capture.
Claiming that climate justice movement is a civil rights movement, she asserted the need of debunking existing climate justice discourse to make it the people and planet centric and an open and broader socio-ecological-economic dynamics with the engagement of multiple stakeholders.
“Women’s contributions to save water, energy and food, thereby reducing emission of carbon are high. But, it has not been accounted for while generating evidence which has made the climate discourse incomplete”, she highlighted. “The policy and legal frameworks of the country have not addressed the woes of the climate survivors who have faced double whammy of compounded impacts of historical and structural exclusion”.
Gurung also took the opportunity to advocate for developing shared understanding on inter-sectional climate justice and development framework for Nepal to make country position clear at sub-national, national and international arenas.
President of Parliamentary Agriculture, Cooperative and Natural Resource, Kusunti Devi Thapa claimed that Nepal currently is in climate urgency while calling for embracing our indigenous culture and nature for averting climate-induced loss. “The economically backward people have no contribution to greenhouse gas emission but their livelihood base are being brazenly ruined”, the lawmaker asserted.
Climate governance expert Dr Rubi Joshi viewed climate justice from risk governance perspective calling for deconstructing homogenous and blanket approach to deal with climate change. “There are explicit gaps in policy and practice in lack of effective inter-governmental coordination and clear implementation plan and procedure. Absence of intersectional analysis in vulnerability assessment in many ways promote inequality and injustice”, she argued.
She questioned the existing climate budget coding practice taking place at local, provincial and federal level which has created misleading evidence, thereby digressing discourse. “Activity wise disaggregated level budget coding is a must; programmatic coding is not giving candid evidence”, Dr Joshi recommended.
As a panelist youth representative, Naren Khatiwada noted the dominant narrative of neo-liberal economy on climate justice should be ruptured by creating discourse that the global corporate sector takes obligation to compensate the harms meted to climate and injustice to the people.
Representative of Association of International NGOs (AIN), Pallav Regmi, highlighted data gaps in assessing Loss & Damage of climate change which has also weakened our position in international climate negotiations. “To access global climate finance, Nepali CSOs should ramp up their capacity to go for accreditation and raise strong voice for simplifying the process for access”, he recommended.
The panelists univocally recommended for evidence-based advocacy for intersectional policy with impact analysis, grassroots-level transformative leadership and social movements, evidence generation system, inclusive platforms with documentation of evidences, influencing climate finance mechanisms (CoP, Finance Ministry), showcasing climate responsive innovative projects from CSOs, safeguarding human rights defenders and monitoring mechanism to know efficiency of existing budget.
Also on the occasion, the participants also raised the voice to collectively seek answers of critical questions such as who is responsible for the harm and how it can be repaired; how are risks and responsibilities distributed across people, regions and generations; who gets to participate in decision-making and which groups are being recognized or ignored in climate actions and policies in the domain of climate justice.
As many as 150 climate justice and civic space advocates had attended the national dialogue event, organized by Nepal Participatory Action Network (NEPAN), in collaboration with the Association of International NGOs (AIN) and the NGO Federation Nepal. (RSS)
