Welcome Pasang Yangjee Sherpa. It's a pleasure to have you here and to have you help us understand a magnificent part of the world, the Himalaya region, and the work that you're doing there to examine climate change, but also the cultural and religious components of this work. You're an anthropologist, you've done your PhD, and we'd like to know a little bit about your life journey. I originally come from southern part of Everest region, which we call Pokhara. It's located in northeastern Nepal between Solu and Khumbu, which is the popular tourist destination. I was born and raised in Kathmandu. I came to the United States to pursue higher education, and I got my undergraduate degree in social sciences and my MA and PhD in anthropology. But as a doctoral student, I studied Sherpa perceptions of climate change and how various institutions were responding to climate change effects. So I want to just open up a particular story that you told me in 2009 about a village where you are in and the problem of an interglacial lake and how this help refocus your studies on climate change. Can you tell us that story? Sure. In 2008, when I was working on my MA thesis, I was interested in Indigenous issues and Indigenous rights. This was also a time when the country was going through major political change. I wanted to know more about the Sherpas, and I went to my village, just as a small part of my field work. I wanted to understand who Sherpas are, although I come from the community, I wanted to understand the local perspective. That took me to the village once again, and that's when I started to hear about mosquitoes arriving. That's when I started to hear about this thing called glacial lake outburst flood, and the potential of Imja glacial lake outburst flood, anytime bursting and destroying the villages. And I also found out that there were two occasions when the villagers had to flee in the middle of the night trying to find a safer ground because they thought the Imja was going to burst on that particular night. When I heard those stories it really made me realize that first of all something needs to be done, and what is going on has to be understood properly. I also felt that as someone from the region and someone with an advanced degree, and the only female anthropologist, I felt like I was in a position to do something about it and I was in a position. I was trained to study and continue to see what is going on. It's our life journey, is a fascinating part of what we study and why we care about these things, and just as a little more background, you might want to help others to understand the situation in the Himalayas with the glaciers and with global warming, is absolutely critical because this provides water for the Gangetic plains in India and Southeast Asia, these great rivers that come out of the Himalaya region. Just give us a little more understanding of how climate change is affecting this region. The global warming has caused glacial melting and as a result, glacial lakes in the Himalayas have been expanding. There are several glacial lakes just in the country of Nepal identified as being critical. For their potential to burst and flood communities downstream. Yes. One of them is in the Everest region called Imja Glacial Lake. For the people living in the Everest region, this conversation about glacial lake outburst flood is alarming because in 1985 we had Dig Tsho GLOF, or glacial lake outburst flood. When I go to my village, every time I pass through the villages, I see impressions of the villages that once used to be there. For someone who sees this on a daily basis, glacial lake outburst flood, and the potential of a GLOF is seriously alarming. Any conversation about GLOF can be disturbing. We know the consequences of this, as I say, for water down on the Gangetic Plains in India, 50 million people depend on the water from the rivers and the glaciers that are behind those rivers. We want to also examine some of the other issues that are happening regarding climate change and then come to the cultural and religious responses that you're saying. Yes. You've spoken last night in a wonderful talk about the problem of food and food security in relation to climate change. Can you give us an insight into that, too? Sure. Last night I was talking about climate change Humla, in Northwest Nepal. Humla District is one of those districts where food security has been a major issue for a long time. Recently during my field visits, I was told by the villagers that they are worried that there isn't enough rain and their crops are suffering, so they don't have enough food. That was an issue that came up regularly during my field visit in Humla. Interestingly what also I was told is that it's not just the lack of rainwater, but also lack of access to subsidized food that the governments provide in order to help the local people, and how social positioning plays into who gets access to subsidized food was also an issue. What I see is food security. Even the issue of food security is a little complex at the local scale. Yeah. So the variety of problems that are arising, flooding and drought, even in this region, it's incredible. And then you're also discussing with us the obvious change of seasons and that birds coming back later or not at all, mosquitoes, you've just mentioned, and so on. Local people are noticing this and you're interacting with these local people.
