Helping mountain communities cope with climate change (From Bucks Free Press)

Aid worker from High Wycombe helps Nepal cope with climate change

11:40am Sunday 25th December 2011 in News By Lawrence Dunhill

SIMON Lucas is spending another Christmas without real ale and Stilton cheese - which he is still unable to find in any of Kathmandu's shops.

It is nearly a decade since the 45-year-old and his family left High Wycombe to live in Asia - so they are used to doing the festive season in a slightly different way.

They have been in Nepal for four years - due to Simon’s aid work with the UK government - where they try and retain some of the Christmas traditions.

The dad-of-three said: “Finding a turkey is a bit of a game, usually it’s just any bird we can find. But we’ll have a tree and a fire going.

“It’s not celebrated here so you don’t have all the commercial stuff which is quite nice.”

Simon left Buckinghamshire with his wife Hilary and children in 2002, after being offered a post in Vietnam by the Department for International Development [DFID].

The former Dr Challoner’s Grammar School pupil spent five years working on irrigation and power schemes out of Hanoi, having previously studied renewable energy at university.

Then in 2007 he was chosen to lead a team in Nepal - where small changes to the climate are having a massive impact on the poorest, most vulnerable people.

As monsoon patterns change, ten million poor farmers are at greater risk from droughts, flooding and food insecurity. Floods and landslides have killed more than 4,000 people in the last 20 years.

Simon told the Bucks Free Press: It’s up in the Himalayas, where temperature changes are happening about twice as fast.

“The glaciers are melting - you can see it if you go into the mountain communities and see where the glacier was ten years ago. It’s shortening by hundreds of yards each year....which can cause flash floods.”

“Some villagers have had to move because the winter rains don’t come anymore. Most people here still rely on agriculture, so if they can’t grow food then that’s it."

The aid workers are helping farmers develop plans to adapt to climate change, to protect water sources and build irrigation systems, as well as promote the use of new drought and disease-resistant crops.

Simon is also helping people move on to different livelihoods.

DFID says an annual £60 million aid package will help to create 40,000 jobs for forest-dependent communities by 2015, including 25,000 jobs for women.

Simon says he has already helped resettle a community from an area called Mustang, adding: “It’s a very complicated process - the communities around where they move to are obviously affected.

“But we’re offering training programmes and talking to local businesses to see what skills are needed...Often it’s things like tourism, carpentry, plumbing or construction. We then pay training providers when the trainees have got jobs.”

DFID has been promoting the team’s work in recent months and Andrew Mitchell, the government’s International Development Secretary, said: “Whether you live in High Wycombe or Kathmandu, climate change will affect us all....

“We cannot have food security, water security, energy security - or any form of national security - without climate security.”

Simon also loves trekking in the hills, which proves a good way of seeing the effects of climate change and talking to people. He’s not made it up Everest though - which is he says is “beyond my pay grade”.

Children William, 11, Edward, nine and Anna, seven, all go to an international school, while Hilary is training to be a maths teacher, in preparation for moving back to the UK.

The family still have a house in High Wycombe and come back every summer, but they plan to move back to Britain permanently in the next two years.

“The main thing we miss is being away from friends and family”, Simon said.

“My brother lives in High Wycombe and has got kids about the same ages, but after they meet they forget about each other.”

Simon, who was served with monkey, snake, and dog’s meat as an occasional ‘honoured guest’ in Vietnam, also misses the earthy English pleasures of real ale and Stilton.

Find out more about the project at: www.dfid.gov.uk/changinglives