On the occasion of 18th SAARC Summit that is going to be held at Kathmandu on 26th to 27th November 2014, Nepalese Youth for Climate Action in support of Clean Energy Nepal and OXFAM successfully organized a campaign “18th SAARC Summit: Youth Demand Action” at Kathmandu on 18th of November 2014. The program with flash mob, street drama and candlelight at Basantapur Durbar Square demanding that the 18th SAARC Summit to be held in Kathmandu next week revisit past decisions of SAARC on climate change, food security and disaster issues and ensure their effective implementation. The program was successful with the participation of more than thousands of people at Basantapur, Kathmandu.
Bundle of declarations have been prepared at previous SAARC summits to fight with impacts of climate change, disaster and to ensure the food security, but proper implementation of commitment does not seem to be effective. By this campaign, we urged the SAARC leaders to revisit SAARC’s past decisions on Climate Change- SAARC Action Plan on Climate Change, Dhaka Declaration on Climate Change and Thimpu Statement on Climate Change, Disasters– Agreement on Rapid Response to Natural Disaster and Comprehensive Framework on Disaster Management and Food Scarcity- Agreement on Establishing the SAARC Food Bank and Agreement on Establishing the SAARC Seed Bank and take actions to implement these decisions to benefit the people living in the region.
The program began with flash mob conspiring 50 youths, which was followed by very informative drama and ended up with candle lighting. The drama was 25 min long and was centralized on displaying the problems faced by people of South Asian countries showing poverty, natural disaster & climate change. The climax of the drama showed happier South Asia after the implementation of all those declarations that the SAARC leaders have made. The drama resembles the nature of piling up of documents which are prepared to fight with the growing impacts of climate change and also show big gap to implement their commitments. The issues of ice melting of Nepal, impact on agriculture in India, Pakistan and Afghanistan, flood in Bangladesh, sea level rise in Maldives, effect in wildlife of Sri Lanka and reduction of natural beauty of Bhutan was displayed at drama. The drama was completed by organizing youth SAARC Summit by actors showing that South Asian leaders are becoming more concerned on these issues and come up on the common floor on 18th SAARC Summit to fight with the impact of climate change.
At the end of Drama, Candle lighting ceremony was done which was designed in the shape of SAARC map. The lightning program was done in the memory of the people of SAARC Countries who lost their life due to the impacts of climate change, disaster and food insecurity.
The drama was directed by Ram Babu Regmi from Mandapika Kala Samuha.
