A veteran ‘peacemonger’ reflects on a virtual youth-led meeting on the Himalayan glacial disaster unfolding in Nepal and the region, and suggests ways forward.
By Lalita Ramdas / Global Southasia
The most powerful unanimous calls at a recent online meeting titled ‘Himalayan Glacial Disaster: A Wake up Call for South Asia‘ were about the need to take urgent note of the human and sociological implications, and to link with local communities for long-term education and awareness building. This must be done if there is any serious intention of preventing future calamities.
The meeting, held on 15 Sept. 2026, was hosted by the voluntary organisation Doyens of Peace that I am part of. Led largely by young people from across the eight Southasian nations, the 90-minute long webinar was rich in content, strong techno/scientific explanations and cautionary warnings of more to follow.
A key takeaway was the calls to focus on practical steps and to plan the way ahead. Analysis, no matter how good or important, can never be a substitute for action on the ground. A core feature of this must be people-to-people dialogue and collaboration across the entire region.
Every speaker stressed the need to alert the world about the nature and scale of loss suffered by communities and countries that share borders.
Senior journalist and public intellectual from Nepal, Kanak Mani Dixit, founder editor Himal Southasian, noted that the 140 points in the New Delhi Resolution of the recently concluded BRICS, makes no mention of the recent catastrophic glacier-related floods in the very region which was hosting this global meeting.
Immediate collective response?
As he starkly put it, other than the two tiny states of Bhutan and Nepal which literally were in the bosom of the mighty Himalayas – none of the others – like Pakistan, India, Bangladesh or even China showed the urgency or empathy which would lead to a demand for immediate collective response.
There was agreement that our youth, whose common futures are directly under threat, are ready to take action. We need to support and listen to their voices and questions, and to engage with them respectfully .
We also acknowledged the need to come back to the elephant in the room – namely the unwillingness of the two largest regional nations India and Pakistan to sit down and talk to each other, to revive and activate the regional body of SAARC, the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation.
But the young Indians and Pakistanis in Doyens are not discouraged or pessimistic. On the contrary, they are asking, “What can we as youth groups do? How do we get our leaders to act? It is we who will inherit this fragile and endangered planet earth – so we need to have a say in the decisions of today that will shape our tomorrows!”
Video presentations and Zoom meetings do help connect us. We have seen the power and potential of the conversations that these technologies facilitate. Exchanging ideas through online videos and chats has helped highlight the urgency and necessity of coming together to think and act regionally for the good of all our peoples.
But it is no substitute for in-person meetings.
Youth meetings
One idea which both young and senior activists are exploring is about the possibility of a series of visits by youth teams to the Southasian capitals, to meet with the leadership. They want to explain how deeply young people are affected and committed to address the crisis of climate change, global warming, and especially the fragility of the mountain regions as witnessed in the recent devastation in Nepal.
Governments, political parties and civil society groups alike are all talking about the urgent need to involve young people to take the lead in environmental protection and nation building.
This may be an ideal moment to prepare exploratory teams to travel and to discuss how to build or revive a regional body that would work in a spirit of goodwill, cooperation and a vision for the development of a harmonious, peaceful and constructive Southasia as a whole.
This is no romantic pipe dream. There is a realistic and sober awareness that this is a tough call given our sad history of regional conflicts and lack of cooperative spirit. There is a hardheaded acknowledgement about obstacles like permissions, visas and finance.
Despite all that, many of our youth want to break man-made barriers and borders created by our common colonial past and inherited boundary conflicts. They do not carry the baggage of past generations. They exhibit a refreshing willingness to build bridges, connect towards the digitally exciting present across the human-made divisions, ease visa restrictions and meet and exchange views with regional leaders.
This is a generation that is waiting impatiently to be given a seat at the table, willing to take risks and plunge into the exhilarating possibilities of daring to create the framework of a new imagination and vision of an energized, proactive and liberated Southasia.
This is a region that is inextricably connected by geography, history, heritage, culture, literature, music, cuisine, religion — and destiny too?
These are all reasons why we choose to write our name with the logic of interconnectivity – ‘Southasia’ not ‘South Asia’.
Recording of the webinar ‘Himalayan Glacial Disaster: A Wake up Call for South Asia’, Doyens of Peace, 15 Sept. 2026.
We need to constantly remind ourselves and our networks of the criticality of this conversation about peace, joint action, and dialogue that is “uninterrupted and uninterruptable”.
Many of us on have been active in the peace movement for decades. Since the 1990s, despite the growing trust deficit at many levels, groups like PIPFPD (the Pakistan India Peoples Forum for Peace and Democracy), IPSI (the India Pakistan Soldiers Initiative), and others have made bold and courageous efforts along these lines. There may well be others, both in the region and the diaspora – this needs research.
It was in March 2021, when bilateral relations between the ‘Big Two’ again nosedived that many of us got together with the simple device of widening our outreach to neighbours in the region, leading to the birth of Sapan, the Southasia Peace Action Network. For more than five years now, Sapan has provided a creative and energized platform for many more individuals and organisations.
It was only logical to move from experienced seniors to the youth – namely Doyens of Peace.
It is important to connect these dots and see ourselves as links in this continuum that so beautifully reflects the strong, underlying spirit of building harmony and goodwill – peace and cooperation across our region.
Many of us from earlier generations, with our own stories and experiences, can help develop a wider picture and understanding of the successes and the challenges faced by young people.
As Mahatma Gandhi said, “There is no way to peace – peace is the way”.
World Peace Day – or International Day of Peace — is celebrated globally on Sept 21. It is a happy coincidence that the next meeting of our Doyens of Peace Steering Committee is taking place that day.
Here’s to many more ideas and initiatives emerging, converging and synergizing into some meaningful directions on the ground.
Lalita Ramdas is a super senior, ‘young at heart’ educator and peace activist, who shuttles between Hyderabad and Alibag, India. She is a co-founder of Greenpeace India, and the first Southasian woman to head the Board of Greenpeace International. She is also a founder member and advisor to the Southasia Peace Action Network, current India co-chair of the Pakistan-India People’s Forum for Peace and Democracy, and active with the Doyens of Peace network.
This is a Global Southasia (formerly Sapan News) syndicated feature available for republication with due credit to sapannews.com.
Why ‘Southasia’ as one word? Because our histories entangle, our struggles intersect, and our futures are bound together.
This article was written and edited by humans. Click here for the Global Southasia AI policy.
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