Dear Change-makers, Dear Lovers of the Himalayas,
We are happy to share that the team of the Climate Himalaya Initiative, the Environment Professionals’ Group and the Asia
Pacific Youth Task Force on Rio+20 (APYTF), together with media, youth and civil
society groups from South Asia and China, is now starting a citizen journalism
campaign - Himalayan Voice: Battle against institutional corruption in the
Himalayas. To be formally launched in November 2013, the campaign is
expected provoke discussion on transparency, human rights, indigenous rights and
right to information in the sustainable mountain development sector, eventually
promoting social auditing of government and other public institutions and form
advocacy group in desired communities to ensure such bodies are economically
efficient, environmentally responsible and socially accountable to the people. The
campaign will have strong virtual presence along with some satellite networks
at country level, largely led by young sustainability forerunners and backed by
media professionals writing on sustainability and governance issues.
During the pre-planning study it is realized that every
year billions of dollars is spent in Himalayan countries – Bhutan, China, India,
Nepal and Pakistan, without any concrete outputs. A large chunk of resources is
utilized by multilateral organizations by themselves or through other
intermediary international and national organizations, whose actual benefits
never go to the local communities. Interestingly, many of such initiatives are
neither registered with the governments nor properly followed-up by the donors.
In our estimate about 80-90% of such resources are spent in staff salary, travel
and administration of international agencies and big national NGOs and rest less
than 10% is channeled further for the real work. Another layer of partners
(national NGOs) further take big chunk of money away leaving less than 5% of
the resource for the real work. Sadly, thus left 5% also dries away without any
use due to poor governance system in the local communities and district level
administrative units. Until a clear mechanism is developed to track all sustainability
funds and spent through well institutionalized integrated sector driven and
community led initiatives, sustainable development will never be achieved in
the Himalayas. Himalayan Voice will attempt to voice these issues among donors,
policy makers, and in the development communities in these countries.
To start with this, we are currently looking for
list of journalists and advocacy groups who work against environmental
corruption and environmental governance with footprint in ‘South Asia + China’ with
global influence. If you know any of them, we appreciate your support in
linking them with us or providing lists of relevant contacts or referring to
the websites where anti-corruption contents can be populated without much
editing. We will be covering sustainable development sector with a major focus
on climate change and associated institutional mechanisms, governance and corruption.
We aim to make aware the governments, civil society in the region as well their
donors from the west about the nature and level of corruption, abuse of power
and how that is triggering jeopardizing environmental issues in the Himalayan
countries.
For more information and to share relevant updates you can bring on board, out virtual platforms are:
Discussion Forum: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/environment-professionals
Exclusive ClimateDebates on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/CHIClimateDebates/
Network beyond Boundaries on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/171967553141/
Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/guardhimalayas
Report your issue in public on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/againstclimatecorruption/
Report your issues privately at climatehimalaya@gmail.com and/or transforminghimalayas@gmail.com. We
ensure highest level of seclusion for the privately reported issues. Such stories
will be published on our blog and disseminated to our audiences globally.
After combining all the platforms above, currently
we are connected to around 10,000 stakeholders. Help us grow more, grow fast!!!
Sincerely,
Team Himalayan Voice
"A small group of thoughtful people could
change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has." - Margaret
Mead
