Invitation to Join: Himalayan Voice – A Voice that cannot go unheard

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

Get periodically Updated on our Blog: http://transforminghimalayas.blogspot.com/

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