Entire Villages Are Up and Leaving Due to Climate Change

The Himalayan village of Samjung didn't die in a day. Perched in a valley in Nepal's Upper Mustang region, more than 13,000 feet above sea level, the Buddhist village lived by slow, deliberate rhythms, harvesting barley and herding yaks and sheep. Then the water dried up. Snow-capped mountains turned barren as, year after year, snowfall declined. Springs and canals vanished, and when it did rain, the water came all at once, flooding fields and ruining mud homes. Families left one by one, leaving the skeletal remains of a community transformed by climate change. More from the AP:

• Changing climate: The Hindu Kush and Himalayan mountains hold more ice than anywhere outside the Arctic and Antarctic. Their glaciers feed major rivers that support 240 million people in the mountains, and 1.65 billion more downstream. Such high-altitude areas are warming faster than the lowlands. Glaciers are retreating and permafrost areas are thawing as snowfall becomes scarcer.

• Repercussions: These shifts are shaping where people can live and work by disrupting farming, water access, and weather patterns, says Neil Adger, a professor of human geography at the University of Exeter. And it's not just in the Himalayas: Around the globe, extreme weather due to climate change is forcing communities to move, whether it's powerful tropical storms in the Philippines, drought in Somalia, or wildfires in California.
• Relocation: Moving a village—even one with fewer than 100 residents, like Samjung—was no simple endeavor. Residents needed reliable access to water and nearby communities for support during disasters. Relocating closer to winding mountain roads would allow villagers to market their crops and benefit from growing tourism. Eventually, the king of Mustang, who still owns large tracts of land in the area, provided suitable land for a new village.
• Missing home: Pemba Gurung, 18, and her sister, Toshi Lama Gurung, 22, don't remember much about the move from their old village—but they remember how hard it was to start over, with families spending years gathering materials to build new mud homes. The sisters are grateful not to have to spend hours fetching water every day, but they long for their old village. "It is the place of our origin," said Toshi. "We wish to go back. But I don't think it will ever be possible." More here.