"Nepal's migrant workers eye overseas jobs as climate threats loom,"

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Though economic migration is a decades-old phenomenon in Nepal, researchers say that in recent years, extreme weather events and climate change-induced disasters are adding to the factors pushing people out of the country.

“The reasons [for Nepalis] to go to foreign countries are socio-economic conditions and a lack of employment opportunities here in Nepal,” says Amina Maharjan, a migration specialist at the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development. “Lately, however, we are seeing people choose labour or educational migration as an adaptive measure to post-disaster economic burdens.”...

Thirty five migrant workers were interviewed by The Third Pole for this report. One of them is 50-year-old Ram Bindo Yadav, who was waiting for a bus from Kathmandu’s main airport to his village in Siraha district on a late January afternoon. He used to farm on rented land, “but in recent years, farming became difficult; there is no irrigation, and we don’t get rainfall when it is needed.”...

According to the environment department’s aforementioned 2021 vulnerability and risk assessment, natural hazards (mainly floods and landslides) are one of the major driving forces behind economic migration in Nepal: “The majority of the labour force depends on agriculture and this sector is badly impacted by recurrent floods, droughts, and landslides. As a result, the agricultural labour force, particularly the young, tends to move away from the agriculture sector and explore employment opportunities in the service sector and labour market outside of the country.”...