Amina Maharjan

Accelerating glacier melt and increasing climatic extremes are transforming mountain environments, heightening exposure to hazards such as glacial lake outburst floods, debris flows, and landslides. In the Hindu Kush Himalaya, where communities often inhabit multi-hazard landscapes, these environmental changes intensify livelihood insecurities and challenge local adaptive capacities. This study focuses on human mobility and immobility in response to such climate risks, which have received increasing attention in the last decade, but are still often framed as a binary. Drawing on qualitative fieldwork in Nepal’s Bhote Koshi Valley, we show that this framing obscures more intricate and differentiated ways human im/mobility is shaped by high-risk environments. Instead, we demonstrate that im/mobilities are spatio-temporally differentiated, deeply entangled and unequally distributed across social groups. A key finding of this study is the phenomenon of ‘monsoon mobilities’: a circular, annual and short- to medium-distance movement of people in anticipation of monsoon-induced risks. These mobilities take place in a context of fragile road infrastructure, where residents are at risk of temporary entrapment. At the same time, they depend on the movement of goods and people (e.g. trade and tourism) for their livelihoods, illustrating that monsoon mobilities function not only as an immediate safety response but also as a livelihood adaptation strategy– unequally accessible within the community. By showing how seasonal risks, fragile infrastructure, mobility-dependent livelihoods and social inequality co-produce differentiated mobility patterns, this study advances a nuanced understanding of climate-related im/mobility in mountain contexts, crucial to addressing specific mobility needs of risk-exposed communities.

For this special issue of the International Migration Review, we develop and provide a comprehensive organizing framework, the Migration Intersections Grid (MIG), to inform and guide migration research in and through the remainder of the twenty-first century. We motivate our work by conducting a high-level scoping review of summaries and syntheses of different directions of travel in migration research over time. Informed by these results, we then identify and describe 12 components that constitute the MIG, which, as we later discuss, is an interactive intersectional organizing framework. Finally, we illustrate the MIG's interactive intersectional nature by applying it to several areas of migration research where a comprehensive organizing framework of this sort is needed to address existing and emerging issues and questions now and in the coming decades.

Air pollution is a key environmental issue affecting the urban population in the urban cities of Hindu Kush Himalaya (HKH) countries. It is particularly detrimental to marginalized occupation groups like street vendors, labourers and drivers who work outdoors for their livelihood. There are mitigation strategies to reduce the brunt of air pollution that work in the long run. However, these strategies will need time to implement and operationalize. Adaptation behaviours and measures, in this context, are urgently required and become vital to cope with the impacts of air pollution exposure especially for highly exposed informal workers who have very little means of avoiding it. Adaptation behaviour is very complex and depends on socioeconomic and psychological factors. In this paper, we assess the impact of psychological factors like perception and motivation on the adaptive behaviour of the informal workers using Protection Motivation Theory (PMT). Our findings from Dehradun show that concern behaviour towards air pollution was strongly affected by motivation and perception factors. Adaptive behaviour in the form of both concern behavior and the extent of use of additional protective measures is dependent on how the risks of air pollution and related adaptation measures are perceived by the workers. In addition to this, certain adaptation behaviours like changing or adjusting the daily normal behaviour to avoid air pollution exposure are not feasible as they have direct implications on daily wage earnings.

Chapter 5 of the Water, ice, society, and ecosystems in the HKH (HI-WISE) assessment report presents the current state of knowledge regarding the impacts of cryospheric change on high mountain societies as well as observed adaptations to associated challenges and the contributions these responses make to sustainable mountain development. Cryospheric change is hitting already marginal and vulnerable mountain peoples hard, and the adverse effects are set to accelerate. Current adaptation approaches have been small-scale and incremental and insufficient to address future needs of communities. Population growth and infrastructure development have exposed communities to increased cryosphere-related hazards and future disasters will be costlier and deadlier.

Urban populations in South Asia are regularly exposed to poor air quality, especially elevated concentrations of fine particulate matter (PM_2.5). However, the potential differential burden for the urban poor has received little attention. Here, we evaluate the links between occupation, patterns of exposure to PM_2.5, and the impacts at an individual and household level for vulnerable populations in Lahore (Pakistan), Kathmandu (Nepal), and Mandalay (Myanmar). We conduct personal exposure measurements and detailed interviews, identifying a wide range of impacts at individual and household levels. Low-income populations are concentrated in occupations that expose them to higher concentrations. Individuals report a range of adverse health impacts and limited capacities to reduce exposure. The lost income, compounded with the costs of managing these health impacts and limited opportunities for alternative employment, can deepen the socioeconomic vulnerability for the household. Reducing these risks requires targeted interventions such as improved social safety nets.

The goal of this research was to investigate the health effects of winter pollution on various occupations in Lahore and its neighboring peri-urban areas. A questionnaire survey, key informants, and focused group discussions were employed to collect data, which included demographic, socioeconomic, and health-related information. Descriptive statistics and the multivariate logistic regression model (MLRM) were used to examine the effects of pollution on exposed occupational groups who experienced symptoms such as coughing, shortness of breath, and eye discomfort. According to data from interviews, MLRM revealed that individuals working in various occupations with outdoor and indoor environments are equally affected by winter smog, but being middle-aged (odds ratio OR = 5.73), having a history of a respiratory ailment (OR = 4.06), and location (OR = 2.26) all play important roles in determining health. However, less educated people, elders, and people who already live in polluted areas are more likely to develop respiratory health symptoms. During the smog incident, it was determined that diverse health and socioeconomic factors exacerbate an individual’s negative health impact more than others.