Hello there! Been a while since we told you about Losar. It actually ended just this week—every Tibetan shuts their shop for renovation for half a month or more here and does their annual shopping pretty much like how it goes for Diwali or Christmas. Here’s how the Tibetans were celebrating earlier this week at the Tibetan Institute of Performing Arts (sound on):
Since we last wrote to you, the winter rains finally dropped, ending the almost two month long drought and water shortages. It snowed one day as well and how could we have not captured it!
Oh and this is how that winter afternoon sounded like just after it snowed:
Yes this newsletter is all about grounding you in this beautiful part of the Himalayas!
On the work front, we’ve realized that communication of our work is as important as the work itself, no matter how technically rigorous it may be. Call it sales, marketing whatever, but that is at the core of any business, whether it is a for profit or non profit, plain and simple.
And so we used these winter days to spread the message of our work on Himalayan Environmental Law throughout the world and managed to send our handbook over to Russia and Japan, to be stored in their National Libraries. Our handbook is now available in digital or print form from these locations.
We’ve also share digital versions with a host of journalists, academicians and lawyers via X and email (it works wonders sometimes) and been in constant discussions with the local community here in Dharamshala!
There have also been some duds. Harvard hasn’t responded. We’ve reached out to Lobsang Sangay, hopefully he’ll get back. There have been a few other that haven’t responded but the game has always been to see what sticks and what doesn’t, right?
If you know of some places which could benefit from having our work in their collections, then leave a comment and we’d love to take it forward!
We also greatly expanded the scope of our work to cover the entire Indian Himalayan region — more on that here. The plan is to hopefully get similar information from neighboring Afghanistan, Bhutan, Nepal, Pakistan, Tibet, East Turkestan, Bangladesh and Myanmar, to draw a coherent unified picture of the state of the third pole.
If you or someone you know is from these places, this is a job posting we put up.
We’ve also been quite active on our Whatsapp channel with the smaller updates and observations that aren’t really newsletter material you know? Lots of useful stuff there if you’re interested in the third pole, so do check that out as well.
As we gather more and more credible + irrefutable information sourced from the Indian state itself, we’ve been considering how best to take further action to protect the Himalayas in a way that is compliant with Indian nonprofit law & practise, and aspirational as well.
One of those ways is to explore “risk” so to say, via well evidenced letters gathering from our existing work.
In other words, we tell the state that “you ought to take better care of the Himalayas” or expose your departments to the “risk” of having to explain your inaction in the court of law or before your superiors.
Since we’re consciously funded and based in the Indian Himalayas and have a “listen to the community first” policy, any action we will take will surely stand on well considered grounds legally as well as morally. What do you think?
Well, that is it for this edition, be back in no time at all hopefully with more news! Gonna leave you with a photograph from a very rare and unique Himalayan festival only a select few get to witness — Faguli!
Happy February,
Himalayan Advocacy Center
Postscript:
As you may know, we are a small non profit in the environment + law space located in the Indian Himalayas. We are completely bootstrapped! This means no foreign funding and no fancy headquarters - just a small community - of which you all are an integral part - in the long run we hope!
What’s more - we, at the Center, are determined to localise efforts for the planet, without compromising on the best that the law has to offer. If you have the means, and want to support a committed local undertaking, please do consider contributing to our corpus. We hope to pleasantly surprise you with detailed information on where you money has been spent!