Climate advocate Namgay Choden grew up in Bhutan with "the existential threat of climate change looming" over her head. Choden—who is the latest person to be recognized as a Newsweek Planet Hero—spoke with us about her background and her drive to work toward a more sustainable world, for a video profile, which you can watch up above.
"I'm from Punakha, a region that is highly vulnerable to glacial lake outbursts," she said during the March interview in Thimphu, Bhutan. "I have also in my own lifetime witnessed a flood, which really made me aware of the disruption that a natural calamity can cause, and I'm now afraid that events like this will not only be more likely, but also frequent because of climate change."
The Punakha area was devastated by a flood in October 1994 after a natural dam on a glacial lake failed, resulting in the deaths of 21 people, according to the scientific journal Mountain Research and Development. In a 2020 report about the possibility of using seismic monitoring to provide early warnings for such disasters, the University of Utah noted that glacial floods "are a significant and growing hazard in mountain regions around the world as glaciers retreat in response to climate change."
Choden has worked in the Bhutanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs and as a climate negotiator. She told Newsweek that international processes are the most viable way to mobilize resources to try and help a country like Bhutan, with a population just north of 777,000 people, mitigate the worst impacts of climate change.
"Bhutan is a least-developed country that contributes very, very little to overall emissions, but Bhutan also stands to be one of the most vulnerable countries to the impacts of climate change," Choden explained. The status of "least-developed country" refers to a United Nations category describing low-income countries with structural impediments to sustainable development.
She added, "We are also the least equipped to address the challenges that will come with [climate change], and this is what inspires me to be in this space, and this is what gets me out of bed."
Choden, who said she got involved with government when she was "very young," believes that the youth are also crucial to addressing threats to the environment, partly because the changing climate is going to be of "huge relevance to the identities and the futures of young people"—not only in Bhutan, but worldwide.
To help inspire more young people, Choden is part of the Bhutan Climate Futures Lab. The group works to involve youth on discourse surrounding the Bhutan Climate Change Policy 2020, which reaffirmed a 2009 commitment the country made to become carbon neutral and also consolidated all of the country's existing environmental and climate legislation. The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization lists a key goal of the policy as protecting "the wellbeing of the people of Bhutan by adapting to climate change in an efficient and effective manner."
Choden said the Climate Futures Lab has, to date, engaged more than 400 Bhutanese youth in climate policy.
The lab runs an incubator to secure seed funding for climate initiatives "based on sustainability, on storytelling [and] on knowledge creation around climate change," she said. Choden added that the members are currently focused on around 18 projects, which include policy literacy workshops, creating campaigns based on real-life stories of people affected by climate change and the collection and monitoring of climate action pledges.
The organization is part of the Bhutan-focused Global Shapers Thimphu Hub, a group comprised of "socially active passionate young leaders from diverse backgrounds," according to its website, who work to make significant and positive change. The Thimphu Hub is itself one chapter of the much larger Global Shapers Community, which was born out of the World Economic Forum and describes itself as a network of young leaders, all under 30 years old. It has 14,000 members, with 456 city-based hubs in 150 countries.
Bhutan reportedly made good on its carbon-neutral pledge in 2011, but if the country is going to maintain that status, and also achieve its goal of eliminating all emissions within the next three decades, it's going to require vigilance and buy-in from the next generation.
"We would need large-scale transformation of society to go net-zero by 2050, and Bhutan as a country has also pledged to be carbon neutral perpetually," Choden said. "So in all this, we need young people in the country, who make up the largest portion of our demographic, to be involved in this process, to be able to demand these changes."
