Pasang Sherpa | Climate Change and the Third Pole

As a part of the Central New York Humanities Corridor working group “Social and Cultural Sustainability in South Asia,” Syracuse University's South Asia Center is proud to host  Pasang Yangjee Sherpa, assistant professor of lifeways in Indigenous Asia at the University of British Columbia, for a series of events addressing climate change and indigeneity focusing on South Asia.  All faculty, staff and graduate students at Corridor institutions are invited to attend and can be reimbursed for travel to this event through the “Intra-Corridor Travel Supplement.” 

Workshop | Whose Climate Change Story Have We Subscribed To?

Lecture | Life on the Third Pole under a New Season of Climate Change

The high Himalayas, and the Mount Everest region in particular, are popular sites for science-policy interface when it comes to addressing issues of climate change in South Asia.  In 2025, Salerno et al. published 30-year (1994-2023) temperature and precipitation data from the Pyramid Network in Lobuche in Khumbu. This remarkable publication coincided with the release of the Khumbu Pasanglhamu Rural Municipality (KPLRM) Local Adaptation Plans of Action (LAPA) that outline climate change impact and adaptation measures as recommended by the KPLRM residents. In this context, Pasang describes her new study of climate change impact through a comparison of the 30-year temperature and precipitation data with local observations and experiences of the Sherpa residents of Khumbu. Drawing on the two publications from 2025, supplemented by the numerous climate change studies that have been conducted in Khumbu, this talk presents preliminary insights on changing seasonality and its implications for life on the “Third Pole.”

Pasang Yangjee Sherpa, Ph.D. is a Sherpa anthropologist from Pharak in northeastern Nepal. She is an assistant professor of lifeways in Indigenous Asia at the University of British Columbia. Her current research applies community-centered approach to exploring the possibilities of collective survival on a warming planet. In 2024, she received the Mellon New Directions Fellowship to study “Sherpa Geomorphology” and the SSHRC Insight Development Grant to lead her project, “Living with Climate Change.” She is currently serving on the Scientific Steering Committee for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) workshop on Engaging Diverse Knowledge Systems.

The workshop and lecture are generously co-sponsored by the departments of Religion and Geography and the Environment.