A former Headington schoolgirl who was brought up in west Oxfordshire is at the cutting edge of the battle against climate change.

Clare Shakya, who recently celebrated her 40th birthday, is living and working in the foothills of the Himalayas where the evidence of melting glaciers is having a profound effect on the lives of millions of people.

She works for the UK’s Department for International Development from an office in the Nepalese capital of Kathmandu. The country has become her home — she is married to a Nepali, Prassad, and they have two young children, daughter Kanshem, nine, and Siddarth, six.

They have trekked as a family on ponies up through the mountains into the Tibetan Plateau, meeting people who rely on snow melt to irrigate their crops.

Along the way, they have met the King of the Mustang area of Nepal.

It is a long way from Clare’s home village near Witney, and a long journey since she was a pupil at the all girls Headington School in Oxford.

Her mother Patricia Freeman still lives at Hardwick and was spending Christmas in the shadow of the Himalayas with her daughter and grandchildren.

Clare says she was always interested in Third World development — her father was from South Africa and she had an early view of native poverty when visiting family and relatives.

She went on to the University of East Anglia, then Oxford, where she studied forestry.

She said: “This job is the first time I am actually bringing together the interests I had when I was 18, when I studied climate change and ecology and development.”

She first came to Nepal more than a decade ago.

Her job now is senior regional environment and water adviser for South Asia.

She heads a team that advises people how best to irrigate their crops, how to stop flooding inundating their homes, using the rivers for clean hydropower and ensuring safe drinking water for families.

She said: “In Nepal, because the weather is warming faster at altitude, we are already seeing big changes.

“The first outbreaks ever of dengue fever took place in the Kathmandu valley. This means my kids will now have to start sleeping under nets.

“But I doubt many Nepalis will start to do that. When we went walking in the hills in October, we met farmers who can no longer plant as many crops as they are getting less winter rain and snow.

“People in Nepal and in the rest of South Asia are already so poor and so vulnerable to the whims of the weather.

“I find my job very exciting because I am helping governments realise flooding and drought are predictable shocks and we should plan for them, not treat each one as a surprise needing a humanitarian response.

“The greatest problems of climate change will be felt through changes in water — too much or too little.

“And a quarter of the world’s population live by the rivers that emerge from the Himalayas.”

In six months’ time, Clare and her family are set to move to Delhi, on the next stage of her work for the UK Department for International Development.

witney@oxfordmail.co.uk