Climate Change and the Himalayan Highlanders

Dipak Gyawali

Nepal Water Conservation Foundation,

GPO Box 3971, Kathmandu, Nepal

e-mail: dipakgyawali@ntc.net.np

A Toad’s Eye View of the Problem and Responses

Breach Point

Barrage

Kosi River

Embankments in Bihar

Bihar

Ganga

Chatara

Laukahi

Kosi flowing after breach

East West Highway

Embankments in Nepal

Nepal-India border

Eastern Embankment

in Nepal 31 km

Western Embankment in Nepal 17 km

Schematic conceptualization Ajaya Dixit

Canal

18th August 2008 Embankment Breach

East West Highway in Nepal Road in Bihar

Skewed Bridge in Bihar Railway Embankment

Irrigation

Designed 325,000 ha (West) and 347,000 ha (East).

Maximum achievements so far are:

7.79 % in 2006/2007 and

29.93 % in 1983/1984

Flood Mitigation

Designed to protect 214,000 ha.

4,15,000 ha is under permanent water-logging

Hydropower

Much lower than the design capacity 20 MW

Performance of Kosi Project

Sediment yield

Designed 700m3/km2/year

After 1993 floods 38095 m3/km2

1994 83333 m3/km2

Average (1981-1994) 12000 m3/km2/year

Mass Wasting Bed Load, Palung 1993

Temperature Change

Nepal India

Rainfall

August spring

July spring

Green water

Blue water

Blue

water

Peak

monsoon

Early Monsoon

Dry period

water level

Foothill

spring

Foothill

spring buffer

Watershed function

Managing monsoon

runoff by

Drainage and ponds

The results

Active gully 1989 Stable gully 1991

Core message

– Landslide stabilization

– Gully stabilization

– Green water preservation

– Increased maize production by 50%

Ponds helped reduce the peak of the monsoon

hydrograph and save water for winter in the system.

The following were the visible benefits

Bureaucracies/State Population - too many people is the

problem: Solution is to manage it through regulation.

Profligacy Pricing

Population

Market Social Movements/Greens

Pricing is the problem: solution is to remove control remove control and subsidies.

Profligacy is the problem:

solution is to reign in our

greed.

Climate Change

Adapted from Rayner and Malone (1998)

Neruvian

Regan/ Thatcheran Gandhian

Plural Definition of the Climate Problem

Outrageous Conclusions from Uncomfortable Knowledge

• Water or climate change – they are all wicked problems with

nested layers of more trouble that won’t go away soon

• They can be dealt with only by uncomfortable knowledge

generated from a “toad’s eye view”, i.e. adaptation based more on

household risk perception than on higher level policy prescriptions

• Clumsy solutions from not just neat procedural hierarchism, but

also informal market individualism and civic egalitarianism.

• It requires rethinking sustainability as understood by informal

households defining their sutainability over generations.