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Climate Change and the Himalayan Highlanders
Dipak Gyawali
Nepal Water Conservation Foundation,
GPO Box 3971, Kathmandu, Nepal
e-mail: [email protected]
A Toad’s Eye View of the Problem and Responses
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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
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East West Highway in Nepal Road in Bihar
Skewed Bridge in Bihar Railway Embankment
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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
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Sediment yield
Designed 700m3/km2/year
After 1993 floods 38095 m3/km2
1994 83333 m3/km2
Average (1981-1994) 12000 m3/km2/year
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Mass Wasting Bed Load, Palung 1993
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Temperature Change
Nepal India
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Rainfall
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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
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Managing monsoon
runoff by
Drainage and ponds
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The results
Active gully 1989 Stable gully 1991
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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
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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
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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.