Climate
Change: Experience from Mountains of Nepal.
Phurba Sherpa,
Flinders University
Globally climate change has
been one of the biggest issues and challenges. Its global effects are sea level
rise, drought, water scarcity, crop failure, forest fire, biodiversity loss
etc. The impact of climate change has started showing its impact in the
mountainous countries like Nepal though the impact is not clearly visible in
many parts of the world. In the Everest region, fast melting glaciers, drying
up of water springs, vegetation shifts, forest fire, unseasonal rainfall, crop
failure, early flowering, drought and disasters like landslides and floods are
the major impacts I have experienced, seen or heard from the local people. The
people in the high mountains are very uneducated about climate change and the
impacts of climate change but these local people are the ones that are most
affected by it.
Major source of income
residing in the rural belts of Nepal are agriculture, tourism (which are
seasonal) and dependence on the natural resources (Timber for fuel wood and
livelihood; spring water for domestic purpose; NTFPs for livelihood and other
forest resources as construction material and fodder). Due to very low adaptive
capacity to cope the effects of climate changes the communities in Nepal are
highly vulnerable to climate change. Low adaptive capacity is mainly because of
direct exposure and sensitivity of the local communities to the impact of
changing climate. Exposure of the community to the disasters such as flood,
forest fires, Landslide, GLOF, and drought are usually direct as majority of
communities reside along the sloppy terrain on the bank of the river and depend
on seasonal rainfall for agriculture. Sensitivity is usually due to weak
infrastructure which are built unscientifically and due to the lack of
knowledge about climate change. Local communities still can be seen doing
cultural rituals such as preying god in hope to get rain on time or hoping rate
of natural disasters will be less. I have found all these in the Everest
region.
Nepal’s approximately more
than 55% population are literate but not well educated. In universities of
Nepal, students are taught on climate change but the lessons taught are not
practical enough and sufficient to develop the human resource that can actually
contribute in climate change adaptation. In comparison to the urban areas, numbers
of educated people living in the rural areas like in Solukhumbu district are
very low. Hence, most of the people living in this rural part have no or very
little knowledge about climate change although they have their own experience
about the impacts of climate change. Educating people on climate change is one
of the major challenges in rural areas of Nepal.
In the Everest region, major
threat to local communities has been Glacial Lake Outburst Flood (GLOF). What I
saw in this region is that local people are very much upset with those
people/organizations that only do research and let them know about the threats.
They are in the hope that they could get knowledge on climate change and
organizations/individuals not only do research but also would bring real
solution to make the community resilient. Recently, several glaciers have been
reported to be retreating and forming big lakes. One of the examples is the
lake Imja. The glacier which now is a huge lake with 65 million cubic metre of
water used to be mass of glacier until 1970s. The high annual retreating rate
of IMJA has made the communities residing in the downstream of Dudhkoshi River
to be in the threat of potential GLOF. Evidence of erratic rain and snowfall
has been observed by local people in recent decade which never happened in the
past. The rate of forest fire in Sagarmatha National Park and buffer zone which
occurred in this decade is the largest until now.
I found that many of the
glaciers have now been lost or are forming big lakes like Ngozumpa glacier,
Khumbu glacier and Imja glacier. While interviewing local people and in several
community consultations (including porters, herders, mountain climbers,
trekkers, farmers, hotel owners, monks, teachers, students etc.) what they have
seen and experienced are: erratic rain and snowfall events, decreased water in
their springs, floods, landslides, forest fire, avalanche, snow melting, crop
failure, crop disease, rainfall instead of snowfall etc. are now clearly
visible in the Everest region. According to local people these changes have
severe impacts in their livelihoods. The increased avalanche have killed many
mountaineers during a decade, crop failure and disease has reduced the
agricultural productivity, biodiversity shifts is impacting herders and have
threated the survival of high altitude cow “Yaks” and other alpine species,
water scarcity has increased social disputes, landslide and floods have damaged
trails that have caused huge impact on tourism, changing weather pattern such
as cloudy condition even in October impacted the air flights which is only the
means to get to Everest region and has impacted tourists and tourism very
seriously, forest fires have damaged the water pipelines and reduced the fuel
wood and fodder, many species such as rhododendron are shifting up and glaciers
are melting glaciers are forming huge lakes in the altitudes above 5000 metres
which have threatened the communities residing downstream. I have seen that
vegetation is shifting upward and many of the vegetation which are anchoring
the hills but can’t shift further up. Although the major threat as local people
said was the threat of GLOFs, there are several other impacts of climate change
that local people are unaware of. Imja already has been seen as the biggest threat
to the local people but there are a lot of other glaciers which are increasing
their size and could pose severe threat in the future.
While working with the local
communities what I have realized is that they are keen interested to know about
the changes that is happening around them because of climate change. They were
interested to know about what they can do from their own side and what other
national/international organizations can do to help them adapt. In many parts
of Nepal there have been significant changes in forest cover. Particularly
local people managed “community forest” and in the “buffer zone” of National
parks forest cover change has been very significant. Local people have now
understood the meaning of conservation and importance of sustainable natural
resource management. Many of the local communities already have solar panels,
improved cooking stove and hydroelectricity which are all climate friendly. But
none of these were done to either adapt for climate change or mitigate the
carbon sequestration. This shows that if educated to the greater extent, they
can develop adaptation measures themselves and can also contribute mitigating
climate change globally.
Some interventions have been
put in order to adapt climate change. Currently, Local adaptation plan of
actions (LAPA) are being made for several districts in support from
international organizations and Government of Nepal. The Mountain Institute
(TMI) where I worked has made first local adaptation plan of action for Everest
region. I was involved in this program for more than 2 years to educate local
people, conduct meetings with district based organizations and to develop the
adaptation plan. USAID, UNDP, Department of Hydrology and Meteorology are some
of the stakeholders of the program where USAID funded TMI for developing LAPA
and UNDP has started their work to lower the volume of the lake IMJA. From the
different community consultations what I observed is that local people have
idea about the changes that are happening around them but don’t know why
actually these are happening. They were seen keen interested to know about how
actually climate change happens, what are the information sources from where
they can get information on future climate change projections, how can it
affect their livelihoods (basically agriculture, tourism and water supply), who
is the core body to deal with it, how can they adapt against the changes, what
are the real risk etc.
As many people in rural
mountains usually struggle for their subsistence livelihood, they lack adequate
sources from which they can get this information. People in this region are very
busy in their own work such as agriculture, trekking, hotels, mountaineering or
fishing. I have seen that many of people can’t understand all these information
in academic terms or how they get it through radio. Hence in order to aware
them effectively, participatory tools and visual information in the language
and level they can understand is seen very necessary.
In overall, what I learned
while working with the communities in rural areas is that they already are under
the high impact of climate change. They are prone to be under the huge impact
of climate change in near future. For this there should be effective
collaboration to develop effective adaptation plans and most important is that
they get implemented. Hence communities should be taught about climate change,
its vulnerabilities/risks and adaptation measures. Unless they have adequate
knowledge about climate change, sustainability of livelihood of rural
communities under climate change can’t be achieved despite of the efforts form
government or international communities.
It’s not only the Everest
region nor only the communities in the Nepal, but most of the people residing
in the mountains are under high impact of climate change already and are very
less educated about climate change. The political instability, nation’s economic
condition, bureaucratic systems etc. have made the national approach for
climate change insignificant in this point of time. Hence it shall be a great
initiative to educate them on climate change. Although many others are already
working on it, but these efforts still do not seem enough to make these people
to think and act to mitigate and adapt against climate change. So a big
question is that “HOW CAN WE HELP MOUNTAIN COMMUNITIES SUCH AS NEPAL TO ADAPT
AGAINST CLIMATE CHANGE?”
