1. Climate Change and the Himalayan Highlanders
A Toad’s Eye View of the Problem and Responses
Dipak Gyawali
Nepal Water Conservation Foundation,
GPO Box 3971, Kathmandu, Nepal
e-mail: dipakgyawali@ntc.net.np

2. 18th August 2008 Embankment Breach
Embankments in Nepal
Breach Point
Western Embankment
Chatara Eastern
in Nepal 17 km
Embankment
Barrage in Nepal 31 km
Kosi River Laukahi
Canal
Embankments
in Bihar East West
Highway
Nepal-India
Bihar border
Kosi flowing
after breach
Ganga
Schematic conceptualization Ajaya Dixit

3. East West Highway in Nepal Road in Bihar
Railway Embankment Skewed Bridge in Bihar

4. Performance of Kosi Project
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

5. Sediment yield
Designed 700m3/km2/year
After 1993 floods 38095 m3/km2
1994 83333 m3/km2
Average (1981-1994) 12000 m3/km2/year

6. Mass Wasting Bed Load, Palung 1993

9. Temperature Change
Nepal
India

10. Rainfall

11. Watershed function
Green water August spring
July spring Peak
monsoon Foothill
spring
Foothill Monsoon buffer
Early
spring Blue
Dry period water
water level
Blue water

12. Managing monsoon
runoff by
Drainage and ponds

13. The results
Active gully 1989 Stable gully 1991

14. Core message
Ponds helped reduce the peak of the monsoon
hydrograph and save water for winter in the system.
The following were the visible benefits
– Landslide stabilization
– Gully stabilization
– Green water preservation
– Increased maize production by 50%

15. Plural Definition of the Climate Problem
Population - too many people is the
Bureaucracies/State
problem: Solution is to manage it
through regulation.
Neruvian Population
Climate
Change
Market Pricing Profligacy Social Movements/Greens
Pricing is the problem: solution is
to remove control remove control Profligacy is the problem:
and subsidies. solution is to reign in our
greed.
Gandhian
Regan/ Thatcheran
Adapted from Rayner and Malone (1998)

16. 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.