Madhukar Upadhya: Climate Change and Sustainability Blueprint of Nepal

Madhukar Upadhya is a watershed expert and the author of the book, ‘Ponds and Landslides: Water culture, food systems and the political economy of soil conservation in mid-hill Nepal’. He contributes opinion pieces to leading national newspapers in Nepal, focusing on the rising tensions between a flourishing society and sustaining natural resources, including the emerging challenges of managing the climate crisis.  

With global temperature rising by 1.2°Celsius compared to pre-industrial levels, we’re witnessing severe climate impacts from snow melt, loss of biodiversity, dwindling water resources, drying up of springs and small rivers, to increased frequency of floods and landslides, extended droughts, and deadly forest fires. Damage to settlements and infrastructure are increasing with every major event and such impacts are likely to be amplified with the relentless greenhouse gas emissions. For the first time in three decades, the COP28 climate summit helped center the issue of fossil fuels and the need to transition away from them in global climate negotiations; however, the jubilant initial response has now given way to skepticism and doubt. Against the backdrop of these catastrophic climate-induced events, which have never been as rampant, how far will transition away from fossil fuels help cut emissions? Estimates say we need to do so by 45 percent by 2030 to avoid the ongoing race towards a global catastrophe. And if not, how will low-income vulnerable countries, like Nepal, safeguard their interests against climate impacts? Under these circumstances, more than ever before, we need to be vigilant and work diligently to explore ways to protect ourselves from these growing threats.  Here are some of my takes.

The Government of Nepal, through concerted efforts, has formulated policies, strategies, and frameworks and laid out plans to cut emissions and adapt to the impacts. But we know that their implementation struggles to be as effective because addressing climate change is plagued by the same problems that have hindered our development efforts for decades. Unless they are legally binding, policies and strategies hardly get reflected adequately, and with the required urgency, in the planning and budgeting processes, nor are they discussed in Parliament or the Provincial Assemblies while approving annual plans. So much so, that even the plans of local governments hardly reflect them. These are preconditions for an effective implementation of climate responses.

Legal platform

First of all, we need to understand that unlike environmental problems, where cause and effect are often clear because they are usually confined to a local area, the complexities of climate change, with its global jurisdiction and wide array of teleconnections, make it too abstract for many to comprehend. Additionally, the climate discussion generally revolves around the saying that climate change is a global problem and requires global solutions. That is particularly true for mitigation since cutting emissions requires collective actions on a global scale, even though the efforts to limit warming to 1.5°Celsius is failing across the board. Small emitters such as Nepal can commit to be carbon neutral all we want but we know it won’t even have a nominal effect on mitigation unless global net human-caused emissions are cut by about 45 percent from 2010 levels by 2030, which seems unlikely. 

Adaptation, on the other hand, is equally if not more crucial for us and it’s a local issue. Moreover, this is where local leaders, communities and planners should be taking the lead. Unfortunately, this isn’t the case because the climate crisis remains absent from our political conversations.

Meetings SDGs

Consequently, we fail to recognize that we have to meet multiple international commitments such as the SDGs, NDCs, and other key national goals with limited funds available. Such obligations should put pressure on our planners to be prudent in planning and budgeting but that isn’t happening because these commitments aren’t legally binding. So, first and foremost, we need climate laws that obliges the planners to identify and prioritize our needs accordingly. 

International experiences

There are examples we can earn from. Countries such as Fiji and the Philippines have climate laws that obligate their governments to take concrete measures to mainstream climate change into their legal, policy and strategic frameworks. In Fiji, the government is required to introduce carbon budgets, adopt a climate budget tracking system, and provide information on the economic implications of climate change in a supplement to the national budget. In this way, climate laws provide a strong legal platform to articulate the broad contours for mainstreaming climate change including gender and social inclusion issues associated with it into national systems.

Mainstreaming 

The sooner we realize that climate change can't be tackled through projects because they are time-bound with limited scope and jurisdiction, the better it will be. Addressing climate change requires mainstreaming it with regular planning and budgeting processes. Furthermore, we know that climate change is a cross-cutting issue, yet we seldom pay attention to how this nature affects our decision-making while formulating sectoral plans. Each sector, from water, forest, agriculture to power and infrastructure follow traditional methods of formulating plans. A failure to align development interventions with the changing climate will leave us with a limited understanding of what needs to be done to avert the worst of climate consequences on sectoral goals and, by extension, national goals. 

Therefore, mainstreaming climate change should be prioritized in local government’s plans in particular because that’s where they can be most effective and, constitutionally, local governments are responsible for implementing all local-level development programs. Unfortunately, there is a huge gap between what is expected of local governments and their existing capacity and capability to mainstream climate change.

Gender and social inclusion

The intersectional concerns of gender and social inclusion present an even more serious issue within the context of climate change because of specific vulnerabilities of women, children, and marginalized sections of society. It’s always these groups that are affected disproportionately in any disaster. Of the 34 odd earthquake victims who died of cold in Jajarkot included a significant number of women, followed by elderly, Dalits and children. Despite abundant policies and action plans to center gender and social inclusion, they leave a lot to be desired in terms of implementation and efficacy. For climate investments to have a positive impact on gender equality and social inclusion, it’s crucial to recognize the differentiated needs and interests of these groups, otherwise, climate actions will remain half-baked and any implementation ineffective.

The entry point

Climate-related events have continued to hit our primary economic sector—agriculture. The economic losses in paddy from 2001 to 2010 due to drought alone amounted to about Rs 10bn per year. Both severity and frequency of drought is increasing over the period. On the other extreme, for the first time in recorded history, the whole of Tarai was flooded on the same day, damaging crops and infrastructure equaling Rs 61bn in 2017. In 2021 alone, we lost ready-to-harvest paddy worth over Rs 11bn to post-monsoon floods. These examples of just one crop highlight how vulnerable our agriculture is to the changing climate. Moreover, what is often ignored while assessing flood damage is the loss of crop-land. 

Between 1971 and 2006, Nepal lost roughly 5,900 hectares of land to floods and landslides per year. If the average family owns roughly half a hectare, then at least 10,000 families lose their livelihoods every year. There is no data about the extent of land damage after 2006. Reclaiming land has traditionally been a way of adapting to land damage. Unfortunately, none of our national or local policies have recognized this inherent problem of our landscape and, therefore, there is no policy of land reclamation, which should be a major component of our climate intervention plans. Focusing on agriculture will help enhance communities’ resilience. 

Bolstering communal knowledge 

Another area of concern is the loss of local knowledge and skills required for enhancing communities’ resilience. The knowledge and skills gained through years of collective citizen-learning in managing local problems have been lost due to the decades of political instability which discouraged a generation of citizen-researchers who dedicated themselves to understand local problems and find innovative solutions to address them. Land and water management, bioengineering, building green roads, micro-hydro projects, and dousing forest fires are some key areas which have produced local experts to take the lead and develop the communal knowledge-base required for climate resilience. Unfortunately, we’ve lost most of them. Sustaining agriculture to enable communities to fight climate change in the warmer climate requires reviving such communal knowledge in a country with a climate and landscape as diverse as ours with 118 types of ecosystems.

Institutional lead 

In 2016, the Environment Protection Committee of the erstwhile legislative Parliament, after observing the increasing cases of floods and landslides and the extent of damage to settlements, infrastructures and farm land, directed the Government of Nepal to immediately establish a high-level climate change institution with a strict mandate to coordinate the planning and execution of climate actions. It was a clear political signal emphasizing the need for a strong institution to coordinate cross-sectoral climate planning across the country. However, the government hasn’t established any such institution in the last seven years. Paradoxically, the Federal Parliament no longer has an Environment Protection or a Climate Change Committee. This structural mismatch is hurting scrutiny and consolidation of cross-sectoral efforts to mainstream climate change.

Accountability 

Two formal agencies namely: the Parliament and the Auditor General’s office have the mandate to make the Executive accountable for every rupee it spends. Unfortunately, investment in climate change hasn’t been a part of their mandate yet except when it is dealt with as part of other programmes. Climate impacts are the reality of every constituency represented in the Parliament. Parliamentary hearings on how climate actions are helping communities to adapt and analyze the effectiveness of the budget invested on climate programs would help make the Executive more accountable. Likewise, Civil Society Organizations are other actors who can help ensure accountability. Their role in connecting communities and the government in formulating doable plans would help ensure that scarce resources reach the neediest to reduce their vulnerabilities.

Mountain specificities 

Nepal has spearheaded discussion on the mountain agenda and its issues at COP28 in Dubai. Though it’s a thing to celebrate, we should be wary of it being dominated by talks of snow-melt as has been the case when discussing climate change in the past.  Our mountains have three other specificities that require equal attention: diverse culture and livelihood impacted severely by climate impacts; dying indigenous practices of land and water management; and depleting groundwater that feed all the tributaries of Himalayan rivers and mountain springs. Future climate actions should consider these specificities as priorities instead. 

In addition, reviving the abandoned mountain-friendly technologies such as ropeways, introduced a century ago, followed by locally-led initiatives to restore dying water resources that have proven effective in addressing water-induced disasters and declining productivity would probably be areas worth investing in to promote mountain issues.   

Last but not the least, climate change is an opportunity to start afresh; a new dawn of development by taking an approach that will change the way we’ve been addressing our core problems of poverty, resource degradation, disaster-risk reduction, and economic slowdown.