Nepal’s Chitwan National Park has become one of Asia's success stories in wildlife conservation. Credit: Naresh Newar/IPS

By Naresh Newar
CHITWAN, Nepal, Apr 11 2015 (IPS)

At dusk, when the early evening sun casts its rays over the lush landscape, the Chitwan National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site about 200 km south of Nepal’s capital, Kathmandu, is a place of the utmost tranquility.

As a flock of the endangered lesser adjutant stork flies over the historic Narayani River, a left bank tributary of the Ganges in India, this correspondent’s 65-year-old forest guide Jiyana Mahato asks for complete silence: this is the time of day when wild animals gather near the water. Not far away, a swamp deer takes its bath at the river’s edge.

“A lot of our success was due to our close collaboration with local communities who depend on biodiversity conservation for their livelihoods.” -- Sher Singh Thagunna, development officer for the Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation (DNPWC)
“The sight of humans drives them away,” explains Mahato, a member of the Tharu indigenous ethnic group who play a key role in supporting the government’s wildlife conservation efforts here.

“We need to return now,” he tells IPS. The evening is not a safe time for humans to be wandering around these parts, especially now that the country’s once-dwindling tiger and rhinoceros populations are on the rise.

Mahato is the ideal guide. He has been around to witness the progress that has been made since the national park was first established in 1963, providing safe haven to 56 species of mammals.

Today, Chitwan is at the forefront of Nepal’s efforts to conserve its unique biodiversity. Earlier this year, it became the first country in the world to implement a new conservation tool, created by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), known as the Conservation Assured | Tiger Standard (CA|TS).

Established to encourage effective management and monitoring of critically endangered species and their habitats, CA|TS has received endorsement from the likes of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and the Global Tiger Forum, who intend to deploy the tool worldwide as a means of achieving global conservation targets set out in the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).

Experts say that the other 12 Tiger Range Countries (TRCs) should follow Nepal’s example. This South Asian nation of 27 million people had a declining tiger population – just 121 creatures – in 2009, but intense conservation efforts have yielded an increase to 198 wild tigers in 2013, according to the National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan 2014-2020.

Indeed, Nepal is leading the way on numerous conservation fronts, both in the region and worldwide. With 20 protected zones covering over 34,000 square km – or 23 percent of Nepal’s total landmass – it now ranks second in Asia for the percentage of protected surface area relative to land size. Globally it ranks among the world’s top 20 nations with the highest percentage of protected land.

In just eight years, between 2002 and 2010, Nepal added over 6,000 square km to its portfolio of protected territories, which include 10 national parks, three wildlife reserves, one hunting reserve, six conservation areas and over 5,600 hectares of ‘buffer zone’ areas that surround nine of its national parks.

These steps are crucial to maintaining Nepal’s 118 unique ecosystems, as well as endangered species like the one-horned rhinoceros whose numbers have risen from 354 in 2006 to 534 in 2011 according to the CBD.

Collaboration key to conservation

Sher Singh Thagunna, development officer for the Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation (DNPWC), tells IPS, “A lot of our success was due to our close collaboration with local communities who depend on biodiversity conservation for their livelihoods.”

Nepal has classified over 34,000 square km – roughly 23 percent of its landmass – into a range of protected areas. Credit: Naresh Newar/IPS

Those like Mahato, for whom conservation is not an option but a way of life, have partnered with the government on a range of initiatives including efforts to prevent poaching. Some 3,500 youths from local communities have been enlisted in anti-poaching activities throughout the national parks, tasked with patrolling tens of thousands of square km.

Collaborative conservation has taken major strides in the last decade. In 2006, the government passed over management of the Kanchenjunga Conservation Area in eastern Nepal to a local management council, marking the first time a protected area has been placed in the hands of a local committee.

According to Nepal’s latest national biodiversity strategy, by 2012 all of the country’s declared buffer zones, which cover 27 districts and 83 village development committees (VDCs), were being collectively managed by about 700,000 local people organised into 143 ‘buffer zone user committees’ and 4,088 ‘buffer zone user groups’.

Other initiatives, like the implementation of community forestry programmes – which as of 2013 “involved 18,133 forest user groups representing 2.2 million households managing 1.7 million hectares of forestland”, according to the study – have helped turn the tide on deforestation and promote the sustainable use of forest resources by locals.

Since 2004 the department of forests has created 20 collaborative forests spread out over 56,000 hectares in 10 districts of the Terai, a rich belt of marshes and grasslands located on the outer foothills of the Himalayas.

In addition, a leasehold forestry programme rolled out in 39 districts has combined conservation with poverty alleviation, providing a livelihood to over 7,400 poor households by involving them in the sustainable management and harvesting of selected forest-related products, while simultaneously protecting over 42,000 hectares of forested land.

Forest loss and degradation is a major concern for the government, with a 2014 country report to the CBD noting that 55 species of mammals and 149 species of birds – as well as numerous plant varieties – are under threat.

Given that Nepal is home to 3.2 percent of the world’s flora, these trends are worrying, but if the government keeps up its track record of looping locals into conservation efforts, it will soon be able to reverse any negative trends.

Of course, none of these efforts on the ground would be possible without the right attitude at the “top”, experts say.

“There is a high [degree] of political commitment at the top government level,” Ghanashyam Gurung, senior conservation programme director for WWF-Nepal, tells IPS. This, in turn, has created a strong mechanism to curb the menace of poaching.

With security forces now actively involved in the fight against poaching, Nepal is bucking the global trend, defying a powerful, 213-billion-dollar annual industry by going two years without a single reported incident of poaching, DPNWC officials say.

Although other threats remain – including burning issues like an increasing population that suggests an urgent need for better urban planning, as well as the country’s vulnerability to natural disasters like glacial lake outburst floods and landslides that spell danger for its mountain ecosystems – Nepal is blazing a trail that other nations would do well to follow.

“Conservation is a long process and Nepal’s efforts have shown that good planning works […],” Janita Gurung, biodiversity conservation and management specialist for the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) tells IPS.

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

A poor Muslim family in the Habrahawa village of the Banke district in west Nepal has little means of recovering from natural disasters. Credit: Naresh Newar/IPS

By Naresh Newar
BANKE, Nepal, Aug 11 2014 (IPS)

Barely 100 km north of Nepal’s capital, Kathmandu, the settlement of Jure, which forms part of the village of Mankha, has become a tragic example of how the country’s poorest rural communities are the first and worst victims of natural disasters.

Barely a week ago, on Aug. 2, a slope of land nearly two km long located roughly 1,350 metres above the Sunkoshi river collapsed, sweeping away over 100 households and killing some 155 people in this tiny settlement with a population of just 2,000 people.

“The majority of natural disaster victims have always been [from] the poorest communities and the tragic incident in Jure is an unfortunate reminder of that fact." -- Pitamber Aryal, national programme manager of the U.N.’s Comprehensive Disaster Risk Management Programme in Nepal
According to the Nepal Red Cross Society (NRCS), the country’s largest humanitarian agency, the death toll from last week’s disaster ranks among the worst in the history of this catastrophe-prone South Asian nation.

With so many dead, and fears rising that the artificial lake – created by blockages to the river – may burst and flood surrounding villages, experts are urging the government to seriously consider mapping out hazard areas across the country and integrate the management of natural disasters into its national economic and development plans.

Such a move could mean the difference between life and death for Nepal’s low-income communities, who are often forced to live in the most vulnerable areas.

When disasters strike, these groups are left homeless and injured, stripped of the small plots of agricultural land on which they subsist.

Poorest suffer worst impacts

Steep slopes, active seismic zones, savage monsoon rains between July and September and mountainous topography make Nepal a hotbed of disasters, according to the World Bank.

Over 80 percent of the country’s 27.8 million people live in rural areas, with a quarter of the population languishing below the poverty line of 1.25 dollars a day.

The poorest of the poor, who largely rely on agriculture, typically live on steep slopes under the constant shadow of landslides, or in low-lying flood-prone areas, and have virtually no resources with which to bounce back after a weather-related calamity, says the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

“In many cases, communities that live in high-risk areas tend to have higher levels of poverty and as a result, do not have the ability to relocate to safer areas,” Moira Reddick, coordinator of the Nepal Risk Reduction Consortium (NRRC), told IPS.

Most homes are abandoned in the flood-prone Holiya village in Nepal but poor families often return to them in the aftermath of natural disasters. Credit: Naresh Newar/IPS

The NRRC, a collaborative body of local and international humanitarian and development aid agencies acting in partnership with the Nepal government, have long advocated for disaster risk reduction (DRR) to be incorporated into the state’s poverty reduction strategies in order to better provide for vulnerable communities and “minimise the impact of disasters” Reddick added.

“The majority of natural disaster victims have always been [from] the poorest communities and the tragic incident in Jure is an unfortunate reminder of that fact,” Pitamber Aryal, national programme manager of the U.N.’s Comprehensive Disaster Risk Management Programme in Nepal, told IPS.

In the last three decades, landslides have resulted in 4,511 fatalities and flattened 18,414 houses, affecting 555,000 people, according to official data.

Forced to take risks

Dinanath Sharma, DRR coordinator for the international NGO Practical Action, told IPS that his organisation has made several attempts to move communities to safer locations, but their efforts are thwarted by the lack of a comprehensive relocation plan that offers both secure residence and economic viability.

“We will not move anywhere unless the government finds us a place that is fertile and good for our livelihoods,” a Muslim farmer from the remote Habrahawa villagein the Banke district, 600 km southwest of the capital, told IPS.

This simple demand is heard often throughout Nepal’s numerous villages, particularly in those that sit on the banks of the Rapti River, one of the largest in the country that has been the source of major flooding over the past decade.

Although floods have affected over 3.6 million people in the last decade alone, according to the government’s National Disaster Report for 2013, villagers continue to return to their ancestral homes where they at least have access to fertile land and water, which enables them to eke out a living.

“Where can we go really? How can we abandon our homes here and go to a new place where there is no fertile land?” Chitan Khan, a farmer from the Khalemasaha village, also in the Banke district, told IPS.

Several families told IPS they sometimes temporarily relocate to villages far from the river during the monsoon season, but always return when the rain subsides. Khan is already stockpiling food in a safer place, but he is resigned to the fact that the annual floods will wash away half his food stores in the village.

According to the ministry of home affairs, floods and landslide cause 300 deaths and economic damages of about three million dollars annually – adding to an already precarious situation in Nepal, where an estimated 3.5 million people are food insecure, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).

History repeats itself

For those familiar with Nepal’s vulnerabilities, the government’s unwillingness to establish comprehensive DRR programmes is nothing short of baffling.

The International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), for instance, has been studying and analysing the fragile mountain ecosystem across the Himalayas in Asia’s central, south and eastern regions for the last 30 years.

One of its observations included the Sunkoshi Valley’s vulnerability to water-induced hazards due to a weak geological formation and steep topography, made worse by frequent and heavy rainfall.

The lack of an appropriate monitoring and early-warning system, however, resulted in a tragedy on Aug. 2 that could easily have been avoided, experts say.

In response, the government has created a high-level committee to seek solutions for longer-term disaster preparedness, said officials.

“There is definitely serious discussion now on how to reduce vulnerability of [poor] communities and the only way to do that is to relocate them with a comprehensive economic programme,” Rishi Ram Sharma, director general of the Department of Hydrology and Meteorology (DHM), told IPS.

To ensure the safety of villagers, the government must create intensive geological studies to map the dangerous areas, which could also help to also identify the safest places to relocate whole villages, explained Sharma, who now heads the newly created disaster preparedness committee.

Local aid workers told IPS the government’s emergency response, coordinated through the army and police force under the supervision of the home ministry, was efficient but that rescue workers faced challenges in reaching remote villages due to a combination of difficult terrain and heavy rainfall.

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

Heavy monsoon clouds advance on Sri Lanka's southern coast near Hikkaduwa town. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

By Amantha Perera
COLOMBO, Aug 20 2013 (IPS)

Gulam Rasul, chief meteorologist at the Pakistan Meteorological Department, was sure early this month that the second leg of the annual monsoon due in the latter half of the month was going to be bad. “Normally it peaks towards late August,” Rasul told IPS.

Even before peaking, the 2013 monsoon has been deadly. By mid-August, floods in Pakistan had killed more than 80 and left over 80,000 stranded, according to the Pakistan Disaster Management Agency.

Rasul says South Asian countries need to treat the monsoon with more respect than they do.

“It is vital for the region, probably the most vital annual weather event, and we need to be better prepared. It is at our risk that we take it lightly,” Rasul said from his office in Islamabad.

The monsoon has been erratic in recent years. Last year the monsoon failed in Sri Lanka, and parts of the country’s northern, eastern and southern regions went through a drought that affected at least 1.2 million people.

This year the monsoon has been above average. Rains have been lashing the country since June, and have so far caused 58 deaths and stranded over 17,000.

“We need to have a better understanding how the monsoon is changing and be better prepared,” S. H. Kariyawasam, head of the Meteorological Department in Sri Lanka said, agreeing with Rasul.

One of the effective means of achieving this is real-time sharing of weather information among countries in the region, experts say.

Rasul sees a simple need to share information. “If countries at the beginning of the monsoon keep sending updates, then countries at the toe end like Pakistan could prepare better.”

If such a scheme had been in place, it would have proved life-saving, according to Mandira Singh Shrestha, programme coordinator and senior water resources specialist at the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) in Kathmandu, Nepal.

She told IPS that as the monsoon moved north from Sri Lanka into north India, information-sharing could have alerted national and regional weather authorities in India to take precautionary measures.

The fast-moving monsoon this year, assessed by some as the fastest in over four decades, ripped into Uttarakhand region in North India by the second week of June without any warning of its deadly potential.

By the time it left, more than 1,000 bodies had been recovered. Over 6,000 people are still listed as missing. The Uttarakhand region has been left in tatters. The region was full of pilgrims who had arrived just before the traditional rainy season when the monsoon burst above their heads. No one told them the rains were moving faster than usual.

“There is a need for coordination between the hydrological and meteorological agencies for providing timely and reliable forecasts,” Shrestha said.

At a meeting attended by regional and national experts organised by the Planning Commission of India on Aug. 13 to assess the aftermath of the Uttarakhand floods, the focus was at last on sharing information, and weather updates.

Experts at the meeting said that the trans-boundary nature of disasters made data-sharing essential.

Since 2005, officials from South Asian countries have been meeting just before the monsoon through the South Asia Climate Outlook Forum set up with the assistance of the World Metrological Organisation. This year’s meeting was held in Kathmandu, Nepal in mid-April.

The final update from the meeting was that the monsoon would be “within the normal range with a slight tendency towards the higher side of the normal range.”

When it arrived a month and a half after the meeting, the monsoon was moving faster than anticipated and was more potent than expected.

Such changes, according to Kariyawasam, are becoming a part of the increasingly erratic monsoon, whose pattern is proving hard to predict.

At the April meeting participants had agreed that detailed information on the monsoon as it moved inland could only be provided by national and regional weather offices. It was not, and it is this kind of update that Rasul and Kariyawasam want shared.

“What we need is a mechanism to do this,” Kariyawasam said. Both Sri Lankan and Pakistani officials say that one of the forums that can be used is the Meteorological Research Centre under the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) based in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

“The SAARC platform can work better than a totally new one, because there is already a structure of regional cooperation in other areas,” Rasul said.

ICIMOD’s Shrestha told IPS that one of the models that can be adapted is the regional tsunami alert network set up after the deadly December 2004 tsunami.

“A new network of land-based seismic stations, deep water pressure sensors and warning centres have been developed throughout the region to provide early warning to the countries,” she said.

The effectiveness of such information-sharing was clear on Apr. 11, 2012 when an 8.6 magnitude undersea earthquake was reported off the coast of Indonesia. The Sri Lanka Disaster Management Centre (DMC) issued a warning within less than an hour of the earthquake, based on information received from regional networks.

More than 1,500 coastal villages from around the Sri Lankan coast were evacuated rapidly. According to DMC officials more than a million persons were moved to safe areas within hours of the earthquake.

A warning system of compatible levels does not exist when it comes to warnings on the monsoon, or fast-moving weather patterns. DMC officials say they rely on the Meteorological Department, that is currently ill-equipped to track and issue timely warnings on fast-moving weather patterns.

“It is very difficult to track these weather patterns, especially when they are moving fast,” Kariyawasam said. “Given what we are faced with now, a regional network for information-sharing is essential.”

Experts warn that climate change is responsible for melting glaciers on the Himalayas. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

By Amantha Perera
JHIRPU PHULPINGKATT, Nepal , Jun 2 2013 (IPS)

Residents of Jhirpu Phulpingkatt, a village nestled in the foothills of the Himalayas, about 110 km from Nepal’s capital Kathmandu, are on red alert.

As the impacts of climate change batter the towering mountains above them, these villagers on the banks of the Bhote Koshi river have started to dread the sound of incoming text messages, which may carry evacuation warnings.

Their fears are not unfounded. Research conducted by experts from the University of Milan shows that the snowline in the Everest region of the Himalayas, also known as the Khumbu region in the northeast of Nepal, has receded by 180 metres in the last 50 years, while glaciers have shrunk by 13 percent.

Last week all eyes were on the Himalayas’ highest peak – 29,000-foot Mt. Everest, whose summit is bisected by the China-Nepal border – in honor of the 60^th anniversary of the first human ascent of the mountain.

But the momentous occasion presented as much cause for panic as for celebration, when images showing bare rock jutting out from under the receding ice caps called attention to the rapidly changing face of this majestic range.

Sudeep Thakuri, who led the Italian team of researchers, told IPS that the continuous and increased melting is most likely caused by rising temperatures, which were 0.6-degrees Celsius higher this year than they have been in previous years.

Together, the two phenomena have led to the proliferation of massive glacier lakes – melting ice held back by natural dams of moraine and debris – that could spell disaster for those living in the rocky ravines down below.

Avalanches, erosion, heavy water pressure and even snowstorms could cause glacial outbursts, “releasing millions of cubic metres of water in a few hours (resulting in) catastrophic flooding downstream”, according to a study by Germanwatch, an NGO dedicated to sustainable development.

Glacier lake outbursts are not uncommon, and over the last century scientists have recorded at least 50 incidents of these icy lakes breaking their dams. One of the most devastating incidents occurred when the Sangwang Cho glacial lake in Tibet burst in 1954, flooding the cities of Gyangze (located 120 km downstream), and Xigaze (about 200 km away).

Now experts warn that the lakes are filling up faster than ever before and new lakes are being created at an alarming rate.

“If climate warming continues, as is predicted, accelerated glacial thinning and retreat are likely,” Pradeep Mool, programme coordinator at the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) in Kathmandu, told IPS, warning that “the danger posed by glacial lake outburst floods will increase.”

According to ICIMOD research, there are over 20,000 glacial lakes in the Hindu Kush Himalayas, stretching from Afghanistan in the west to Myanmar (formerly Burma) in the east.

The Dudh Kosi river basin in eastern Nepal is home to 278 glaciers, some of which are receding at a rate of 74 metres annually. Mool told IPS that the region is now home to 34 lakes, including 24 recent formations, of which ten have been tagged as potentially dangerous.

Mool warned that earthquakes also pose a serious threat. “The Hindu Kush Himalaya region is one of extreme seismic instability. Earthquakes could act as major triggers for glacial lake outbursts,” he stressed.

There has been at least one reported lake outburst in the last 500 years in the Seti Khola region that was triggered by seismic activity, the scientist said. That outburst produced a 50-metre-high debris field in the western region of Pokhara.

According to Thakuri, the future wellbeing of glaciers is largely dependent on the climate, adding that much more concrete scientific research is required to determine possible outcomes.

But those living in the Himalayan foothills, like the villagers of Jhirpu Phulpingkatt, say there is evidence enough of the possible disasters to come.

The steep mountain walls in this village, mostly covered in lush vegetation, are frequently disrupted by deep cave-ins caused by earth slips that follow heavy rains.

At the small power plant that lies just next to the Bhote Koshi river, officials rely on a warning system to give residents adequate notice to escape any lake outbursts.

However the plant’s acting manager, Janak Raj Pant, told IPS that the warning would only give an escape window of between six and 10 minutes, and extends only to the Nepali border, which is just 10 km from the plant. But many of the glacial lakes that could impact this village and others lie in Chinese-controlled Tibet, where the warning system does not reach.

ICIMOD’s Mool told IPS there is an urgent need for better monitoring of lakes and their water levels. He pointed to a few isolated examples in which outlets have been cut into the dams of some glacial lakes in Nepal and Bhutan to let out excess water, but Mool said such preventive action needed be more uniform.

There is also an economic imperative to take action, at least in the Bhote Koshi valley, where Nepali authorities are planning to build at least four new power plants on the river.