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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
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
East West Highway in Nepal Road in Bihar
Skewed Bridge in Bihar Railway Embankment
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
Sediment yield
Designed 700m3/km2/year
After 1993 floods 38095 m3/km2
1994 83333 m3/km2
Average (1981-1994) 12000 m3/km2/year
Mass Wasting Bed Load, Palung 1993
Temperature Change
Nepal India
Rainfall
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
Managing monsoon
runoff by
Drainage and ponds
The results
Active gully 1989 Stable gully 1991
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
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
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.