Adaptation in the Third Pole
No commentsIt was pouring in Kathmandu when my plane landed in September – the runway had cracked due to the torrential rains (the monsoon had arrived late this year) and the city was muddy, crowded and clogged with traffic. I had been expecting a cross between Hunza and Chitral – instead I felt I was in Rawalpindi! The mountains were far away in the distance and Kathmandu was full of precarious-looking concrete buildings (this is, after all, an earthquake zone).
Later, of course, I managed to visit the old parts of Kathmandu and was enchanted by the intricately-carved temples and ornate palaces. What’s more, they seem to have kept them in good condition and the historical places we visited were thronged with tourists. Anyhow, I had not come to Nepal as a tourist but as a participant in a climate change media workshop and conference, which took up most of my time.
Rooftop rain water harvesting tank
The idea behind the workshop, which was called “Third Pole Project: Covering Climate Change in the Himalayas”, was to draw attention to this mountainous region which is home to some of the largest reservoirs of ice outside the north and south poles. We learnt how rising temperatures are threatening this fragile region, which includes the Tibetan Plateau and the Hindu Kush, Himalayan and Karakoram mountains. Scientists now say that the temperatures in this region are rising twice as fast as the global average, and that could lead to major changes in the strength and timing of the Asian monsoon. Already the failure of the monsoon to arrive on time in Nepal this year has led a few farmers to commit suicide. Take retreating glaciers into account as well, and the impacts on river flows, groundwater recharge, ecosystems and people’s livelihoods could be dramatic.
The highlight of our workshop was our field visit to the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), which is located in Kathmandu. ICIMOD was created in 1983 and its members include India, Pakistan, China and Afghanistan. Scientists from all over the region work for ICIMOD. They say the Hindu Kush and Himalayan mountain ranges are a climate change hotspot and need the world’s attention. “Mountain systems are very fragile and sensitive to climate change…”, says ICIMOD. “Policy makers need to be made aware of this”.
I knew that ICIMOD was well funded, but I was still surprised by their impressive, well-equipped building. The Pakistan Government donated the library and computer lab section. ICIMOD does appropriate research and offers ways of adapting to their problems to mountain communities – but they can act only as facilitators. Action has to be taken by the governments themselves.
With climate change now affecting the amount of snow and ice and rainfall patterns in these high mountains, there is an urgent need to understand the changes and their impact on downstream users. Unfortunately regional cooperation, scientific data and exchange of information are lacking – for example, scientists are still unsure about the glaciers’ storage capacities. They just don’t know how much ice there is and what amount of water is available each year for irrigation needs. ICIMOD is trying to bring all the region’s scientists together so that there is more data sharing and regional and trans-boundary cooperation.
Later that day, we were taken to visit ICIMOD’s field station in Godavari, outside Kathmandu. An entire degraded mountainside has been rehabilitated by ICIMOD’s researchers and scientists since 1992, and it is hard to believe that the lush green area, spread over 30 hectares, was once denuded of trees. This is where ICIMOD comes up with the technology to help create resilient mountain communities. “Our focus is on adaptation”, one of the scientists explained as they took us on a tour of the mountainside.
Access to fresh water is a recurring problem in the mountains, and it will be made worse by climate change. The first intervention we saw was roof-top rain-water harvesting. This is actually quite simple – you collect the rainwater which hits your roof-top by channeling it into a large tank which then stores the water for later use in the house and kitchen garden. I thought of all the water shortages faced by hill stations like Murree in Pakistan – what a simple but ingenious solution!
Another interesting technique was in the water-harvesting ponds, which are lined with thick blue plastic to avoid seepage. These small ponds can be built on mountain slopes (wherever there is enough flat space) and they can easily store water for irrigation and for livestock use. Mountain communities depend on their livestock for survival, so it is vital to ensure that they get enough drinking water. Usually they have to hike for miles with their goats and sheep to reach fresh-water springs above the valleys.
There were also examples of gravity sprinkler irrigation, drip irrigation and hydraulic ram pumps (which use the momentum of water flowing downhill to pump it to villages further up the mountain). We saw Sloping Agricultural Land Technology, or SALT – growing different species of trees and plants close together. Dense, double hedgerows of trees or shrubs are planted along contour lines, creating a living barrier that traps sediments and gradually transforms the sloping land into a series of terraces. This prevents soil erosion and improves its fertility. In the long run, it protects mountain communities from land-slides, while the terraces can be used to grow cereals, vegetables and fruit trees.
The scientists at ICIMOD have also devised ways to improve cooking methods in the mountains – since foraging for fuel wood is a constant problem for villagers and the cause of deforestation. We met some of the villagers, who explained how community-managed forests have been successfully replanted in recent years. In 1993, the Government of Nepal reversed its earlier policy (forests were nationalized in the 1960s, resulting in massive deforestation) and community forestry restarted. The people now protect and manage their own forests – and as a result, forest cover in Nepal has increased dramatically.
ICIMOD has also experimented successfully with solar cookers and improved bio-gas plants. What fascinated me were the bio-briquettes which are now being used quite widely in Nepal to light cooking stoves and heaters. Beehive Briquetting Technology (BBT) converts unwanted bio-mass (weeds, paper trash, etc.) into charcoal in a charring drum. A mould (the only real cost involved) is used to turn it into solid fuel bio-briquettes which can be ignited quite easily and burn smokelessly thanks to the air flow through the various holes in the briquette. One briquette is enough to prepare a meal for a small family. In Nepal, many villagers have turned making briquettes into a side business.
Other techniques include cool chambers, rectangular pits made of bricks which have a water channel running round them. They are used to store vegetables and food. There were also solar dryers that can be used to dry fruit.
Our last stop in Godavari was a visit to the centre for sustainable apiculture and pollination. Honeybees are essential for the health of any eco-system, as they increase yields by pollinating plants. A Pakistani scientist told us that honeybee production in Pakistan could easily be doubled if the government paid more attention, and that the healthiest nations in the world were the ones who had the highest consumption of honey.
We left Godavari, our heads full of new ideas. Perhaps it was too much information for one day, but it was heartening to learn that the technology is out there to help poor mountain farmers adapt to climate change in the near future.
