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Climate change adaptation cannot take place in isolation, but needs to be integrated with community development in a sustainable manner.
Intriguingly, while this tussle boils at the national level, some communities at the local level have taken an initiative and started organising themselves to adopt measures that would tackle climate change impacts. One such community is in Sundari Dada of Lekhnath municipality in Kaski district. This community has not only diversified its incomes sources and crop choices but has also started taking its own weather measurements. Keeping weather records is a technical subject and needs long-term reading with precise analysis to help plan well for the future, but at least this community has taken a step forward.
With the help of an organisation called Li-Bird, this community operates a weather station that records temperature, humidity and precipitation. For the last six months, they have been recording the measurement every day. They not only keep the record from the station but also maintain a log of what they observe in the daily weather, later to be compared and verified by an expert.
Shushila Gurung, who takes the measurement says, “I maintain the daily record from the station and actual observation hoping that in the future it will help us plan well during crop plantation and harvest. The weather now has become very uncertain and I hope my work will help the community in the future.” She is also hopeful that Li-Bird will help them analyse the data and convert it into usable information so that her effort does not go waste. Some communities in Chitwan district have also adopted similar methodologies.
Sabitri Tiwari, a community member proudly articulates, “We don’t want to be deterred by the negative climate impact, after all we can’t leave our homes. We have started practicing new income generation activities such as beekeeping, goat rearing, fruit and vegetable farming, in addition to growing traditional crops.”
Another laudable activity by this community is protecting the Rupa Lake and its watershed, while benefiting from fish farming at the same time. This beautiful lake, which stretches across 135 hectares, is shrinking due to landslides and erosion. Over 750 households directly benefit from this activity, which is organised under a cooperative.
When small communities have started taking bold steps and accepting challenges, even at technical levels, to adapt themselves to the changing climate, why is our government merely a passive spectator? Can these good practices not be embedded into a national movement where communities take the lead and government acts as a helping hand?
There are several agencies that can either help with or coordinate the climate adaptation work for communities around the country. The Department of Hydrology and Meteorology (DHM) can tackle technical matters, if spruced up with more capacity building and institutional strengthening. Similarly, local development agencies are well rooted in the districts. After all, climate change adaptation cannot take place in isolation, but needs to be integrated with community development in a sustainable manner. And this is possible only with proper coordination and inter-connection among government ministries and departments.
Donors have a crucial role to play as well but they shy away when it comes to implementing concrete activities that directly helps communities. They often shift the blame to the government, citing lack of good governance and capacity. On the other hand, they spend millions in producing paper work and conducting conferences in the capital, unaware of whom they are actually supporting. We learn from implementing programs, not producing documents.
Nepal has spent millions of dollars developing policies and programmes, apparently for climate vulnerable communities, but which have failed to reach them. It is time we turn the strategy around to make it a more bottom up approach, where community assistance and planning is encouraged and then taken holistically to develop and implement a nationwide policy.
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