Adapting to Climate Change In Nepal

That’s why, in August 2011, WWF began work on one of the largest, most complex conservation, development, and climate change projects ever launched in Nepal. The program was dubbed Hariyo Ban, short for a Nepali saying that means “Healthy green forests are the wealth of Nepal.”

The five-year, nearly $40 million USAID-funded program brought together WWF, the international development organization CARE, the Federation of Community Forestry Users Nepal, and the National Trust for Nature Conservation. Together, the groups have worked to forge a new model for a landscape-level, community-driven approach to conserving biodiversity that also helps people adapt to climate change and mitigate greenhouse gas emissions by storing carbon.

“Hariyo Ban works across two major landscapes: the Chitwan-Annapurna Landscape and the Terai Arc Landscape, which together cover 40% of the country,” says outgoing Hariyo Ban chief of party Judy Oglethorpe. “As climate change advances, we know it’s going to have serious impacts on ecosystems and people, including entire river basins and their freshwater resources. By working at different scales, we can work with upstream and downstream water users at the same time.”

The entire Chitwan-Annapurna landscape, says Ryan Bartlett, WWF’s senior specialist for climate resilience, is vulnerable to climate change. Prior to the launch of Hariyo Ban, researchers at WWF had already begun looking at the specifics of climate resilience, observing individual ecosystems within the Gandaki and other river basins, and studying how each is uniquely affected. A common theme—water—quickly emerged.

Bartlett says, “Sometimes there’s a lack of water and sometimes there’s too much. And sometimes it comes at unexpected times. Unfortunately, those new extremes are undermining people’s lives.

To help people in the Gandaki basin adapt to the changing conditions, Hariyo Ban organized climate vulnerability assessments at various levels—from community to landscape—to identify situation-specific solutions for the people and the land. This led to a strong focus on people’s livelihoods and their ability to prepare for and recover from disasters.

For example, when people suffered from landslides, crop failures, or water sources drying up due to changes in rainfall patterns, Hariyo Ban supported the restoration of forests in their water catchments to stabilize slopes and conserve water supplies. It provided greenhouses (called “plastic tunnels” in Nepal) to diversify crops and incomes. And it provided support to upgrade foot trails to improve local people’s access to harvesting areas and schools, and to promote ecotourism.

“You can’t do good conservation,” says Bartlett, “without learning from the people who live there and helping meet their needs.”

So Hariyo Ban partners spend months, or even years, getting to know the intricacies of each target community—working with people to assess how they and their ecosystems are vulnerable to climate change, helping them develop programs that address specific needs, and helping to secure funding and resources. The process has a special focus on including the voices and concerns of those who are most vulnerable—including women, those with disabilities, and the very poor.

Five years on, and against daunting odds, the program is a striking success. Across both landscapes, hundreds of thousands of people have benefited from Hariyo Ban, and more than 160,000 acres of degraded forest have been improved with the aid of hundreds of locally run user groups and protected area staff. 

“The program also worked with thousands of local people and Nepal’s government to mitigate climate change by reducing or sequestering an estimated 3.7 million tons of carbon emissions in Nepal’s forests,” says Netra Sharma, Natural Resources Management and Climate Change Programs Specialist for USAID/Nepal.

Those living in project areas have reported economic improvements, increases in wild species, and the recovery of local forests.

And each community has its own story to tell.

“We understand the importance of conserving [the water] because we use it as a drinking source. We know the health problems caused if we pollute, so we keep it clean. Not only for us, but for downstream in Pokhara,” says Baikuntha Poudel, pulling back fronds to show the budding cardamom plants.

Downstream in the lakeside town called Pokhara, dozens of families have gathered at Phewa Lake for a spot of sightseeing in the middle of the week. The lake draws hundreds of thousands of tourists each year who hire boats, stroll the grassy banks, host weddings, and pay their respects at the famed Tal Barahi Temple located on a small island just off the shoreline.

The lake’s watershed is part of the Seti sub-river basin and rich in biodiversity: More than 100 bird, 34 mammal, 16 fish, and 14 reptile species inhabit the area. Lila Jung Gurung, program officer for the Chitwan-Annapurna Landscape, says the area has 113 species of orchid alone. But because of forest conversion, landslides, and soil erosion from poorly constructed roads, the lake has shrunk considerably over the years. Climate change exacerbates the problem—more intense bursts of rainfall cause more rapid erosion, sending increased amounts of sediment downstream. Today Phewa Lake is about half its original size, and continues to fill in as sediment is deposited from upstream.

To tackle the problem, Gurung and his colleagues at the Hariyo Ban program have been working with locals both in Pokhara and upstream. Through a coordinated effort between the private sector and communities, villagers like those in Dhikurpokhari amend planting and grazing practices, while Pokhara hotel operators pay a fee to support important upstream work. The situation is beginning to improve.

“Some people upstream were not aware of the problem,” says Gurung, speaking as he walks beneath a copse of trees planted with Hariyo Ban’s support to help secure Phewa Lake’s banks.

So getting a village to buy in to the program requires no small effort. “The first three to six months we call ‘trust building,’” explains Anil Manandhar, country representative for WWF-Nepal. “You have to be open about your goals and listen to the people’s concerns and ideas.”

Once trust is established, he says, “communities are ready to do the work.” Across Hariyo Ban, thousands of community members have done just that. By participating in the various user groups and learning and action centers, as well as lending a hand informally, farmers, fishers, housewives, and students have become leaders in bettering their own lives—in part by protecting and restoring the natural systems around them.

But while some communities were able to quickly make the most of Hariyo Ban’s support, others have had a harder time finding their way. In Musahar Tole, a small community located in Amaltari and the buffer zone of the Chitwan National Park, there is much work to be done.

The Musahars are the poorest of the poor—part of the “untouchable” Dalit caste viewed with derision by many. The community has watched its already tenuous situation worsen in recent years as the government has cracked down on illegal fishing within the national park—once a mainstay of their livelihood.

And while nearby villages have made strides in recent years, with homestay programs, ecotourism initiatives, and even a community-run “vulture restaurant”—a feeding station for the endangered birds that draws tourists—Musahar Tole has struggled to gain such ground. At one of Hariyo Ban’s regular community forums, one community member after another stands up to discuss their need for more hands-on assistance.

“Many people raise [our] hopes, but we’re not getting anything,” Jit Bahadur Musahar Kawaseti tells the forum in a raised voice. “People are ready to do whatever is asked of them, but they don’t know what to do.”

Afterward, asked if he was taken aback by the outpouring, Shant Raj Jnawali, biodiversity coordinator and incoming chief of party for Hariyo Ban, admits that such heated conversations are a normal part of the ongoing process—and can even be seen as a good thing.

“The fact that the villagers—particularly the women—could be so outspoken,” he says, “is a positive sign that project interventions such as the CLACs have started to work.”

A Village Reinvented

Many of these efforts, unique and specific as they are, are designed to increase the ability of Nepal’s people and ecosystems to build resilience and adapt to climate change at a massive scale.

Building climate resilience in Nepal means linking upstream communities like Bhakarjung with Pokhara and Phewa Lake downstream, to ensure that land use in one place doesn’t impact freshwater sources in another. It means identifying the water flows that are needed to maintain ecosystem functions in the face of climate change, and working with hydropower and irrigation investors to find ways to do this. It means identifying crops—like cardamom and broom grass—that anchor soils, retain water, and provide much-needed sources of additional income. And it means working with people, from communities in remote villages to park rangers and government officials, to make sure that the rhinos drawing tourists to isolated places are safe, allowing more people to develop and benefit from increasingly diverse sources of income.

“For me,” says WWF Chief Operating Officer Marcia Marsh, “the highlight of this project was meeting with the women of the Community Learning and Action Centers. Watching a group of previously disenfranchised women boisterously cheering each other on as they shared their results was inspiring.

“Hariyo Ban,” she points out, “assessed climate vulnerability all the way from river basins to ecosystems to individual communities—and finally to the most marginalized members in each place. With our help, people have taken control of their forests and watersheds and built small businesses in the process. They have developed and executed action plans, contacting local government agencies to ensure that they received the services they were entitled to, and taking charge of their own futures. These women now have the expertise to adapt to even the toughest challenges. It’s easy to imagine that many of them will be village leaders in the future—perhaps even a Parliamentarian or two.”