Pedro Walpole in Kathmandu, Nepal 

 

Newspapers in Kathmandu are filled with charges of corruption against officials brought by the Maoist changeover, the countdown to the new Constitution, and occasional daytime strikes. Revenues from overseas workers give a further economic push to the growing consumption. Return migration to areas once threatened with violence is well under way. 

Just outside Kathmandu, Dhulikhel is one such municipality expanding rapidly with the usual demands for shelter, food, and water. The Dhulikhel landscape reflects these resource uses as clay agricultural lands are turned into brick making fields and brick works abound. The demand for food production results in high levels of inorganic production and a demand for irrigation. Extraction of water for basic domestic needs is probably the least visible and Dhulikhel is very fortunate in having a long history of community-based relations in the hills.

Nearly 25 years ago the Dhulikhel Drinking Water Supply Scheme (DDWSS) identified water sources in the area of Bhumidanda, a village development committee in Kavrepalanchok District in the Bagmati Zone of central Nepal. The German International Cooperation (GIZ) supported the effort. In the negotiations, the community got a school constructed and the town got a viable water system, now with a population of about 14,000. Today, the Bhumidanda Village Development

Committee is still working out a 10-point agenda with DDWSS.

In community discussions, five key elements were identified as hindering a comprehensive ecosystems management.

First is the annual contribution of 800,000 Nepalese rupees (NPR) per year with an increase every five years of NPR 100,000 to the village committee (NPR 71 to US$ 1) as support for the provision and maintenance of water to all the villages within the catchment. For middle and higher school, NPR 100,000 is pledged and provision for a teacher. The forest guards get NPR 1,000 a month. There are different health support programs for the villages. The university in the area is willing to contribute to quality education and there is temple assistance.

This is an impressive shopping list and over the past years, the community has gained an estimated NPR 6.9 million, so for the moment this is working well. What it means is that the DDWSS is acting as government in providing for basic needs, as it is readily accessible to the rural communities and willing to negotiate the delivery of other benefits with government.

This relationship must not be confused with payment for environmental services. Outside of a menial salary for the guards and some water system maintenance, very little else can be considered as reinvestment in the water resource.

Today, DDWSS is an often-quoted national success, but it remains a unique success story and not a model adopted and integrated into a policy framework and overall strategy.

Second, the villages should not be dependent upon a water scheme for their overall development.

Third, only a limited amount of the money is spent on management of the water source.

Fourth, the system is not integrated into the legal framework of resource ownership and management.

Lastly, there is no projection of the demands as the municipality grows (and now wants water for agriculture and new areas of distribution) and no estimation of the catchment water potential while the impacts of climate change must also be considered.

These five elements alone give a hint of the challenges ahead, and unless community forest management - with real payment for environmental services and not just community services - is integrated in watershed management, and this is in turn embedded in river basin management, we will not be building the relations necessary for a resilient people and environment.

Another component of the concern in environmental management is the neighbouring urban watershed of Kathmandu that highlights the disaster. The stagnant Bagmati River, like many in Asia, is an open sewer and dumpsite receiving 80% of its pollution from this 1% of its length.

During any period of political unrest, sustainable resource management always suffers and the forests of the hill region and terai have seen much degradation right down to the river sediments of the Churia Hills that are sold off for construction.

It is hard to see how these extensive and as yet non-integrated water resource issues are going to improve. Though there may be environmental awareness, accountability and management systems development are today necessarily complex and progress is slow. This kind of progress is hard to achieve whatever the governance structure and calls for much greater levels of social integration and infrastructure the length and breadth of the river basin.