Nepal: Climate change, Manmohan´s largesse at SAARC
Atul Chatterjee
August 06, 2008
Girija Prasad Koirala and others from Nepal have had a nice visit to Colombo, Sri Lanka for the 15th SAARC (South Asian Association for Regional Co-operation) meet. What transpired in the open sessions is generally known. Was Koirala able to get anything for Nepal?
India is to release $ 100 million for the Saarc Development Fund (SDF) and another $ 39 million towards its assessed share. The SDF was first mooted in 2005 and has taken quite some time to crystallize. (Manmohan Singh the Indian prime minister announced a $ 450 million aid package for Afghanistan outside the SAARC fold.)
Climate change was one of the main items on Nepal´s (as well as Bangladesh´s agenda) and the meet for this was held in Dhaka along with the meet at Colombo and attended by environment secretaries of the eight SAARC countries. Manmohan Singh announced that India was willing to share its experiences with other SAARC nations.
The combined news from Dhaka and Colombo amounted to: 1. SAARC nations would consult each other and take a common stand especially before the UN Copenhagen Conference 2009 on climate change. 2. SAARC nations would seek to estabilish a fund to which advanced western nations responsible for global warming would contribute. Bangladesh has already put up $ 44 million to this end. However the leaders were unable to reach a consensus of how to set up this fund. 3. This action plan for climate change would extend over three years till 2011.
Manmohan Singh said that SAARC could co-operate in areas of sustaining the Himalayan ecosystem, protection of coastal areas, disaster management strategies, early warning systems and research on climate modeling. The track record of India needs to be seen in this regard. Further SAARC already has an action plan on water harvesting and afforestation.
Some of the new areas of co-operation are mainly technical in nature. Sustaining the Himalyan eco system is something that India has done reasonably badly in and does not have much to offer to other countries of SAARC. Protection of coastal areas is not relevant to Nepal.
Disaster management strategies are terrible in India, government tries to move fast during these times but is plagued by lethargy or scams (at this time rules are kept to the minimum for procurement of relief supplies hence scams arise). It is mainly the NGOs which do good work and have developed expertise. Further the RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh a Hindu ultra right wing organization) is one of the best providers of relief work. At the ground level HAM radio operators continue to provide emergency communication facilities while government agencies run around like headless chickens.
Early warning systems have provided relief to coastal regions on one or two occasions. However, inland heavy rains being predicted are seldom of any help, flooding in rural and urban areas cannot be prevented if drainage is not taken care of. Similarly droughts cannot be accurately predicted. And with the wide variances in climate medium term forecasts cannot be made.
Large areas of Mahrashtra, India are reeling under the impact of a drought, while large areas of Bihar, India are flooded. The people in both areas are miserable, advance knowledge of either phenomena would not help much unless there is a clear cut strategy and tactics to tide over the situation.
In Bangladesh for the past 50 years of so the rains have wreaked havoc in some district or the other each year. The tidal wave (tsunami) that hit India in 2005 caused a huge loss of life in coastal areas. Early warning could have saved lives but not property. Further in Bangladesh and India coastal population has increased as part of a trend so any natural disaster causes greater damage to lives.
Water harvesting is undoubtedly very important, in the rural setting an individual Rajendra Singh had done it in Rajasthan. Government officials destroyed the check dams that he had constructed saying they were illegal. Whatever expertise rural Nepal wants in this regard would be available from the mountainous regions of Uttarakhand and Himachal.
Afforestation is another area in which India has had a very poor record. Part of the reason is that trees are treated as sacred and cannot be cut down. In Canada, Russia etc trees can be grown and then cut down after 20 years plus. This gives an incentive to rural people to grow trees. Further certain trees can be grown for fuel wood.
Since SAARC is working on its own Nepal may find a good program to increase green cover, but given the fact that its constituent member countries have been unable to develop good programs on a large scale the assumption may be misplaced.
PV Narsimha Rao a former prime minister of India had a penetrating comment to make when in the mid 1990s he was told that "Satellite images show an increase in forest cover by 4 per cent in India". He said, "Those are images."
One of the aims of the SAARC action plan on climate change is to sensitize the media on these issues. The media would probably beg to differ, it is the media which has been sensitizing government and the people regarding environment issues more than any government body.
Nepal´s new government headed by the Maoists has a 50 point common minimum program, which seems a bagful. The country has to look at what are the projects that are most important and have a good chance of taking off. To take an example Nepal has one of the most successful programs to derive fuel gas from cow dung. This is an area in which it has derived a certain amount of expertise which it can give to India and other countries. The drive for afforestation and water harvesting may be very important but their implementation would take longer. It could also identify projects in green tourism.
It is here that government officials could help the new government in taking decisions. The problem today is not in accessing funds as much as it is in creating good projects. . And SAARC is not the only funding body, besides donor agencies there is the Asian Development Bank and etc. But the government will have to come up with good ideas.
India is to release $ 100 million for the Saarc Development Fund (SDF) and another $ 39 million towards its assessed share. The SDF was first mooted in 2005 and has taken quite some time to crystallize. (Manmohan Singh the Indian prime minister announced a $ 450 million aid package for Afghanistan outside the SAARC fold.)
Climate change was one of the main items on Nepal´s (as well as Bangladesh´s agenda) and the meet for this was held in Dhaka along with the meet at Colombo and attended by environment secretaries of the eight SAARC countries. Manmohan Singh announced that India was willing to share its experiences with other SAARC nations.
The combined news from Dhaka and Colombo amounted to: 1. SAARC nations would consult each other and take a common stand especially before the UN Copenhagen Conference 2009 on climate change. 2. SAARC nations would seek to estabilish a fund to which advanced western nations responsible for global warming would contribute. Bangladesh has already put up $ 44 million to this end. However the leaders were unable to reach a consensus of how to set up this fund. 3. This action plan for climate change would extend over three years till 2011.
Manmohan Singh said that SAARC could co-operate in areas of sustaining the Himalayan ecosystem, protection of coastal areas, disaster management strategies, early warning systems and research on climate modeling. The track record of India needs to be seen in this regard. Further SAARC already has an action plan on water harvesting and afforestation.
Some of the new areas of co-operation are mainly technical in nature. Sustaining the Himalyan eco system is something that India has done reasonably badly in and does not have much to offer to other countries of SAARC. Protection of coastal areas is not relevant to Nepal.
Disaster management strategies are terrible in India, government tries to move fast during these times but is plagued by lethargy or scams (at this time rules are kept to the minimum for procurement of relief supplies hence scams arise). It is mainly the NGOs which do good work and have developed expertise. Further the RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh a Hindu ultra right wing organization) is one of the best providers of relief work. At the ground level HAM radio operators continue to provide emergency communication facilities while government agencies run around like headless chickens.
Early warning systems have provided relief to coastal regions on one or two occasions. However, inland heavy rains being predicted are seldom of any help, flooding in rural and urban areas cannot be prevented if drainage is not taken care of. Similarly droughts cannot be accurately predicted. And with the wide variances in climate medium term forecasts cannot be made.
Large areas of Mahrashtra, India are reeling under the impact of a drought, while large areas of Bihar, India are flooded. The people in both areas are miserable, advance knowledge of either phenomena would not help much unless there is a clear cut strategy and tactics to tide over the situation.
In Bangladesh for the past 50 years of so the rains have wreaked havoc in some district or the other each year. The tidal wave (tsunami) that hit India in 2005 caused a huge loss of life in coastal areas. Early warning could have saved lives but not property. Further in Bangladesh and India coastal population has increased as part of a trend so any natural disaster causes greater damage to lives.
Water harvesting is undoubtedly very important, in the rural setting an individual Rajendra Singh had done it in Rajasthan. Government officials destroyed the check dams that he had constructed saying they were illegal. Whatever expertise rural Nepal wants in this regard would be available from the mountainous regions of Uttarakhand and Himachal.
Afforestation is another area in which India has had a very poor record. Part of the reason is that trees are treated as sacred and cannot be cut down. In Canada, Russia etc trees can be grown and then cut down after 20 years plus. This gives an incentive to rural people to grow trees. Further certain trees can be grown for fuel wood.
Since SAARC is working on its own Nepal may find a good program to increase green cover, but given the fact that its constituent member countries have been unable to develop good programs on a large scale the assumption may be misplaced.
PV Narsimha Rao a former prime minister of India had a penetrating comment to make when in the mid 1990s he was told that "Satellite images show an increase in forest cover by 4 per cent in India". He said, "Those are images."
One of the aims of the SAARC action plan on climate change is to sensitize the media on these issues. The media would probably beg to differ, it is the media which has been sensitizing government and the people regarding environment issues more than any government body.
Nepal´s new government headed by the Maoists has a 50 point common minimum program, which seems a bagful. The country has to look at what are the projects that are most important and have a good chance of taking off. To take an example Nepal has one of the most successful programs to derive fuel gas from cow dung. This is an area in which it has derived a certain amount of expertise which it can give to India and other countries. The drive for afforestation and water harvesting may be very important but their implementation would take longer. It could also identify projects in green tourism.
It is here that government officials could help the new government in taking decisions. The problem today is not in accessing funds as much as it is in creating good projects. . And SAARC is not the only funding body, besides donor agencies there is the Asian Development Bank and etc. But the government will have to come up with good ideas.
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