Impacts of Climate Change setting Extra stress to Majhi community

Climate Change is increasingly being accepted as a major issues facing Nepal (ICIMOD, working paper 2014/3). The general trends corroborated by the ground-level observations of various communities in Nepal, do give a basic framework of identified and projected change (Bartlett et. al. 2010). As a nation, Nepal is therefore extremely vulnerable to the impacts of climate change- especially those related to water resources. Many of these changes are already felt (NCVST 2009; ICIMOD 2009; Eriksson et al. 2009).

The 2011 census listed the population as belonging to 125 caste and ethnic groups, including 63 indigenous peoples, 59 castes (including 15 Dalit castes), and 3 religious groups, including Muslim groups. The indigenous nationalities (Adivasi Janajati) of Nepal comprise 35.81% of the total population of 26,494,504 persons. The Marginalized indigenous community is most vulnerable to impacts of Climate change.

Who are Majhi 

The direct translation of Majhi into English is ‘fisherman’. The Majhis are one of the indigenous peoples of the nation of Nepal - possessing their own language, dress, culture, etc. with ancestral occupations of boating and fishing. There are about 18,000 majhi people in Nepal.

Most of the Majhi people are below the poverty line. The economic status of the Majhi is very poor. They even have not sufficient land for agriculture that is why they are living impoverished kind of life. They are very vulnerable to impacts of climate change.

A Majhi Village; Bodgaun

Bodgaun is a village located in Bhimtar Village Development Committee of Sindhupalchowk district in Nepal with Majhi population of 2,000 in 350 families. The majority of the people of Bodgaun depend upon animal husbandry and agriculture for survival over the threatened ancestral occupation of fishing and boating. The land is not very fertile and the yield is also very low as people cultivate crops in a traditional way, despite the development of new technologies. Majorities of the people are illiterate and among those who are, many had just received primary or secondary level of education. There is very poor condition of hygiene and sanitation.

Impacts in Majhi Village; Bodgaun

The major impacts can be summarized as

Induced by Climate change		Impacts on
		Primarily	Secondarily	Extended
Extreme Events	Extreme Drought	Agriculture	Decreased production of rice and other food	-          Food insecurity -          Pressure on family economy -          Social impacts
	Extreme Rainfall	Landslide in agricultural land	Decrease area of cultivation
		River cutting
		Road damage	Blocked accessibility	-          Loose selling of local products -          High price of food
Prolonged summer		Prolonged favorable condition for Mosquito and other insects	Health Impacts	-          Right of well being -          Pressure on economy

There are several communities in Nepal, which are facing similar or severe challenges due to climate change impacts. Being mountainous, fragile, landlocked and underdeveloped, Nepal seems to be most vulnerable to these impacts and poor and marginalized people in the country are facing many difficulties. 

There are some initiatives taken by government and international agencies on adaptation but the initiatives are often seem to be not effective and making real change in the livelihood of people. A collaborative, strong and long term efforts is crucial to protect people, communities and environment. 

HI-AWARE Consultation from eye of Young Researcher; Adaptation to Climate Change Impacts in Gandaki River Basin of Nepal: Putting Research into Use

From the young researchers to researchers with long history, from pure science based researchers to practitioner and community workers, from local government officials to national level officials etc. were congregated in Kathmandu on August 10^th and 11^th for the consultation on adaptation to climate change impacts focusing on putting research into use.

Overview

In the two days, there were two sessions for presenting the view of the panelist in each day and two technical sessions for the touch table usages followed with the discussions by the involved participates in each.

In the first part of the session followed after the welcome remarks, the presenters presented the general introduction of the HI-AWARE, Research component 1 (Climate modeling), research component 2 (Vulnerability) and in adaptation component. The panelist from Ministry of land reforms, Environment and Municipality development section of MoFA, water induced disaster control department, DRR specialist of Practical Action put their remarks after the presentations.

The government officials in one hand gave the ongoing happenings of the respective coverage areas and in another hand urge to integrate the findings of previous research and projects like CHAL/SHAL/TAL, Hariyo Ban etc. The research for the scarcity of the water in many parts of country was a special urge. Government officials were committed to integrate the outputs of research in the policies and practices if the outputs are submitted in the concrete form.

The concept of touch table was presented and the participants practiced on the themes of precipitation/flood and temperature/drought during the workshop making two groups and inner and outer cluster in each group. The participants suggested for the integration of different maps as per need, to account the contribution of GOLF and expressed the kind concerns on Quality control of the data, Licensing and device uses are supposed to be made user friendly.

In Policies and Practices Panel on Adaptation in Nepal, eight panelist with a moderator interacted with the participants. Three of them were from the district development committees of Rasuwa, Chitwan, and Nuwakot, two of them were from Ministry of water and Sanitation and Forest and Soil conservation, one each from Adaptation fund, Media and Research Centre.

The NAP coordinator focused on the formulation of policies and milestones achieved whereas the representatives from sectorial ministries shared the plans and action of the respective ministries, the DDC representatives explained the current situation of the respective district, representative of IDF on research prospective, DRR specialist of Pratical action on the joint actions and media person on the media prospective focusing what is grabbed by the media.

Foci

-         Gandaki Basin; one of the 10 river basin in the Hind Kush Himalayan (HKH) region

-         Consideration of projected (by 2050) heat stress in the India and Bangaladesh

-         People moved to upstream due to malaria in the past and now water scarcity forced to move downward

-         Documentation of good development practices (IWRM, Seed Bank, Solar, Wind, Hydro)

-         Urge to research on the water scarcity

-         Publish the research outcomes in locally understandable language

-      Vulnerability map and zonation in implementation

-         Contribution for creating act on water induced disaster management in Nepal

-         Adaptation for the future

-         Need driven strategy for future

-         Issues of high land, midland and low land

-         Milestones in the adaptation process by the government of Nepal

-         Presentation of NAP implementation modal and reflection of wishes to affect the life of very general public to honorable Prime Minister

-         involvement of young graduates in NAP process for knowledge generation, capacity building and learning

-         Climate Resilient water supply safety plan of the MoWS

-         Necessity to be focused on new arrangement by constitution which seems to make the DDC a powerless body

-         Adaptation is most important factor and must be done for the better livelihood of poor people

-         Research component is very important

-         gap in demand and supply

-         Media lacking how to take researches and researchers lacking what and how to give media

Erudition

The knowledge generation and research are the ever ending process but there are still lacking of the basic research outputs that are vital for the policy formulation and implementation. The fractional study trend and individualistic approach is not well contributing the wholesome understanding of the scenario. In one hand government officials are asking for the concrete suggestions and in another hand the researchers are asking to start implementation with the available information.

There is still much needed in knowledge generation and need a lot of work in effective dissemination of the research outputs.

It has been realized that there needs to be engagement of wider range of researchers in the process but how to make it is much perplexing.  

Afterward

Collaborative efforts with responsible individual roles are the most demanding need. The trend and necessity of research is always dynamic and have to be driven as per the need. Every part of the research may not be directly useful but each part of the research contributes for making concrete outcomes to be applied.

The research for the current use over the modeling, the research reports in the simple local language over the complex complied reports, the well dissemination of results over the copyright/protection, involvement and trust to young passionate engagement over the handful of engagement etc. need to be considered.

The workshop was hosted by the Himalayan Adaptation, Water and Resilience Research (HI-AWARE) which is one of the four consortia of the Collaborative Adaptation Research Initiative in Africa and Asia (CARIAA) and conducting research and pilot interventions, capacity building and policy engagement on climate resilience and adaptation in the mountains and flood plains of the Indus, Ganges, and Brahmaputra river basins.