Saturday, August 20, 2016

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 10th and 11th 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.

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