Tara Bhattarai, GPJ Nepal
PANCHKHAL, NEPAL – For 53 years, Sunchari Dunwar, 65, has had the same daily routine. Married at the age of 12, she has risen early every morning to do her housework and tend to her children, animals and crops. But for the last two years, things have been different. These days, her life is about waiting for water.
Each morning, Dunwar wakes up at dawn and rushes down to the common tap in the village only to find dozens already waiting in line.
“Waiting for water puts my household on hold,” she says.
Back in her home, her morning milk tea has gone cold. Her 11-year-old granddaughter is loading up her backpack for school.
“It’s getting late for school,” she says. “Grandma left to get some water and she is still not home.”
There is no water to cook rice, so the girl will go to school without eating. She used to take a bottle of water with her to school because there is no safe drinking water there. Today, she has no water to take with her on her three-mile walk to school.
Meanwhile, Dunwar is still standing in line. In front of her, there are 30 aluminum and brass buckets and dozens of empty Coke and Fanta bottles lined up before a tiny water tap that is a quarter of a mile away from her home. Water trickles out of the tap.
“I have been in line since 5 a.m.,” Dunwar says, looking down at her old wristwatch. “It’s already 9 a.m. and still it’s not my turn. What time will I get home to cook and eat? What time will I be able to feed my cows and buffalo? And today I didn’t even get to feed my grandchildren before they left for school.”
Everyone in line, from young mothers to old men, exchange their frustrations as they wait. After waiting in line at the local spigot for five hours, Dunwar says she can’t even fill one full bucket. And that is not enough to quench her family’s thirst.
The source, atop the hill, is drying up. Just a few years ago, Dunwar says water gushed from that tap. In the small village of Panchkhal, in Nepal’s Kavre district, some 35 miles from Kathmandu, this is the only drinking water tap left. It serves more than 20,000 residents. In the last two years, 1,705 taps and 1,030 wells and water holes have dried up here.
Pawan Sapkota, a local community advocate, says the gradual closure of water resources like canals, ponds, wells and water taps has deeply affected the entire village.
“Now the time has to come for people to take action,” Sapkota says. “How can we survive?”
As natural water supplies dry up, residents of rural Nepali villages are coming to grips with the realities of a changing climate.
The Ministry of Environment in Nepal reports that Panchkhal is not the only village to face serious water shortages during the last five years. A decrease in rainfall, ground water and river flow has been reported in the mountain, hill and plain regions of the country.
“This could be the sign of global warming,” says Ganesh Raj Joshi, secretary of the Ministry of Environment here.
As global warming continues to be a major topic of international dialogue and debate, new research suggests that elements of climate change, including water shortages, often disproportionally affect women, like Dunwar.
“When there is a change in society, it definitely impacts [women] first,” Joshi says. “The climate change has adverse effects on family surroundings, social life and even health.”
With this monsoon season expected to be as dismal as the last, residents in villages across the country have begun to search for new sources of water. And many are critical of the government’s hesitant response to climate change. While Nepal participated in a major U.N. climate change convention last year, officials here share the international skepticism and politics that seem to follow the climate change debate. While the government here recently created the National Adaptation Program of Action, or NAPA, the severe lack of water on the ground is having debilitating effects on local farms, livestock and families.
The Search for Water
The local Jinghu River dried up two years ago. Today, it is a beach. Trucks drive freely through the area once flooded with water to load sand and stone. Even with the surface dry, local residents continue to dig in search of water.
“Hoping we will find some water, we even dug a hole in the ground, but there were no signs of water,” Bimala Shrestha says of the 20-foot hole her family dug in search of ground water.
In all, more than 120 holes have been dug here. Each one was dry.
“It costs 40,000 rupees [$530 USD] to dig one well, and few residents of the village can afford to dig a well,” Sapkota says.
And as more than 120 residents realized, digging a well is no guarantee of finding water.
Local residents are critical of the government’s response to climate change, though in recent months new efforts are emerging. For years, the government of Nepal did not acknowledge climate change.
“Now, climate change has become a big problem for small countries,” says Shankar Prasad Koirala, secretary of the Home Ministry. “Since last year, the government has been trying to find a solution.”
International Cooperation Sought, Climate Change Still in Doubt
Last year, Nepal participated in the U.N. Climate Change Conference, the COP 15, in Copenhagen. The representatives from Nepal were among the first to suggest that developed countries should help poor countries in dealing with the increasing effects of climate change.
The COP 15 was one of the first conferences to address preventive measures and funding options for poor countries in the fight against climate change. But nearly 10 months after the conference, Ajay Dixit, director of the Institute for Social and Environmental Transition-Nepal, ISET-N, says it remains unclear what resources, if any, will be distributed to poor countries and how much suggested programs will cut down on the production of carbon dioxide.
“Big countries often betray poor countries, and poor countries never stop hoping to get help from big countries,” Dixit says.
Dixit says small countries like Nepal are often not able or invited to participate in global forums on climate change and few international bodies are addressing the needs of the world’s poorest countries when it comes to climate change.
“If a resident of a small country does not buy [a] car [so it won’t] pollute the environment or chooses to plant a tree, it does not bring any change,” Dixit says. “Big countries are responsible for all these things.”
But while advocates like Dixit say they are actively seeking solutions, many are hesitant to blame all of Nepal’s environmental problems on climate change.
“It’s not fair to blame everything with the unwanted change of climate,” Dixit says, suddenly skeptical. “Before complaining about not having rainfall and land being dry, we should first try to find a scientific reason to find out what is really caus[ing] this problem. But Nepal doesn’t even have the manpower and budget to do any scientific research on these topics.”
In Nepal, more than a dozen organizations are working with the Ministry of Environment to solve the water shortage problems plaguing local villages. But for local residents like Dunwar, relief can’t come fast enough, as households and farms continue to suffer from a dramatic shortage of water.
For Buddhi Nath Luithel, a teacher at Chandeswori high school in the Kavre District, the changes in the climate are obvious.
“Due to [the] change in the monsoon, we did not see any new insects in our farm field like before,” he says. “Even the rhododendron [Nepal’s national flower] did not even bloom in regular time this year.”
Luithel and others are calling on the government to provide farms with new solutions and techniques as soon as possible so they can “make an income and survive,” he says.
Earlier this year, Nepal created NAPA, the first official initiative to adapt national policies and actions to address the adverse impacts of climate change and reduce vulnerability to the changing climate.
NAPA officials have confirmed that Nepal is seeing an erratic change in the monsoons, which is causing water shortages and drought. There is also a climate threat coming from deforestation, the invasion of exotic species and crop disease, which is causing a decline in food security. These climate-induced risks and hazards can have wide-ranging, and often unanticipated, effects on the environment and on socio-economic and developmental sectors.
As villages report an increase in diarrhea and flu, local schools are reporting a decline in student hygiene. Local health centers are also reporting an increase in infant mortality in regions hardest hit with water shortages. Also troubling is the countrywide impact on agriculture, forcing many to consider the long-term food insecurities that may soon leave thousands of villagers hungry. In short, climate change is fueling a cycle of poverty in many villages once considered to be self-sufficient.
Impact on Agriculture & Cultural Response
Panchkhal village is known for its prolific production of potato and lentil crops – two staples in the Nepali diet. This region used to supply more than 60 percent of the Kathmandu markets with vegetables. Today, it supplies less than 5 percent.
Dolmaya, a local resident, 65, says she once had a dozen cows and buffalo. But last year, she says she was forced to sell everything. She opened a small convenience store on the main road to town.
“There was always clear water flowing in this river,” she says, standing in her dusty store. “We use[d] to bathe and swim in this river. We use[d] to irrigate water from this river for cultivation. We used to make a lot of money. But these days, even to drink water, we have to buy a bottle.”
For Dolmaya and many others, the scientific explanation for climate change is inadequate.
“Five years back, this place use[d] to produce gold, and now it does not even produce bushes,” she says. “These are the results of Lord Indra getting mad because of the increasing growth of evil people in this world.”
While governments and locals can’t seem to come to a consensus on the cause of the change, the reality remains that the impact of water scarcity is fueling a cycle of poverty in many villages. Joshi of the Environment Ministry confirmed reports of the adverse effects of climate change, particularly the lack of heavy rainfall during monsoon seasons, which results in a decrease in agricultural business and has adversely affected families and domestic animals.
The scarcity of water has forced many to sell their farmland and their animals. For Bishnumaya Shrestha, who used to own a dozen animals and made a living selling their milk, her source of income is gone. Today she has just two cows. Each morning, she sells their milk on the roadside. For one liter of milk she earns just 31 rupees, 41 cents USD. But it costs her more than 1,700 rupees, $22 USD, to buy the daily water supply for her cows to survive.
“I don’t know how long I will survive without making any income,” she says.
Shrestha’s neighbor Sharmila Giri says she faces the same problem. But she says it is her children who are suffering most. She says she can’t wash her children’s clothes or give them baths when they are dirty.
“I cannot even afford to buy clothes, books and not even a pencil for my son and daughter,” she says.
And searching for new water tap, she says, is just a waste of time.
“Even being in line for water until 1 a.m., it’s impossible to fill a bucket of water,” she says. “It has become very difficult to survive.”
With little international cooperation or national action, residents here remain frustrated and thirsty.
“National and international corporation people visit our village riding in fancy vehicles,” Dunwar says. “They ask questions like, ‘Is there a problem of water? Why do you think this is happening?’ They take pictures of people waiting in line for water, but there is no one who comes and helps me.”
