E-Kantipur

A major official blueprint to adapt to the inevitable impacts of climate change has rated Humla’s vulnerability to glacial lake outburst flood as “very low.” Contrary to the top template, the National Adaptation Program of Action (NAPA), a village in the remotest district of the far western region was hit by such a disaster last month. And it wasn’t the first experience for the nearly 100 households in Halji of Limi village development committee below the Gurla Mandata Mountain bordering Tibet. For the last five years, flood waters from the Tako Tsho glacial lake have hurtled down to the village at around the same date of June.

“Since 2006, we have seen the glacial lake floods becoming stronger and stronger every year,” says Mangal Lama who manages construction of a road to link Limi with the district headquarters Simikot. “And the way it came this year has left us all in the village so worried that some villages are even considering going to Tibet as refugees.”

Just behind the Gurla Mandata is the mesmerising Mansarovar Lake and overlooking it is the sacred Kailash Mountain.

The frustration of the villagers in Halji stems from what they say is the apathy of both the central and local governments. The locals had even reached the prime minister’s office more than a year ago to seek a long-lasting solution.

The central government did provide them with 1.5 million rupees and later they also received one million rupees from the district authority. “But the defences we made with these monies proved to be nothing for the flood we were hit by this time,” says Lama.

Whether the government could have done a better job or not, but more critical than that is: Why was Humla not categorised as highly vulnerable in terms of glacial lake outburst flood (GLOF) by the NAPA?

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change requires all least developed countries to prepare NAPA so that they can adapt to climatic impacts already becoming evident.

This column has in the past discussed my investigation for the BBC on how Nepal’s NAPA was severely delayed due to the fight for supremacy between the Global Environment Facility and the United Nations Development Programme. How the UNDP’s failure to timely hire a consultant further added to the delay, and now the GLOF incident in Humla has thrown light into what caveats Nepal’s NAPA could have.

Not only has the document misrepresented the remote district in the GLOF vulnerability ranking, it has also cited it as “moderate” in the overall climate change vulnerability index.

Government and donors’ experts who prepared the NAPA can argue that because no significant climatic impacts were reported in Humla, the overall rating is justified.

But given that the district has witnessed floods from the Tako Tsho glacial lake almost every June in the past five years, it no doubt has been grossly underrepresented in the NAPA’s GLOF vulnerability index.

The index has Dolakha, Solukhumbu, Manang, Mustang, Taplejung and Gorkha as highly vulnerable districts.

These are where the high profiled dangerous glacial lakes like Tsho

Rolpa, Imja, Thulagi, among others, are located.

Securing an estimated 350 million dollars funding for adaptation projects of NAPA remains a far cry as the LDC fund under the UNFCCC has no money.

Meanwhile, the World Bank-led Strategic Programme on Climate Resilience (SPCR) is advancing and it plans to complement, among others, NAPA projects.

The danger is that it may end up focussing only on the glacial lakes that have been prioritised by NAPA.

Under its “building resilience to climate related hazards” component, the SPCR has said, “the establishment of community based early warning systems (for GLOFs, floods, landslides and droughts) will be focussed initially in targeted areas that are most vulnerable to climate change impacts.”

If the most vulnerable areas are identified by NAPA standards, Humla will certainly miss out big time. The district is in Karnali river basin that

has the largest number of glaciers in the country.

There are nearly 4,000 glaciers in the Nepali Himalayas and most of their glacial lakes are not monitored. Meaning, there will be nagging gaps in the knowledge bank, including that of NAPA.

More so, when impacts of climate change continue to evolve.

Precipitation-induced flood is another example. Mustang, for instance, has been categorised as a district having low vulnerability in terms of floods by NAPA.

This wet season has wronged that. What used to be once a rain- shadow area because of the high Himalayas blocking monsoon clouds, Mustang has now begun to see not just rains but at times even floods and landslides.

Some locals in Upper Mustang have had to move elsewhere after the soiled roofs of their traditional houses began to leak because of heavy rainfall recently.

All this means, NAPA must be revised and updated as soon as possible.

That could also help the SPCR — that had recently courted huge controversy because of its loan component - or any other adaptation projects that builds on the national document.

Or else, many other villages like Halji of Humla will be left out in the cold.

Khadka is a BBC journalist based in London

Navin singh khadka navin.khadka@gmail.com

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