-Dil B. Khatri, Andrea J. Nightingale, Gyanu Maskey and Hemant Ojha
- The transition to federalism in Nepal has paved the way for provincial and local governments to hold more political authority than they did before.
- They bear policymaking and resource-allocating responsibilities that were once the preserve of the ministries and the National Planning Commission.
- But there is a disconnect between public expectations and the ability of nascent provincial governments to effectively respond to the local consequences of climate change.
- The authors write that decentralised institutions need to be able to access and mobilise resources so they can respond meaningfully at the local scale.
- Without these powers, there is little room to take ownership of the solution and an ultimate sense that the climate crisis is the federal government’s problem.
Climate change is not an abstract concept in many parts of the world. It is a frightening reality with significant consequences, especially for the poor and in economically ‘least-developed’ countries like Nepal. But for this, climate change here is infamously considered a ‘donor’s agenda’, and the government still looks for solutions and aid from without its borders. It’s important to localise climate change action for it to be effective. And pro-decentralisation scholars and activists believe an important step in this direction is to devolve authority to local institutions.
The authors of this article are a team of researchers familiar with the mechanisms of climate change as well as Nepal’s federalisation process. And we challenge this idea of devolution based on an analysis of documents, past engagements with multi-stakeholder policy forums, ethnographic research and interviews with experts and other professionals.
The transition to federalism in Nepal has paved the way for provincial and local governments to hold more political authority than they did before. They bear policymaking and resource-allocating responsibilities that were once the preserve of the ministries and the National Planning Commission. But even as the federal structure takes shape, we sense a disconnect between public expectations and the capability of the nascent provincial and local governments to effectively respond to the local consequences of climate change.
We have found that decentralising governmental authority is not likely to produce effective climate policy outcomes if this mismatch between authority and capability remains unaddressed.
Nepal’s 2015 Constitution vests province and local levels with the authority to formulate laws and policies, set yearly budgets, and undertake plans and strategies for issues falling in their respective jurisdictions. Yet the authority that they have been granted is difficult to operationalise. This is due to ongoing struggles over access to and the mobilisation of knowledge and financial resources.
For example, the ministry of the Gandaki province doesn’t have experts who can develop climate-change-related policies and depends on external consultants. Hiring these consultants is contingent on the availability of funds. So ministry officials only work with them if they have the funds to spare. When funding isn’t available, they draft policies with the limited expertise available within the ministry. Obviously, these policies aren’t as good as those drafted with expert assistance.
Further, the federal government has retained the authority to access and mobilise international funding. This has become a barrier to provincial and local governments, which can’t access external funding, and has widened the gap in the local governance system vis-à-vis climate response.
In Khotang, the ‘local adaptation plan of action’ became stalled after a donor-supported project came to an end. Local officials blamed the lack of financial resources within the district forest office even as the local government wasn’t able to access external funding. In another instance, at the Gandaki province ministry, the federal government implemented two international donor-funded projects in the province without consulting its provincial counterpart.
In addition to these issues, the recently constituted ministries at the provincial level have been struggling to operationalise their knowledge and authority to materialise the national focus on climate governance. Per our research, the ministry of tourism, industry, forests and environment in Gandaki province has prioritised tourism infrastructure over other forest and climate-change issues with respect to both policy development and budget allocation.
At the local level, the palikas – or municipalities – have even less access to expertise and resources than the provincial government. The newly instituted palikas have also prioritised more pressing needs, such as infrastructure development. For example, the Diktel municipality in Khotang has declared that its priorities will be education, health and infrastructure, over plans to address climate change.
There are other challenges as well – such as delays in implementing restructuring plans and a paucity of institutional memory, considering there are now so many first-time politicians and civil servants. The frequent transfer of staff members and changes in organisational arrangements linked to the political transition have also hampered knowledge retention. A related and perhaps more prominent issue is that, at both the provincial and the local levels, climate governance has been put on the back-burner, on the assumption that it is something the federal government will deal with.
In sum, decentralisation does not suffice for effective and local response to climate change. Decentralised institutions need to be able to access and mobilise resources – knowledge and materials – so they can respond meaningfully at the local scale. Further, decentralisation should also facilitate coordination across levels so that officials can share expertise, institutional memories, and access to international knowledge and financial support.
But if the mismatch remains unaddressed, Nepal will soon find out in a much harder way that decentralisation will have failed to prepare the country for the worst of climate change.
The authors acknowledge Avipsha Rayamajhi and Monika Giri for their contributions to drafting this article.
Dil B. Khatri and Andrea J. Nightingale are with the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala. Nightingale is also with the University of Oslo. Khatri and Gyanu Maskey are with the South Asia Institute of Advanced Studies, Kathmandu. Hemant Ojha is with the Institute for Governance and Policy Analysis, University of Canberra, and the Institute for Studies and Development Worldwide, Sydney.
“Views expressed here are personal and not associated with any affiliated organisations”
This blog article was first published at The Wire Science on October 13, 2022.
