By Dr. Hemant R Ojha
Misplaced Adaptation
In Makawanpur, no one knows what the NAPA is,” said a grassroots women’s representative at a roundtable organised in Kathmandu to take stock of the implementation status of the National Adaptation Program of Action (NAPA). The roundtable, held at the Everest Hotel, was attended by around 80 government and donor staff, NGO representatives, grassroots actors and researchers. The objective was “to take stock of NAPA implementation and identify gaps and the ways forward”. It is of wider interest to know how the NAPA’s promoters and implementers are thinking about adapting to climate change.
Adaptation science
Adaptation is fundamentally about how societies live together with a changing climate. To be successful, we need to monitor the impact of climate change and improve technology. More importantly, we need to adapt institutions and political processes. This is because those affected by climate change depend on local social structures and politics. I was disappointed to find that the roundtable discussion was not sufficiently appreciative of the need to base adaptation responses on an understanding of the intertwined relationship between society and the environment. I raised this issue but received a very defensive answer: “we need to be serious on understanding the biophysical impact of climate change”. To adapt to climate change, we need as much a ‘science of society’ as a science of the biophysical dimensions of climate change.
Aid governance
Funding was at the centre of the roundtable discussion. Indeed, the main objective of the NAPA is to sell projects for accessing funds to address “urgent and immediate” adaptation needs. In 2001, the Seventh Conference of Parties of United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) made a decision whereby developed countries support Least Developed Countries (LDC) to prepare NAPAs and their implementation. Nepal’s NAPA identified nine areas under which projects are being developed to access the LDC fund. In addition to the LDC fund, Nepal has received funding from bilateral and multi-lateral donors too. One of the panel speakers made a quick calculation: “there is roughly 30 arab rupees that could be available for Nepal”.
Most projects were designed by a United Nations programme or other international agencies on Nepal’s behalf. It was not quite clear from the discussion what principles and criteria were followed for defining agency roles for project development, for accessing funds or for implementation. An official from the Ministry of Science, Technology and Environment (MoSTE) regretted that the lengthy bureaucratic procedure of donors and the Government of Nepal had created hurdles in timely accessing climate funds. As another participant highlighted, only a small part of the $20 million allocated for Nepal at the LDC fund has been accessed so far. A $7 million project has been submitted with the Department of Hydrology and Meteorology as the focal point. Another $5.2 million project was submitted for ecosystem-based adaptation. The MoSTE official said that there will soon be an attempt to access $12-13 million dollars. Already, a 14.6 million pounds sterling project called the ‘Nepal Climate Change Support Programme’ has been launched in 14 districts in the Far West and Mid-Western regions to develop and support Local Adaptation Plans of Action (LAPA). Besides these, the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank have developed a $110 million project called the ‘Strategic Programme on Climate Resilience.’
One participant pointed out that the adaptation programme cannot work well without critically addressing the prevailing aid culture. Another elaborated, “aid kills the local cadre base and encourages corruption”. Implicit in this point was a question of transparency and accountability in aid governance. Nepal’s climate change policy 2011 requires that at least 80 percent of the budget go to the community level. There were questions on whether this criterion is being met. Clearly, we need to learn from the past 60 years of aid management as we enter the new round of aid packages coming in as “climate finance”.
Projects
There was an hour devoted to sharing updates on planned and ongoing projects. This session was rife with language about ecosystem, glacial lake outburst, flash flood disasters and so on. These are risks that we need to act on. Activities for which budgets were asked for included monitoring the environment and finding technical responses. Obviously, a lot of thinking has gone into understanding the risk and designing adaptation action from a biophysical lens. I sensed that such technocratic approaches to climate change adaptation is going to create problems for society. Indeed, a community activist argued that community rights are already being compromised.
I also sensed that much of the project investment was related to developing plans and guidelines for adaptation. Over the past couple of years, hundreds of LAPAs and thousands of Community Adaptation Plans have been prepared. As one participant asked, “who is going to own the LAPA document?” Those implementing projects said that they have held discussions with many women and organised consultation meetings so the plans are fully locally owned. During the lunch break, participants talked more openly about progress on adaptation. One participant said to me, “there is no elected local government and all these plans are being made without local ownership. There is a possibility of the adaptation investment being wasted”.
Repoliticising adaptation
We must understand how climate adaptation processes are ‘situated’ in the ongoing political dynamics in Nepal. Studies from outside show that climate change can fuel social conflicts. So responding to climate change is fundamentally political. It appears that a strong apolitical and technocratic ‘community of practice’ has developed. This approach assumes that political institutions are working just fine and it is possible to design any kind of adaptation projects. Climate projects have also misused the notion of ‘participation’, which has been reduced to a rhetorical instrument to legitimise adaptation projects. It is now high time to allow politics to enter the climate adaptation debate. Politics is not just about what political parties do but how citizens exercise their fundamental freedom on matters concerning them.
“Views expressed here are personal and not associated with any affiliated organisations”.
Ojha is the Chairman and Co-Founder of Southasia Institute of Advanced Studies
Available at: http://www.ekantipur.com/the-kathmandu-post/2013/03/04/oped/misplaced-adaptation/245995.html
