World Water Week 2025 highlighted the role of “water for climate action”. The event concluded with a global call to prioritise water in climate and development agendas. The COP30 currently ongoing in Brazil has reinforced the role of water as the starting point for mitigation and adaptation emphasising the need for integrated water governance to strengthen community resilience.
Despite recurrent calls on the central role of water for climate and development goals, integrated approach to managing water resources is still merely a rhetoric repeated in policy documents. Likewise, many are marginalised when it comes to access to water and decision-making processes that affect their capacity to adapt.
Invaluable but declining springs
One of the water-climate-society interaction persistently missing in the global, regional, and national water agenda is “Springs”, an important yet ignored water resource in the Himalayan Region. In Nepal, springs are the primary source of water for drinking, household use, agriculture, and livestock, especially for the mid-hill communities. They sustain not only individual households but also entire ecosystems and local livelihoods. However, these invaluable sources are increasingly under pressure due to growing water demand, infrastructure development, land-use changes, and rainfall variability caused by climate change. The issue becomes particularly severe during dry seasons, affecting multiple communities dependent on springs and spring-fed streams for drinking water, irrigation, and other essential needs.
A 2021 study conducted in Nepal’s western hilly areas found that water flow has declined in over 70% of the region’s springs, with significant declines noted in the last 10 years. An alarmingdecline in spring discharge has also been observed in central Nepal. As an elderly woman in Sindhuli noted, “The discharge of the springs is now only one-third as compared to what it was a decade ago”. Such experiential knowledge of local hydrology, yet, is rarely counted as evidence in “scientific” studies and often subjugated in a technocratic approach to local development.
Uneven realities of declining springs
Amid growing climatic and non-climatic pressure and limited attention, a decline in spring discharge and the consequent reduction in river flow have adversely affected community relations, impacted water access, and threatened locallivelihoods. In the past, communities residing closer to water sources were relatively unconcerned about others accessing their springs. However, the sharp decline in springs has led to palpable regret over ancestral decisions. Many are reluctant to share spring water, viewing it as a necessary safeguard for their water rights and access.
Water conflicts, in some cases, escalated to the extent that downstream water supplies were cut off for weeks. Such a severe dispute hindered the execution of a fully funded drinking water supply project. In another case, more powerful downstream communities leveraged their socio-political networks and accessed more springs to expand and improve their drinking water supply services. These water supply extensions, however, came at the cost of upstream communities, who lost an entire cropping cycle, specifically the March Paddy.
In the midst of these ongoing changes, those socioeconomically and politically disadvantaged are primarily losing access to water and are increasingly vulnerable to compounded impacts of climatic and socioeconomic stresses. As a Dalit man recounted his experiences, “We lost access to the downhill kuwa after the land it was on was sold. The piped connection is costly. So, we started using water from uphill springs in the forest, but the spring water has significantly decreased, nearly running dry during the lean season”.
Adaptive responses and varying capacities
Paradoxically, one common strategy to adapt to declining springs involves tapping more spring sources, preferably located farther from local settlements. Communities that can afford the costs have adopted modern technologies to access water. Theinitiatives, such as river-water lifting projects, are also implemented with financial and technical support from theprovincial government. However, the operation and maintenance costs of such systems are high. Hence, communities still prefer traditional gravity-flow irrigation whenever possible. As a woman farmer remarked, “Lift irrigation costs NPR. 500 per hour; we use it only when our traditional canals do not have enough water to irrigate our farmland.”
Women now more widely contribute both cash and labour to the operation and maintenance of irrigation canals and water supply systems. The mandatory requirement of 33 percent women’srepresentation in user committees, along with the migration of male household members, has helped to increase women’s presence in community-based water user committees. However,decision-making power within these community institutions largely rests in the hands of a few influential men. Women and other marginalised groups continue to have limited influence in these processes that shape adaptive capacities.
Social inequalities also prevail in adaptive strategies such asgroundwater extraction. In addition to household investments, local governments have supported communities in digging wells to cope with the drying of springs. While such supports are intended for marginalised communities, the benefits of suchsporadic institutional support have mainly been confined to those privileged.
In contrast, water-strapped and poverty-ridden communities are often unaware of such institutional support. Moreover, these socio-culturally marginalised communities barely have an understanding of the bureaucratic processes involved in planned adaptation. They rely on the dwindling springs, which they believe can be rejuvenated into a reliable water supply.However, both the challenges they endured and theirperspectives on the potential solutions remain marginalised.
Enabling inclusive, integrated, and resilient climate action
Springs are undoubtedly central to life, livelihoods, and climate adaptation in the agrarian settings of Nepal. However, adaptive strategies have primarily focused on increasing water supply by tapping into more distant springs or implementing larger water projects, without considering their social, economic, and environmental impacts.
Nevertheless, there is an increasing interest in the conservation and revival of springs, as seen in national and municipal policies. Given the critical role springs play, it is urgent to translate these policies into tangible actions. In Sindhuli, for instance, the forest division has supported some community forest user groups in initiatives aimed at recharging springs. Similar pilot activities, although limited, have also been launched in other areas. These pilot projects for spring revival are important. However, more comprehensive efforts are neededto tackle the complex challenges of spring degradation and its varied impacts.
Efforts to conserve and rejuvenate springs should take into account the interconnected effects of both climatic and non-climatic drivers that impact these vital resources. Therefore, it is essential to improve coordination within and across differentsectors and levels of governance. Exploring and addressing gaps in existing institutional arrangements, in collaboration with localstakeholders, and through the exchange of traditional and expert knowledge, is a cornerstone for facilitating the much-needed coordination.
It is equally important to recognise the diversity within communities and understand how these differences shape their experiences, needs, and adaptive capacities. Acknowledging and addressing these differences is essential for strengthening the adaptive capacities of those most affected, as aimed by national climate policy, which requires that at least 80 percent of climate finance be allocated for community-level adaptation activities.
Such inclusive and integrated efforts to identify issues and collaboratively design and implement sustainable solutions can foster inclusive decision-making and equitable water access to co-existing diverse water users in dynamic agrarian settings. It is only through such concerted and sustained efforts that water can truly catalyse resilient climate actions on the ground.
Acknowledgements
This article is based on the findings of the recently initiatedaction research project “Muhan”, with evidence and insights also drawn from the authors’ previous research engagements.
The Muhan project is funded by the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research and led by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO). The Muhan project has adopted an interdisciplinary and participatory approach to broaden the understanding of the drivers of spring decline, their uneven impacts, and adaptive practices, and collaboratively address the declining spring issue and related socioenvironmental and policy implications.
The authors of this article are Researchers at the Southasia Institute of Advanced Studies (SIAS), Nepal. The authors thank Dr. Shahriar Wahid (CSIRO) and Dr. Hemant Ojha (the Australian National University) for their feedback on the draftversion of this article.
This blog article was first published at nepalpress.
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