Byline: Shahani
Singh - Photos credit: Credit: Utsav
Maden / ICIMOD
KAVREPALANCHOK
Bimala
Bajagain, a farmer and mother of three, wears a fading red kurta and
appears older than her age at 35. She offers us plates of salted guavas at the
porch of her quake-damaged house. By mid-day, October’s warm sun boils over
Kalchebesi village of Kavrepalanchok district. Bajagain insists we also savour
a plate of cucumbers.
“We managed to build our temporary shelter from
initial government funds and assistance from an INGO,” Bajagain shares, nodding
toward a small hovel constructed of corrugated steel, right beside her cow
shed.
“But this structure will have to be rebuilt for
winter – the steel heated up unbearably in the summer and now it will turn very
cold.”
Bajagain
plans to reinforce her shelter with plywood for insulation, which she will fund
with a loan from a local cooperative, and eventually pay with income from
selling her vegetables, if the water holds out.
“We have scarcity of water during the summer due to
erratic rainfall. This year, it poured torrentially for a day but halted for
the rest of the season.”
Rows
of bitter gourds hang from climbers suspended atop a wired roof. They look ripe
for picking, and Bajagain explains that mulching has helped her crops retain
moisture through dry spells, sustaining her income.
“It involves nothing more than digging a hole for
placing organic manure, sowing the seed and covering it with hay as a
protective layer,” she says. The
results are obvious: “I
had sown my bitter gourd seeds in February this year – six months on, I am
still harvesting, whereas last year, the manure dried quickly and the harvest
lasted only four months.”
Bajagain
says her income has nearly doubled compared to the year before, thanks to the
extra water. Donor funds for reconstruction still haven't been distributed by government, even eight months since the quake. The extra money from her increased harvest
of potatoes, tomatoes, cucumber and bitter gourd will be all she has to fund both the better winter shelter and support her children’s education.
Bajagain
may have high hopes, but she has good reason to remain concerned.
“The total annual rainfall in Kavrepalanchok is not
changing, and it is not projected to change,” says Laxmi Dutta Bhatta,
ecosystem management specialist at the International Center for Integrated
Mountain Development (ICIMOD) in Kathmandu. “It is the pattern of rainfall that is changing –
there are heavier, more intense downpours which lead to flooding. What we need
is sustainable rainfall that the soil can absorb and which re-charges the
ground water.”
Farmers
in the neighbouring village of Patlekhet have also found climate-smart ways to
adapt.
“Plastic ponds have greatly assisted the irrigation
needs of my home garden,” says Saraswati Dhital, a farmer who was helped by a
climate-smart project run by the Centre for Environmental and Agricultural
Policy Research, Extension and Development (CEAPRED), a local NGO.
Dhital’s
pond is lined with plastic sheeting. Waste-water from wash basins and excess
water from torrential downpours are channelled into a small plastic-lined pond
that irrigate Dhital’s turnips, cardamom, lemon and coriander. Saplings
are already starting to sprout.
Each
household in Patlekhet village has its own plastic-lined collection pond, while
a bigger community pond sits higher up the hill. Having a local irrigation
source means Saraswati
no longer has to hike to the next
hill for potable water; it’s a big time-saver.
“Our main intervention is for waste-water
management,” says Keshav Dutta Joshi, programme director, CEAPRED. “According to our research, a typical family that
grows vegetables using waste-water irrigation and keeps cattle can earn more than a migrant labourer working in
the Gulf.”
CEAPRED
aims to have a scientific basis to design and apply a well-packaged programme
for the entire mid-hill agro-ecological region of Nepal that will tell farmers
how much water can be harvested. It will even work out the amount of investment
required, the crops that can be grown and the amount of income that can be
earned. “But, we will need data from at least three
consecutive years of action research for this.” Joshi says.
Japan’s
Kochi Technology University (KTU) surveyed over a 1000 farmers in Nepal’s
western mid-hill agro-ecological zone. They found that vegetable production and
income could increase more than 30 per cent by simply deploying water-conservation
techniques like lining ponds
with plastic.
The
study expects plastic-pond technology to “…contribute to poverty reduction for smallholder farmers…and shall be a
promising technology not only in Nepal, but also many other developing
nations.”
It
seems mulching and water harvesting by using plastic ponds have a good basis
for scientific validity as adaptive practices against extreme weather. This
will also help alleviate poverty in the mid-hills region in Nepal.
Bajagain
is acutely aware that climate change and Nepal’s recent devastating earthquakes
means age-old farming methods are going to have to adapt to a new reality. “We need self-sufficient practices to help ourselves.
Mulching and plastic ponds have certainly helped us abate losses in the face of
unexpected weather and climate change.”
“My
crops would dry up and wilt in previous years,” she tells me calmly.
“Thankfully, such is not the case this year, given our financial struggles
after the quake.”
Link
to research from KTU: http://econpapers.repec.org/paper/kchwpaper/sdes-2015-18.htm
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