The New Nation - Internet Edition

The Kanchenjunga conservation area

It was 10 years ago when the staffs of DNPWC and WWF Nepal who had gone for feasibility study in KCA were chased away by locals fearing that they would be removed from their land and restricted from using the natural resources which they had being doing for ages. Over the years, despite the various adversity and challenges, Kanchenjunga Conservation Area Project (KCAP) has managed to fulfill its objectives but even as we appreciate and applaud the effort the one of a kind protected area management practice and its impact on such conservation practice is yet to be evaluated.

Declared as "A Gift to the Earth (1997)",the

Kanchenjunga Conservation Area (KCA) is known for its rich biodiversity, its spectacular scenery of Mt Kanchenjunga (8,586m), and rich cultural heritage represented by the 5,254 inhabitants living within the four Village Development Committees (VDCs) of Lelep, Olangchungola, Tapethok and Yamphudin.

On March 22, 1998, with the technical and financial support from WWF Nepal, the Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation (DNPWC) launched the Kanchenjunga Conservation Area Project or KCAP. The aim was to conserve globally threatened wildlife species such as the snow leopard combined with local development activities like the promotion of health services, informal education, and income generating activities. The KCA also falls within the Sacred Himalayan Landscape, a landscape approach for biodiversity conservation and improving livelihoods in the Eastern Himalaya. Since 1998, WWF has invested US$ 1.5 million in KCA undertaking initiatives to conserve and protect the flora and fauna while also focusing on programs to improve livelihood, as well as educational and advocacy programs. In 2000, the Conservation Area Government Management Regulation was formulated while the territory of KCA was extended from 1,659sq.kms to 2.035sq.kms.

Ever since the initiation of KCAP, the local communities of Kanchenjunga have long expressed their eagerness to take on the responsibility of the conservation area. With this perspective the KCA Management Council (KCAMC) was formed in 2000 which was represented by all stakeholders from the seven Conservation Area User Committees, 44 User Groups, and 32 Mother Groups. The KCAMC in July 2004 submitted the Kanchenjunga Conservation Area Management Plan to the DNPWC. The goal of the management plan is that biodiversity of KCA is managed by local communities to ensure ecological integrity and bring socio-economic benefits. The management plan was approved by the Cabinet of the Government of Nepal on August 31, 2006.

On September 22, 2006, a formal handover of KCA to the local management council KCAMC was organized. Late Mr Gopal Rai, Minister of State for Forests and Soil Conservation, handed over a Certificate of Authority to late Mr. Dawa Tchering Sherpa, Chairperson of the management council, for the management of the conservation area at a ceremony. This ceremony was attended by international and national conservationists, government dignitaries, friends and supporters as well as national media. This historic step shows the commitment of the Government of Nepal towards the devolution of power to local communities, especially with regard to natural resources and equitable sharing of benefits.

The handover of Kanchenjunga Conservation Area (KCA) to the Kanchenjunga Conservation Area Management Council (KCAMC) was supposed to be remembered as a landmark in the history of biodiversity conservation of Nepal. However this was not to be. The following day, September 23, 2006 the helicopter ferrying the high level team including the Minister, conservationists and dignitaries crashed, killing all 20 passengers and 4 crew members few minutes after take-off.

But, despite the tragic loss, KCAP continues to undertake major strides forward under the able leadership of a new Chairman of KCAMC, Mr. Tsheten Dandu Sherpa. On December 14, 2006 a joint agreement was signed between KCAMC and DNPWC in Kathmandu to facilitate the management process of KCAMC. Similarly, KCAMC has also WWF Nepal has also signed an agreement with the KCAMC to support biodiversity conservation and sustainable community development programmes in the KCA. As per the agreement signed by Dr Ghana Shyam Gurung on behalf of WWF Nepal and Tsheten Dandu Sherpa, KCAMC Chairman, WWF Nepal will support eco-tourism promotion, access to basic community services, linking culture and religion with nature conservation and livelihood enhancement activities. Meanwhile, the global conservation organization will support the KCAMC for the next five years as part of the larger Sacred Himalayan Landscape.

"We are dedicated and committed to the sustainable management of resources in the KCA as envisaged by our colleagues who died in the region in a helicopter crash last year," said Chairman Sherpa. "We will make KCA a successful community managed conservation area." Since the handover of KCA for the period of five years, the local communities have begun to take responsibility for conservation and protection of the KCA. The management committee has been effective in controlling illegal trade of wildlife and forests and conservation of medicinal plants and its management as well as sustainable use has ensured improvement in livelihood of the local communities. Similarly, women and disadvantaged groups in the region have been provided income generating seminars and training programs which have resulted in increase awareness resulting in minimizing internal conflict amongst different groups within the conservation area. "With the communal harmony and unity amongst locals, the conservation effort has received huge boost in the region" states Badri Binod Dahal, Ranger of KCAP. He adds, "Women and user's group have begun to save money paving ways for a community owned banking scheme which has provided financial support for income generating programs as livestock rearing thereby assisting in improved livelihood of the local communities."

Similarly, under the Snow Leopard Conservation Program, an 'animal insurance scheme' has been developed by the locals to provide compensation to any villager whose livestock is killed by snow leopard. Under the scheme a villager rearing livestock pays NRs 55 per animal for a year. If the farmer's animal is killed by a snow leopard, he submits an application to the snow leopard committee who reviews and approves the application. Once the application is approved, the farmer is paid NRs 2500/-per animal. Hence, with the attraction of receiving compensation if the yak is killed by snow leopard, local farmers have stopped killing or chasing away snow leopard while conserving forests resulting in improved habitat of wildlife.

The project has also been successful in changing attitudes of locals on conservation of wildlife in KCA. Under the initiatives of the program specialist and subcommunities of KCAP, studies on snow leopard in participation of locals have begun. Under the initiative, locals are trained to monitor and track snow leopard by studying their pug marks, urine and fecal matter and taught how to estimate the number of such species in the region. Similarly, alternative income generation activities have resulted in many villagers who used to hunt wildlife for their parts have now given up hunting as a livelihood source as well as their hunting weapons.

Since the handover, the management council has initiated dialogue with the police and administration in the neighboring country, Tibet to control illegal trade of wildlife parts from the region after increased incidents of illegal hunting of wildlife and trade of medicinal plants by people of Tibetan origin from KCA. However, even though it is for a cabinet to decide about such agreement between two governments and which can only be signed by the designated people, Mr Chotten Dhonden Sherpa, Chairman of the KCAMC insists that if agreements are drawn which benefits the country, than anyone should be allowed to sign it.

The unforgettable accident at Ghunsa remains in the memory of the people of Ghunsa. But, with commitments from WWF Nepal and USAID/Nepal to the people of Kanchengjunga to mark this tragic loss into happiness, a 35 kilowatt micro-hydro power plant in the region with support from WWF Nepal and USAID/Nepal. The hydropower plant is being constructed in memory of the 24 conservationists and to commemorate the tragic loss. According to the Program Manager Bheshraj Oli, the microhydro plant would benefit more than 70 households of Ghunsa and Phalakhe. Electricity would be useful for cooking, space heating, and operating small machineries to support small cottage industries in that region. More so, the impact of the micro-hydro would be hugely beneficial to reduce the fuel wood demand in the region for cooking purpose as well as would also help meet the energy demand for the incoming tourists in the region. According to Ugan Manandhar, Energy Development Officer of WWF Nepal, WWF Nepal and USAID/Nepal will invest NRs 1,10,00,000 while the user groups will invest NRs 13 Lakhs for the project. Similarly, the local communities will contribute NRs 40 Lakhs in terms of labor while investing NRs 40,000 for the construction.

However, even though the KCA has been handed over the community, there is still a lot of work necessary to ensure that it is a successful and unique conservation area management practice. According to Kumar Mao, a teacher at the Kanchenjunga Lower Secondary School there is still a lot to be done to improve the living standard of the people of Kanchenjunga.

He adds "even as the local people have been handed out authority to develop rules and regulations to manage KCA, the program has not yet been effective in improving the standard of living of the locals." He also stressed that the lack of education amongst KCAMC members is a crucial factor and hence the programs must focus on improving capacities of the KCAMC members to make conservation efforts more effective.

Similarly, questions have also been put forward by conservationist on why KCAP is still not yet 'completely' handed over to KCAMC as well as question the lack of transparency. As per WWF Nepal's agreement with KCAMC states that they will work as technical partners while the finance is yet to be handed over to KCAMC. Hence, it is imperative for WWF Nepal to 'completely' handover the not only management responsibilities but also financial responsibility to the management council of KCA.

The group was on its way back from Taplejung, where they had handed over management of the Kanchenjunga conservation area to local communities. A Kanchenjunga Conservation Area Management Council (KCAMC) representing all communities had been set up. KCAMC chairman Dawa. Tsering Sherpa perished in the accident. This devolution of authority over a conservation area is a bold step. It is unfortunately a rather rare one, for much of the Indian subcontinent remains steeped in colonial notions of conservation that centralize all powers in the hands of a bureaucracy. In taking such a step, Nepal has shown that it intends to entrust biodiversity and natural resource management to communities who live closest to such resources, rather than rely on distant and continuously changing government officials.

Across the world, a new paradigm of conservation is spreading, one in which responsibility for wildlife protection and benefits of forests are shared with communities.

Two trends have emerged collaborative managed protected areas (CMPAs), in which governments and communities jointly manage conservation, and community conserved areas (CCAs), in which the predominant role is that of local people.In South America, over a fifth of the Amazon forests are now under indigenous protected areas, while in Canada, such areas cover seven million hectares.

In Australia, huge territories have been given back to aboriginal peoples, and many of these are now managed for conservation. In South Africa, portions of world-famous areas such as Kruger National Park have been handed back to communities from whom lands had once been snatched away by the apartheid government, but a negotiated deal keeps the area under conservation land use.

Across many European countries, complex arrangements between governments, local councils, and otherlocal bodies are managing hundreds of protected landscapes. In Zimbabwe and Namibia, communitymanaged conservancies; protect the continent's biggest fauna, with ecotourism benefits going to local people.

Change must be championed

Sunita Narain

Did the Nobel Prize committee make a mistake when it gave the 2007 Peace Prize to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and former us vice president Al Gore? I wonder. My disquiet is not because the prize recognized and put climate change at the centre of global debate. It stems from the fact that the Nobel Prize has held up, as champions, an organisation and individuals that are cautious, conservative and play strictly by the book when searching for answers to tackling climate change. There is nothing wrong in being so. Except that this is a time the world needs to re-invent what it means by growth and development. It needs hard answers for a crisis already hitting large parts of the poorest world, but created because of economic wealth and power.

Today, everyone is saying, indeed screaming, that we can 'deal' with climate change if we adopt measures such as energy efficiency and some new technologies. The message is simple: managing climate change will not hurt lifestyles or economic growth; a win-win situation where we will benefit from green technologies and new business. I do not mock this approach or undermine its proponents. But I do want to caution it is not so simple: the transition to a low-carbon economy is not just about technology but about re-distributing economic and ecological space. This change will hurt, as indeed climate change itself-variable weather events, destroying crops, are already hurting the most vulnerable and powerless.

I believe change will be difficult. It will require us to stand behind the tough measures society has to take. Let me share an experience from my own city: the introduction of a bus rapid transit system, brt, on a 15 km road in the heart of New Delhi, and the uproar around it.

Everybody agrees public transport is important. It is a policy prescription everybody believes will happen, as all good things do, without discord or disruption. Good idea, very win-win. But nobody says why, if it is so easy, cities of the rich world have never made the transition to mass rapid transport-bus, light or metro rail-and restricted the growth of private gas-guzzling cars. In fact, all evidence shows transport- and personal vehicle-related greenhouse gas emissions are galloping in the rich 'developed' world.Enter Delhi, where we are learning public transport is a homily which should not come home. The city government, after much deliberation, decided last year to build the first brt corridor. This system creates a central lane for buses to drive without obstruction, segregating the remaining road space between cars (two or three lanes), bicycles and pedestrians.Last week, the first stretch opened. It runs from Delhi's poorest areas to its poshest. It opened badly-traffic signals failed and there were long lines in the car and bike lanes. But these snags do not explain the intensity of emotions against BRT, as a concept. BRT has been plagued with bad media coverage. And educated people will tell you the idea is a mad one-how can buses run in the middle of the road, taking space away from cars? BRT reduces car space, and this is just not acceptable.

The fact is space has not been reduced; for once, it has been equitably allocated to the users of the road. In this stretch in my rich city (Delhi has the highest per capita income in the country), buses transport over 60 per cent of the commuters; cars and two-wheelers roughly 20 per cent. It is also clear that cars are growing so exponentially the city is running out of road space even as it builds new roads and new flyovers. The city already has over 21 per cent of its land area under roads and even as road length increased by over 20 per cent between 1996 and 2006, the number of cars increased by 132 per cent. It is no surprise the city is fighting congestion and air pollution. It is important to recognise that in Delhi, unlike many other cities where the system has been introduced, cars have already taken over road space. This scarce space has to be re-allocated, and this creates tension. There is no easy answer. My city is building a metro but knows it is too expensive to expand across its sprawl. Therefore, buses, cheaper and faster to introduce, are the most cost-effective and efficient answer to mobility. But buses must take part of that very road space that is already taken.

The fight is really on. Even as I write this, the chief minister, beleaguered by her colleagues, media opinion and opposition has shown political courage and decided not to scrap the project. What is strange, very strange, is that the proponents of public transport (as a good idea) have not stood up to fight for this idea as it is being implemented. Clearly, that would be rocking the boat and pushing too hard to make the change.

The world has similar intentions. It will find small answers (or no answers) to big problems. Biofuels-growing fuel, not food, on land to run the cars of the rich-is one such techno-fix. There has been no discussion on whether biofuels, already competing for land with food crops and raising prices, will indeed reduce emissions when vehicle numbers are increasing. With biofuels under criticism for raising food prices and depleting water resources, the next generation technical solution is on the cards-hybrid cars. I am not against either biofuels or hybrid cars. But I know these are small parts of the big change we need. We desperately need new champions who can push new approaches. Let us hope next time the Nobel Prize Committee will show not just wisdom, but also courage.

(The writer is the editor, Down To Earth magazine of the Centre for Science and Environment, New Delhi, India)

UK for carbon capture and storage in India

Mario D'Souza

Unable to cut down on its coal usage, it seems that the West is looking to burry its CO2 emissions underground. The British government, for example, has become zealous about the carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology. Its high commission in Delhi has already organized two workshops on the technology this year.

The point of CCS is to continue making CO2 but capture it, convert it into liquid by pressurizing, transport it over great distances, often across countries, and then inject it under pressure into the ground.

Aspects of the technology have been around for almost 60 years. For example, drinks are made fizzy by capturing carbon. But experts say that as an integrated technology, CCS is costly and fraught with risks.

The British government, however, holds up the technology as the key to energy security.

At the first workshop in January, the UK's High Commissioner, Richard Stagg highlighted that CCS could reduce emissions while enabling the use of coal for development. "The UK has become the first country to support CCS on a commercial scale.

We are keen to share our experiences with India," he said. At the second workshop in April, UK- based consultants Mott MacDonald released two studies on the financial aspects of ultra mega power plants (UMPPS) in the country, one of which recommends that new power stations in the country be equipped to use CCS at a later stage. At least nine UMPPS, each with a capacity of 4,000 mw are being planned for the country.

Debbbie Stockwell, spokesperson of the UK's department of environment, food and rural affairs says that the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) could mitigate the high capital costs of CCS. CDM is a tool under the Kyoto Protocol which allows developed countries to avoid the expense of cutting their emissions by paying developing countries for the technology to do the same-albeit less than what it would have paid at home. The inclusion of CCS as a project under CDM was discussed at the Bali climate change meet in December 2007 and is currently being negotiated.

Besides the British initiatives, studies have been conducted to gauge India's CO2 storage potential. A map showing potential storage sites is being developed by the International Energy Agency's Greenhouse Gas Research and Development Programme and is expected to be released shortly- Down To Earth has a preliminary draft of this map. Also in February, the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation signed an MOU with the Norwegian company StatOilHydro to explore possibilities of CCS and CDM projects in the country.

The Indian government hasn't committed itself to CCS yet. The science and technology minister Kapil Sibal says, "We support the research and development activities, but would like that all concerns raised about the technology be addressed before adopting it."

The concerns that Sibal speaks of are quite a few. Anand Patwardhan, executive director of the Technology Information, Forecasting and Assessment Council, a ministry of science and technology body, raises two of them. "First is the issue of priority.

Should we adopt CCS or invest in renewables and in efficient ways of burning coal?" he asks. Patwardhan also raises the issue of high costs of CCS. "The construction costs of a 500-mw power plant are likely to go up by us $300-400 if it has to be equipped with CCS facilities. Such a plant costs about half a billion dollars," he said.

Stockwell counters such criticism: "No single technology will deliver the emissions reductions needed to avoid climate change. The UK government is committed to renewables, energy efficiency and carbon abatement technologies, such as CCS". But there are other question marks over CCS. Anil Razdan, the secretary at the power ministry, raised one of them at the January meet. "To separate and capture the CO2 emitted by the power plant requires energy. This energy is derived from the power plant itself, thereby decreasing its efficiency. Estimates put this efficiency drop by about 10-15 per cent," he said.

In 2005, an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report concluded that the costs of electricity produced from a CCS- equipped power plant would be us $0.01-0.05 more per kilowatt hour. This would mean an increase in the per unit cost of electricity by almost 50 per cent. Stockwell said that variation in energy markets makes it difficult to estimate electricity costs.

"It is difficult to provide precise figures, given that the technology has not been demonstrated on a full-scale plant," she said.

As of now, no coal-fired power plant has been built with CCS technology. The FutureGen project in Mattoon, us, which by 2007 end, looked set to be the first plant to integrate all aspects of CCS, has run into trouble. Early this year, the us Department of Energy cancelled its funding for the project after the cost of the 275 mw plant doubled to us $1.8 billion.

So far CCS has been confined to small projects. But Stockwell believes that the technology will receive an impetus once it's included under CDM. Patwardhan says this would be easier said than done.

"I don't think we have any institution in the multilateral system that can spend that so much money on a single project. CCS is beyond the entire CDM market," he says.

Anand Rao, assistant professor at the Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai, who has researched CCS, raises another issue. "The storage site has to be monitored to ensure it is safe. This will escalate the already high costs of CCS."

The 2005 IPCC report pointed out that leakage from carbon leakage from geological formations could affect humans and contaminate groundwater. Rao says that, "Continuous leakage will partly negate the benefits of trapping CO2 underground. It will also be a waste of the energy and money spent to inject CO2 into the ground." He also says that "Storing CO2 underground raises liability issues similar to that of nuclear waste."

The issues get even more complicated because CO2 from one country will be stored in another or in international waters. There is no international regulatory framework pertaining to CCS yet.

(CSE/Down To Earth Feature Service)

The parallel economy of commons

Jonathan Rowe

Economists might see the problem right away-a kind of corollary of the problem they would see in Bali. Writers lacked a property right in their output and therefore a monetary "incentive" to activate their dormant mental assets. Wales was familiar with that lure; he was a refugee from the world of options trading and understood the role that incentives play in business. But instead he went in a different direction. He tried writing an entry himself (on option trading) and discovered it was like "handing in an essay at grad school." It just wasn't any fun, and the top-down corporate structure was the reason why. So Wales shifted gears. He abolished the expert peer-review panels and put informal teams of coordinators in their place. More important, he dropped the idea of assigning entries and let users write them on any topic they desired. Then these same users would check one another for accuracy and bias. A discussion page for each entry would provide a forum in which to hash these issues out and a written record that every user could retrace. In other words, Wales created-or rather, seeded-a social network instead of an economic mechanism in the conventional sense.

People were engaged not as profit seekers from the economics texts but as social beings who get a kick out of producing in this way. Within two weeks the project had generated more articles than it did in two years of the top-down model.

The result is Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia that now has almost 2 million articles in English and smaller numbers in about 250 other languages-for a total of almost 8 million articles. Nature magazine compared a sample of science articles from Wikipedia with corresponding ones in Britannica. It found that the difference in accuracy was "not particularly great." Technophiles attribute this social productivity to the magic of silicon chips and the Web. Tech leads and people follow. Yet in reality the Web is just a new venue for the same human capacity that found expression in the water temples of Bali. It is a long way from one to the other, in time as well as space. But in both the rice fields and on the Web, social structures and social norms are doing jobs- creating and managing resources that are held in common-that conventional economic wisdom says only monetary incentives and private property rights can do.

Moreover, both draw on a side of human nature that does not exist in the economics texts and that has fallen off the radar in western economic life. People are not supposed to produce something for nothing. They are not supposed to be able to manage a scarce resource without a regime of private property rights to keep them in line or else the edicts of an authoritarian state. They are not supposed to but they are-and with results that equal if not surpass those produced by the prevailing economic model.

The rice farmers on Bali are an example of a mode of local resource management that has worked for eons, from the alpine pastures of Switzerland to the irrigated rice fields of the northern Philippines. Today this model is reappearing in many precincts of the economy at large-from the revival of traditional main streets, public spaces, and community gardens to the resistance to the corporate enclosure of university research and the genetic substrate of material life. It is as though something latent in human nature is breaking through the concrete of the corporate economy and the bureaucratic state. The result is not just effective and generative use of the asset, but also a dividend in the form of social cohesion and trust that can be as important as the product itself. A new field called "behavioral economics" (a phrase that ought to be redundant but revealingly is not) has been rediscovering and giving empirical shape to this. Researchers have demonstrated, for example, that people seek fairness in economic dealings and not just their own gain.

They seek stability over the long term and not just a quick buck.

Such insights are not really news to most people. But recognition of them by at least a part of the economics profession helps put policies that derive from them into play in the high-level debate. In particular, it gives new legitimacy to the commons-a form of property that is neither the market nor the state, public nor private, but rather that people hold jointly and together rather than separately and apart. (See Box 10-1.) As governments look for models for conserving natural resources for the long haul, a large part of the answer could lie here.11

(Source: Worldwatch State of the World 2008. Jonathan Rowe is a fellow at the Tomales Bay Institute and is founding codirector of West Marin Commons volunteers.)