Download Ajaya Dixit - Ecosystems Services for Poverty Alleviation

Ecosystems, climate change and resilience in
Nepal’s rural-urban continuum
Ajaya Dixit
ESPA Meeting
26 and 27 November 2014
New Delhi
Physical context
Ecosystems
Changing rural urban
relationships
Climate change
Adaptation and resilience
Some questions
Concluding thoughts
Physical context
(FAO, 2014)
Meso-scale variation. Regions on the wind ward of
mountain ranges are wetter than those on leeward side
Micro-scale variation. Whether floor or hills of a single valley
get more rain at any one rainfall event is hard to predict
Ecosystems
River ecosystem
Elements:
• River channel
• Flood plain
• Land and land use types in the riparian area linked directly to river
water
• Human habitat, agricultural land, forest, grassland, wetland,
biodiversity- plants and animals)
Processes:
• Hydrologic (water production and distribution)
• Geological (erosion and sedimentation)
• Bio-chemical (disintegration and synthesis- nutrient recycling)
• Biological (conversion of water, nutrients and energy into food)
Processes link the elements in producing goods and services
River ecosystem types:
i.
•
•
ii.
•
•
Natural system:
Functions to satisfy all uses
Ecosystem integrity is maintained
Human engineered system:
Designed to satisfy irrigation, municipal and
industrial uses and non-consumptive (power
generation, flood control) uses
Enhanced gains for human welfare (generally
at the cost of environmental integrity)
Human engineered system
• Uni-dimensional and uni-directional) : focus on
enhancing provisioning services and to some extent
maintaining and/or enhancing regulating services
(dams, flood embankments, inter-basin water
transfer)
• Cultural and supporting services are either ignored
or compromised
• Social, economic and environmental costs are
externalized.
Knowledge: Human engineered ecosystem
• Hydraulics and river hydraulics understanding from different
geo-hydrological context.
• Limited empirical evidences on behavior of regional climate and
river systems.
• Over simplification of processes.
• Preponderance towards construction based (hardware)
solutions
• Non-structural alternatives not considered while designing
strategies.
• Data deficit: precipitation, river flow, sedimentation, river
bahavour, ecosystem service relationship
• Knowledge deficit in accounting and quantifying supporting,
regulating and cultural services.
Indeed a Mosaic but Fluid Mosaic
Provisioning
Regulating
Cultural
Agricultural land (20 % total
area) 8.58 million metric tons of
cereal,
employs
66
%
population.
Mountains condensation
of vapour in water-bearing
winds 1,857 mm of rainfall:
80 % in four summer
months.
Safaris, trekking and
mountaineering, and white water
rafting, canoeing, bungee jumping,
paragliding, and mountain cycling).
Forests (timber, fodder forage).
109 m3 spatial
6,000 rivers, 225*
and temporal variations.
FMIS 75 % irrigated land.
Bio mass meets fuel needs of
65.6 % households.
Hydropower
708.519
MW;
4218.135 Gwh, 22 MW small
scale 48 Gwh of energy
Solar home systems produce
1.23 MW
268,464 biogas plants serve
over 225,000 households.
Exploitable minerals include
limestone, copper and zinc.
Stones, boulders and sand are
mined and used.
2,000 plants known to have
medicinal properties
Forests, grasslands, and
water bodies modulate
temperature and wind
patterns: produce microclimates.
Micro level forests,
grasslands, and leaf litters
support the recharge of
aquifers, local surface and
groundwater systems.
Both
traditional
and
modern hydro structures
regulate flowing water.
5,358 lakes, of
glacial lakes 2,323
which
Vegetation, together with
soil-building processes,
provides a buffer against
disturbances caused by
natural and human forces.
Capacity is being eroded
by
the
haphazard
construction of roads,
urbanization.
Hindu temples, shrines and
Buddhists monasteries
8.03 million tourists supported
hotels, restaurants, travel and
trekking agencies, and other
related service sectors.
About 553,500 people were directly
employed in the tourism sector and
tourism generated USD 356.73
million as revenue for the state
exchequer. Tourism and travel
trade accounted for 4.3 per cent of
the GDP.
IKLP drinking water, irrigation,
housing, bridge building, milling,
trails, forest use, natural resources
and agro-systems, Sources of
resilience.
Supporting
Ponds in hills recharge
springs.
Estimated to be 8.8 X 109
m3. The recharge rate
varies from 11,598 x 106
to 14,300 x 106 m3.
Sediment yield rate, about
472 x 106 m3/year fine
sediment deposited on
flood plains maintains soil
fertility.
.
Wetlands support a wide
variety of plants and
animals and are a means
of livelihood for many
people. In the Tarai,
fishing occurs on 14 per
cent of wetlands and
animal grazing on 70 per
cent.
Wetlands help moderate
flood peaks too.
Changing rural urban relationship
Next 15 years, 60 per cent of the world’s people will
live in cities, most of them in Asia! .
Homo sapiens becoming Homo sapiens urbanus
Total urban population 58
municipalities4,523,820(17%)
Municipality numbers- 130
(in recent times 72 added )
Total population of
Kathmandu Valley2,517,235 (Kathmandu,
Lalitpur & Bhaktapur
districts) (CBS, 2011)
Penetration of rural and urban systems
DST (2008)
Tamrakar (2003).
Dixit et. al (2013)
Imports of cereal foods doubled during fiscal year
2009/10 compared to 2008/2009.
(Rs 4.19 billion from Rs 2.2 billion during the period).
Climate Change
IPCC
IPCC
Climate change: Scenario for Nepal
Rara
Solutionsheds
Floods, storms, drought mitigation – up to thresholds
Water availability, access, disease control
Who benefits, who decides, who is represented
o Impact of temperature rise has not been seriously
examined
o Just not temperature but heat
Heat includes humidity
Humidity a factor in metabolic cooling processes
Temperature
Humidity
Precipitation
Temperature regime Nepal
Historical records
Temperature rise in hills of central Nepal about 0.060
C/annum.
Higher temperature most certain of projection outputs:
Rise in mean temperature in 2090 CE could be
4.7o C (NCVST, 2009)
Extreme
Base
Increase by %
Scenario Year
hot days
hottest 5% of days/nights:
1970-1999
70
2090
Hot nights
as high as
93
Local experience: days and nights becoming hotter
A recent ISET study in Gorakhpur, India (McClune et al
forthcoming) highlights heat as an emerging issue for
the poor households:
Cannot escape it
• Worked with National Centre for Atmospheric
Research (NCAR) to explore what might be the
future of heat
• Used the 37° body temperature threshold
Gorakhpur: Change in heat days
Number of days in Gorakhpur above 37˚C
South Asia –
heat days above 370 C
Provisioning
Agriculture.
Forests
forage.
fodder
and
%
with
reliable,
affordable,
green
24/7 energy
Plants with medicinal
properties
and
livelihood
?
?
Regulating
Cultural
Temperature
modulating role
?
?
Supporting
?
?
?
?
Heat problem arenas have major challenges
What temperature threshold forces humans into actions that they take
to save themselves from the extreme heat?
Solutions are partly technical, social, economic and political
– and don’t yet exist
New strategies needed: how, who, where
Adaptation and resilience
• For many impacts we can build on elements of technology and
social organizations that are placed to build resilience or adapt
• For heat, human threshold is fairly sharp, active cooling essential
response.
• Implications on energy, technological choice, economic pathways,
access and equity issues
• Adds yet one more tough layer on already tough current
challenges.
Existing challenges
Brooks et al. (2011)
NCVST (2009)
Dealing with attribution
Developmentadaptation continuum
What is the
additionality?
Linking planned
and autonomous
adaptation
Climate Resilience Framework (CRF)
ISET (2009) Dixit and Khadga, 2013)
Systems
Resilience
characteristics
Flexibility
diversity
and
Redundancy
modularity
and
Agents
Institutions
Resourceful
Recognition
of
access rights and
entitlements
Responsive
Ability to learn
Fail safe
Decision
making
processes
follow
principles of good
governance
Transparent
information flows
Able to apply new
knowledge
Questions

Which ecosystems and services are most vulnerable,
and what does their interdependence with larger
systems tell us about their current vulnerability?

Which individuals, households, communities, and
institutions are likely to be more vulnerable?

How will climate change (temperature, moisture
change, heat) affect the services, the interdependence
and those dependent on the services and change
vulnerability?

How can resilience of natural and human built
systems enhanced so that people are better
prepared to deal with the stresses that climate
change may engender?

Who should be involved in the process of building
resilience and how?
Few concluding thoughts
• Climate change creates new stress in the wellbeing journey:
adds to governance deficit, lowers development and poverty
alleviation gains.
• If adaptation is planned responses to specific projected
impacts, then specific climate-targeted responses required.
• If adaptation an ongoing process within complex evolving
systems, then approaches that address points of
vulnerability within the Fluid Mosaic needed.
• Approach: pluralistic, incremental and reflective.
Thank you
[email protected]
www.isetnepal.np