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"Water is the primary medium through which the impacts of climate change are manifested. This book fleshes out the latest and contemporary science required to inform decision-making that spans from climate risk assessment to developing conducive policy measures in different socio-ecological zones for one of the most vulnerable regions in the world." – Mukand Babel, Professor at Asian Institute of Technology and David Molden - former DG of ICIMOD and former DDG of IWMI "The experiences, insights and key lessons drawn from ground-based experiences across the Asia-Pacific are essential for water professionals worldwide grappling with how to deliver water security in the face of climate change. The authors and editors have done a commendable job in bringing to life a set of diverse realities, and then drawing timely lessons for all of us". – David Molden This book takes stock of how climate change is impacting water security, across diverse socio-ecological zones and river basins in the region. It shows how interactions between climate, society, environment, and hydrology are exacerbating water insecurity. The book showcases emerging operational, management and policy responses, highlighting contextual lessons for securing the region's water future under changing climate. Chapters are written by researchers and practitioners engaged in a variety of socio-ecological zones, such as Himalayan springs, coastal cities, deltas, dry zones, wetlands, and Pacific islands, plus basin-scale analysis of the Yangtze, Murray-Darling and Lower Mekong. Through intersectoral analysis and a risk-focused approach, this book makes an important contribution to water management and climate resilience in the Asia-Pacific region and beyond. Hemant Ojha is Associate Professor, University of Canberra, and Principal Advisor, IFSD, Sydney. Nicholas Schofield is Professorial Fellow, University of NSW, and Director Global Future Research. Jeff Camkin is Adjunct Professor, University of Western Australia and founding Editor-in-Chief, World Water Policy Journal. .

AbstractNumerous scientific reports have established that the water future of humanity and the entire earth system is at risk. Solving contested water problems require new ways of harnessing dialogues, reflections, empathy, research, and visions. Too often, water policies and practices tend to take shortcuts, missing out on the benefits these powerful social learning processes can bring towards water justice and sustainability. This editorial presents a Water Policy Lab approach to initiate dialogue among those who are concerned with this dual crisis—of escalating water insecurity and knowledge not being linked well to water policy and practice.

The Community Forestry Program in Nepal is a global innovation in participatory environmental governance that encompasses well-defined policies, institutions, and practices. The program addresses the twin goals of forest conservation and poverty reduction. As more than 70 percent of Nepal's population depends on agriculture for their livelihood, community management of forests has been a critically important intervention. Through legislative developments and operational innovations over three decades, the program has evolved from a protection-oriented, conservation-focused agenda to a much more broad-based strategy for forest use, enterprise development, and livelihood improvement. By April 2009, one-third of Nepal�s population was participating in the program, directly managing more than one-fourth of Nepal�s forest area. The immediate livelihood benefits derived by rural households bolster strong collective action wherein local communities actively and sustainably manage forest resources. Community forests also became the source of diversified investment capital and raw material for new market-oriented livelihoods. Community forestry shows traits of political, financial, and ecological sustainability, including emergence of a strong legal and regulatory framework, and robust civil society institutions and networks. However, a continuing challenge is to ensure equitable distribution of benefits to women and marginalized groups. Lessons for replication emphasize experiential learning, establishment of a strong civil society network, flexible regulation to encourage diverse institutional modalities, and responsiveness of government and policymakers to a multistakeholder collaborative learning process. ; Non-PR ; IFPRI1; GRP4; DCA; 2020 ; DGO

In recent years, growing water insecurity in the Himalayan region has attracted new scientific research and fresh attention on policy. In this paper, we synthesize field research evidence from a sample of five Himalayan cities&mdash ; three in Nepal and two in the western Indian Himalayas&mdash ; on various forms of water insecurity and cities&rsquo ; responses to such challenges. We gathered evidence from a field research conducted in these cities between 2014 and 2018. We show how different types of Himalayan towns (mainly hilltop, foot hill, river side, touristic, and regional trading hub) are struggling to secure water for their residents and tourists, as well as for the wider urban economy. We found that even though the region receives significant amounts of precipitation in the form of snow and rainfall, it is facing increasing levels of water insecurity. Four of the five towns we studied are struggling to develop well-performing local institutions to manage water supply. Worse still, none of the cities have a robust system of water planning and governance to tackle the water challenges emerging from rapid urbanization and climate change. In the absence of a coordinated water planning agency, a complex mix of government, community, and private systems of water supply has emerged in the Himalayan towns across both Nepal and India. There is clearly a need for strengthening local governance capacity as well as down-scaling climate science to inform water planning at the city level.

Abstract Over the past decade, widespread concern has emerged over how environmental governance can be transformed to avoid impending catastrophes such as climate change, biodiversity loss, and livelihood insecurity. A variety of approaches have emerged, focusing on either politics, technological breakthrough, social movements, or macro-economic processes as the main drivers of change. In contrast, this paper presents theoretical insights about how systemic change in environmental governance can be triggered by critical and intellectually grounded social actors in specific contexts of environment and development. Conceptualising such actors as critical action intellectuals (CAI), we analyze how CAI emerge in specific socio-environmental contexts and contribute to systemic change in governance. CAI trigger transformative change by shifting policy discourse, generating alternative evidence, and challenging dominant policy assumptions, whilst aiming to empower marginalized groups. While CAI do not work in a vacuum, nor are the sole force in transformation, we nevertheless show that the praxis of CAI within fields of environmental governance has the potential to trigger transformation. We illustrate this through three cases of natural resource governance in Nepal, Nicaragua and Guatemala, and Kenya, where the authors themselves have engaged as CAI. We contribute to theorising the 'how' of transformation by showing the ways CAI praxis reshape fields of governance and catalyze transformation, distinct from, and at times complementary to, other dominant drivers such as social movements, macroeconomic processes or technological breakthroughs.

This paper demonstrates that a new crisis has emerged in the Himalayas in recent years, as five decades of well-intentioned policy responses failed to tackle escalating environment and development challenges. It then suggests some practical pathways for achieving what we term transformative resilience in the region. Our analysis draws on a critical review of literature, combined with individual co-authors' longstanding experience in the region in both research and policy arenas. We highlight how the neo-Malthusian Theory of Himalayan Degradation continues to shape simplistic responses to environment and development problems of a multi-faceted nature, in the vulnerable, complex and politicized contexts of the Himalayas. A key reason for this failure is an obsession with technical reasoning underpinned by the dominance of biophysical analyses of the problems, which have, in most cases, undermined the potential for emancipatory political transformations. The failure is visible in various ways: poverty remains, while environmental vulnerabilities have increased. Foreign aid has often been counter-productive and 'blue-print' development planning has been fragmented and dysfunctional. Likewise, livelihood opportunities and social capital have seriously eroded due to unprecedented political crises, out-migration, abandonment of productive mountain lands and unregulated remittance economies. We term this phenomenon a 'new Himalayan crisis'. In response, we argue for the need to open up a transformative agenda for integrating approaches to environment and development challenges, emphasizing an emancipatory multi-scalar politics that has the potential to open up sustainable pathways in the context of dynamic social and ecological changes in the Himalayas.

This working paper provides a summary of initial findings on the factors influencing how meso-level institutions in Nepal are responding to climate change and extreme climate events. Nepal is still experiencing difficult processes of transition from war to peace. Underlying these difficulties and central to a view of Nepal as a state with limited capabilities is the ongoing challenge to its legitimacy, the failure of the state to perform in terms of delivery of basic public goods and reduce poverty, all underpinned by the persistence of an old political elite based on old social hierarchies and practices leading to enduring patterns of social exclusion. Through a combination of landscape features characteristic of mountainous countries, a largely subsistence agrarian sector, high poverty levels, and limited government capability Nepal has been ranked as the fourth most at risk country according to one Climate Change Vulnerability Index. Natural disasters - especially landslides and droughts in the mountains and hills and floods in the Terai - accentuated by extreme weather events are argued to be likely to have a significant impact on agricultural production and livelihoods, especially for marginal locations farmed by the more food insecure households. Although there is talk of climate policy integration or climate mainstreaming with assumptions of government coherence this is far from reality. The state and government are internally complex and incoherent, and the institutional landscape around climate change is complex both at national and district levels. Nepal's mountainous landscape makes it difficult to make wide generalizations about climate change impacts, risks and effects. Related to this, effects of climate-linked disasters and change may often, although not always, be localized and of small scale with respect to human impact in the mountains and hills although not in the plains. But the absence of a political settlement and the weakness of the state, a significant presence and influence of donors juxtaposed against a dynamic and increasingly contentious civil society leads to an extremely complicated, often muddled and context specific institutional landscape at all levels The climate change agenda has made inroads into policy processes and into the programmes and activities of the Government of Nepal entities and several donor agencies and service providers. Despite political contention and conflict, climate policy seems to have been supported by relevant government agencies. A significant part has been concerned to localise the climate change and disaster agenda and the development of policies. These still need translation into detailed policy and programmatic instructions for the meso-level government institutions. But policy development on climate change and disaster risk is mainly dictated and driven by donor agencies, and there is less ownership across various levels of governments. In some cases, government officers at the district level are even not aware of the plans that they themselves endorsed – indicating a co-option in climate change and disaster planning by donor-funded organisations who are keen to legitimize their own work through these plans.

We reflect on methodologies to support integrated river basin planning for the Ayeyarwady Basin in Myanmar, and the Kamala Basin in Nepal, to which we contributed from 2017 to 2019. The principles of Integrated Water Resources Management have been promoted across states and regions with markedly different biophysical and political economic conditions. IWRM-based river basin planning is complex, resource intensive, and aspirational. It deserves scrutiny to improve process and outcome legitimacy. We focus on the value of co-production and deliberation in IWRM. Among our findings: (i) multi-stakeholder participation can be complicated by competition between actors for resources and legitimacy ; (ii) despite such challenges, multi-stakeholder deliberative approaches can empower actors and can be an effective means for co-producing knowledge ; (iii) tensions between (rational choice and co-productive) models of decision complicate participatory deliberative planning. Our experience suggests that a commitment to co-productive decision-making fosters socially legitimate IWRM outcomes.

Based on the review of relevant literature, this paper investigates how forest authority is produced or reproduced in the course of forest policy change, by drawing on the past four decades of participatory forest policy reform in Nepal. We analyze various waves of deliberative politics that emerged in different contexts related to the Himalayan crisis, the flow of international aid for conservation and development projects, civil conflict and democratic transition, and most recently the policy responses to climate change. The analysis shows how such deliberative politics contributed to the change or continuity of conventional authorities around forest policy and practice. It shows that despite notable participatory policy reform, the conventional authority has become further re-entrenched. Based on this analysis, we argue that efforts to understand forest policy change can be more meaningful if attention is paid to whether and how deliberative politics emerge to challenge the hegemonic claims to power and knowledge about resource governance practices. Such approach to policy analysis can open new possibilities for understanding democratic policy reform by explicating the nuances of deliberation and policy politics occurring at multiple scales.

Based on the review of relevant literature, this paper investigates how forest authority is produced or reproduced in the course of forest policy change, by drawing on the past four decades of participatory forest policy reform in Nepal. We analyze various waves of deliberative politics that emerged in different contexts related to the Himalayan crisis, the flow of international aid for conservation and development projects, civil conflict and democratic transition, and most recently the policy responses to climate change. The analysis shows how such deliberative politics contributed to the change or continuity of conventional authorities around forest policy and practice. It shows that despite notable participatory policy reform, the conventional authority has become further re-entrenched. Based on this analysis, we argue that efforts to understand forest policy change can be more meaningful if attention is paid to whether and how deliberative politics emerge to challenge the hegemonic claims to power and knowledge about resource governance practices. Such approach to policy analysis can open new possibilities for understanding democratic policy reform by explicating the nuances of deliberation and policy politics occurring at multiple scales.