scholarly journals Climate Change and its Increasing Impacts in Nepal

1970 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
pp. 30-37 ◽  
Author(s):  
Madhav Karki ◽  
Pradip Mool ◽  
Arun Shrestha

There is a general agreement that Climate Change impacting Nepal rather disproportionately compared to its size and its own meagre contribution of the green house gases. However, given its location between two rapidly growing economies of India and China, Nepal cannot escape the rapidly increasing influence of climate and global changes. The rapidly retreating glaciers (average retreat of more than 30 m/year), rapid rise in temperature (>0.06°C), erratic rainfalls and increase in frequency of extreme events such as floods and drought like situation are some of the effects Nepal is facing during the last few years. Most of the big rivers of Nepal are glacier-fed and its main resources of water and hydroelectricity will be seriously affected due to the ongoing changes in glacier reserves, snowfall and natural hazards. Nepal has to prepare itself to try and mitigate these effects if possible and if not adapt to them to reduce their impacts on our lives and livelihoods. Nepal is largely a mountainous country and current indications are that the mountain regions are more vulnerable due to increased warming trends as well as extreme changes in altitude over small distances. These alarming trends not only make Nepal's major sectors of economy such as agriculture, tourism and energy more vulnerable but also endanger the health, safety and wellbeing of Nepali people. Biodiversity - the other important resources of Nepal is also being affected as invasive species will spread fast and useful medicinal, food and nutrition related plants may disappear. Climate change is becoming already dangerous to our survival and we have to do everything possible to prevent it being catastrophic to us. The globally accepted strategy to contain disastrous climate change impacts is Adaptation and Mitigation. For a least developed country such as Nepal, adaptation should be the priority. Nepal is currently preparing National Action Plan on Adaptation (NAPA) which should be made as comprehensive and topical as possible. Well coordinated, quick and serious implementation of NAPA will be extremely important to mitigate and adapt to the growing impacts of climate change in Nepal. Nepal's central location in the Himalaya portends the fact that it is the prime target country of climate change impacts and calls for it to play a leadership role at least in showing political will and playing a responsible role in global events such as the COP-15 at Copenhagen.   DOI: 10.3126/init.v3i0.2425 The Initiation Vol.3 2009 p.30-37

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 245-257
Author(s):  
Vikram S. Negi ◽  
Shinny Thakur ◽  
Rupesh Dhyani ◽  
Indra D. Bhatt ◽  
Ranbeer S. Rawal

AbstractMountains are important global sites for monitoring biological and socioecological responses to climate change, and the Himalaya has some of the world’s most rapid and visible signs of climate change. The increased frequency and severity of climate anomalies in the region are expected to significantly affect livelihoods of indigenous communities in the region. This study documents the perceptions of indigenous communities of climate change in the western Himalaya of India. The study highlights the power of knowledge and understanding available to indigenous people as they observe and respond to climate change impacts. We conducted a field-based study in 14 villages that represent diverse socioecological features along an altitudinal range of 1000–3800 m MSL in the western Himalaya. Among the sampled population, most of the respondents (>95%) agreed that climate is changing. However, people residing at low- and high-altitude villages differ significantly in their perception, with more people at high altitudes believing in an overall warming trend. Instrumental temperature and rainfall from nearby meteorological stations also supported the perception of local inhabitants. The climate change perceptions in the region were largely determined by sociodemographic variables such as age, gender, and income as well as altitude. A logistic regression, which exhibited significant association of sociodemographic characteristics with climate change perceptions, further supported these findings. The study concluded that the climate change observations of local communities can be usefully utilized to develop adaptation strategies and mitigation planning in the Himalayan region.


Author(s):  
B. K. Khanna

Strategies for mitigating climate change impact on the vulnerable Lakshadweep coral islands have been drawn up in accordance with the principles, guidelines and strategies laid down in the Indian National Action Plan on Climate Change (NAPCC). The region most vulnerable to inundation from accelerated sea level rise (at least 40 cm by 2100) is the Lakshadweep archipelago. The first section of the chapter reviews the origin and geophysical features, climate profile, sectoral impact of climate change and vulnerabilities of Lakshdweep. The second section deals with climate change strategies and their adaptation, recommending appropriate actions for coping strategies to be adopted by local communities to be resilient against the adverse impacts of climate change. The third section outlines the Lakshadweep Action Plan for Climate Change (LAPCC) and the fourth section describes integrating LAPCC within the NAPCC, successes and challenges ahead. For small islands it is a notable case study to emulate, mitigating the effects of climate change while not deviating from development goals.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Birte-Marie Ehlers ◽  
Frank Janssen ◽  
Janna Abalichin

<p>The “German Strategy for Adaption to Climate Change” (DAS) has been established as the political framework to climate change adaption in Germany. One task of the “Adaption Action Plan of the DAS” is the installation of a permanent service of seamless climate prediction. The pilot project “Projection Service for Waterways and Shipping” (ProWaS) prepares an operational forecasting and projection service for climate, extreme weather and coastal and inland waterbodies. The target region is the North Sea and Baltic Sea with focus on the German coastal region and its estuaries.</p><p>ProWaS provides regional model setups for the North and Baltic Seas. To figure out technical issues and to validate the model setups, 20-year hindcast simulations forced with a regional reanalysis (COSMO-REA6 (Bollmeyer et al., 2015)) were carried out.</p><p>These simulations are used as basis for sensitivity studies with reference to global change scenarios. To evaluate the effect of global changes on the coastal regions especially in the North and Baltic Seas, model studies regarding global sea level rise, changes in global ocean and air temperature, changes in global salinity and changes of the regional river runoffs have been performed. Therefore, boundary conditions of a hindcast simulation are adapted to different change conditions and sensitivity studies for different periods have been carried out. First results of these investigations on model sensitivity studies are presented. These results will be used as a basis for further development of climate projection models.</p>


2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (8) ◽  
pp. 2423-2435 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sabuj Bhattacharyya ◽  
Ninad Avinash Mungi ◽  
Takeo Kawamichi ◽  
Gopal Singh Rawat ◽  
Bhupendra Singh Adhikari ◽  
...  

Author(s):  
Nguyen Kim Loi

With the changes in climatic, biophysical, socio-cultural, economic, and technological components, paradigm shifts in natural resources management are unavoidably and have to be adapted/modified to harmonize with the global changes and the local communities’ needs. This chapter focuses on sustainable land use and watershed management in response to climate change impacts. The first part covers some definitions and background on sustainable land use, watershed management approach, and sustainable watershed management. The second part describes the use of the Geographic Information System (GIS) and Spatial Decision Support System (SDSS) model focusing on the framework for a planning and decision making, computer-based system for supporting spatial decisions. The mathematical programming has been reviewed focusing on optimization algorithms that include optimization modeling and simulation modeling for decision making. Finally, the example of methodology development for sustainable land use and watershed management in response to climate change in Dong Nai watershed, Vietnam is presented.


2013 ◽  
pp. 2080-2101
Author(s):  
Nguyen Kim Loi

With the changes in climatic, biophysical, socio-cultural, economic, and technological components, paradigm shifts in natural resources management are unavoidably and have to be adapted/modified to harmonize with the global changes and the local communities’ needs. This chapter focuses on sustainable land use and watershed management in response to climate change impacts. The first part covers some definitions and background on sustainable land use, watershed management approach, and sustainable watershed management. The second part describes the use of the Geographic Information System (GIS) and Spatial Decision Support System (SDSS) model focusing on the framework for a planning and decision making, computer-based system for supporting spatial decisions. The mathematical programming has been reviewed focusing on optimization algorithms that include optimization modeling and simulation modeling for decision making. Finally, the example of methodology development for sustainable land use and watershed management in response to climate change in Dong Nai watershed, Vietnam is presented.


Author(s):  
Eric Kemp-Benedict ◽  
Sivan Kartha

There is a fairly broad consensus among both the philosophers who write about climate change and the majority of the climate-policy community that efforts to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions—“mitigation” in the jargon—should not harm the ability of poor countries to grow economically and to reduce as rapidly as possible the widespread poverty their citizens suffer. Indeed, this principle of a “right to development” has been substantially embraced in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) itself. Yet as the evidence of the risks from climate change has continued to mount and calls have grown for more stringent mitigation targets, the need to give substance to this right has come into conflict with the evident unwillingness of already “developed” countries to pay the costs of adequately precautionary mitigation. The long and the short of it is that almost any reasonable ethical principles lead to the conclusion that, as Henry Shue (1999) put it straightforwardly, “the costs [of mitigation] should initially be borne by the wealthy industrialized states.” In the words of the UNFCCC, “the developed country Parties should take the lead in combating climate change and the adverse effects thereof,” and this point is embodied in practical terms in the Kyoto Protocol itself, in which only the 40 developed “Annex I” countries have binding emissions limits. Yet particularly because of the rejection of Kyoto by the United States but also because of the weak efforts at mitigation that have taken place so far in Europe, Japan, and other industrialized countries, we find ourselves in a situation in which precaution requires that emissions be reduced extremely soon in poor countries, too, but the rich countries can’t yet be said to have fulfilled their obligations to “take the lead.” The delay in taking action so far, the increasing evidence of current climate-change impacts and greater risks than previously estimated, and the speed with which we must now move all imply substantially greater costs for adequately precautionary action than were previously estimated.


2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 111-123
Author(s):  
Tahmina Hadi

Water sector is crucial to sustainable development. It sustains the natural resources, livelihood of the people and facilitates to operate economic activities of the country. Currently, the water sector of Bangladesh is under severe threats particularly due to impacts of climate change. The Fourth Assessment Report of International Panel on climate change confirms that the water sector will be one of the most vulnerable sectors to climate change. Climate change impacts are being manifested in the form of extreme climatic events and sea-level rise followed by salinity intrusion into the groundwater and wetlands. The Government of Bangladesh has formulated policies to address the climate-induced water vulnerabilities. However, the existing policies are heavily leaned towards strategising adaptation options to address short-run climate-induced water vulnerabilities. Implementation of long-term approaches to combating climate change require laying groundwork which include extensive research on determining the future impacts of climate change on water resources. The article aims to assess some of the major policies, including National Water Policy, Bangladesh Climate Change Strategy and Action Plan, National Strategy for Water Sanitation and Hygiene, The National Sustainable Development Strategy, National Adaptation Programme of Action and Bangladesh Delta Plan 2100, through the lens of climate change to determine that up to what extent these policies have addressed the climate-induced water vulnerabilities. The article has recommended to emphasise on conducting a comprehensive research with proper institutional setup on the long-run impacts of climate change on water resources and undertake subsequent water adaptation strategies to address the water-related problems.


Author(s):  
Ei Thinzar Min ◽  
Nay Pyi Taw

Myanmar is an agricultural based country and 70% of total population is relied on Agricultural sector. On the other hand, Agricultural sector is affected by climate changes especially in the Costal and Delta Regions of Myanmar. Besides, Myanmar is currently transforming towards the democratic nations and the government is supporting to upgrade Agricultural Sector not only for local farmer but also throughout the country. There can be found that the lack of education, training and seminar, technological knowledge, modern technologies, inadequate modern farming methods and insufficient infrastructure respectively. If Government can provide effectively agricultural techniques, modern technologies and climate change policies on the challenges and difficulties, it will surely become a developed country within a short period.


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