•Adaptation interventions may reinforce, redistribute or create new vulnerability.•Retrofitting adaptation into existing development agendas risks maladaptation.•Overcoming these challenges demands ...engaging more deeply with vulnerability contexts.•Real involvement of marginalised groups is required to improve use of climate finance.•Unless adaptation is rethought, transformation may also worsen vulnerability.
This paper critically reviews the outcomes of internationally-funded interventions aimed at climate change adaptation and vulnerability reduction. It highlights how some interventions inadvertently reinforce, redistribute or create new sources of vulnerability. Four mechanisms drive these maladaptive outcomes: (i) shallow understanding of the vulnerability context; (ii) inequitable stakeholder participation in both design and implementation; (iii) a retrofitting of adaptation into existing development agendas; and (iv) a lack of critical engagement with how ‘adaptation success’ is defined. Emerging literature shows potential avenues for overcoming the current failure of adaptation interventions to reduce vulnerability: first, shifting the terms of engagement between adaptation practitioners and the local populations participating in adaptation interventions; and second, expanding the understanding of ‘local’ vulnerability to encompass global contexts and drivers of vulnerability. An important lesson from past adaptation interventions is that within current adaptation cum development paradigms, inequitable terms of engagement with ‘vulnerable’ populations are reproduced and the multi-scalar processes driving vulnerability remain largely ignored. In particular, instead of designing projects to change the practices of marginalised populations, learning processes within organisations and with marginalised populations must be placed at the centre of adaptation objectives. We pose the question of whether scholarship and practice need to take a post-adaptation turn akin to post-development, by seeking a pluralism of ideas about adaptation while critically interrogating how these ideas form part of the politics of adaptation and potentially the processes (re)producing vulnerability. We caution that unless the politics of framing and of scale are explicitly tackled, transformational interventions risk having even more adverse effects on marginalised populations than current adaptation.
•We analyzed impacts of the COVID-19 lockdown on food and livelihood security in 16 villages in rural Himalayan India and Nepal.•Intensive qualitative enquiry reveals fear and uncertainty, food ...insecurity, and drastic reductions in livelihood opportunities.•However, diverse individual and collective responses, and a patchwork of policy support, have provided some basic security.•Local elected governments have played a critical role in coordinating responses and delivering social support.•Knowledge of vulnerability provides a foundation for analyzing the pandemic’s long-term impacts and recovery.
The global COVID-19 pandemic has brought unprecedented disruption to lives and livelihoods around the world. These disruptions have brought into sharp focus experiences of vulnerability but also, at times, evidence of resilience as people and institutions gear up to respond to the crisis. Drawing on intensive qualitative enquiry in 16 villages of Himalayan India and Nepal, this paper documents both dark and bright spots from the early days of the pandemic. We find intense experiences of fear and uncertainty, heightened food insecurity, and drastic reductions in livelihood opportunities. However, we also find a wide range of individual and collective responses as well as a patchwork of policy support mechanisms that have provided at least some measure of basic security. Local elected governments have played a critical role in coordinating responses and delivering social support, however the nature of their actions varies as a result of different institutional arrangements and state support systems in the two countries. Our findings highlight the changing nature of vulnerability in the present era, as demographic shifts, growing off-farm employment and dependence on remittances, and increasing market integration have all brought about new kinds of exposure to risk for rural populations in the context of the present disruption and beyond. Most importantly, our research shows the critical importance of strong systems of state support for protecting basic well-being in times of crises. Based on these findings, we argue that there is a need for greater knowledge of how local institutions work in tandem with a broader set of state support mechanisms to generate responses for urgent challenges; such knowledge holds the potential to develop governance systems that are better able to confront diverse shocks that households face, both now and in the future.
Nepal is going through a major socio-economic transition in rural areas and hence in forest management practices, leading to changes in and evolution of new forest-people relationships. Community ...forests are experiencing an ecological transition resulting a new pattern of growth, regeneration and diversity in forest composition. The ecological transition of forest corresponds to the shifting local collective actions in community forestry which are emerging from the new socio-economic dynamics in rural areas such as income-diversification, declining subsistence utilization of forest resources and outmigration of the rural population. However, these changes are highly differentiated and variable. The hilly areas are experiencing remarkable forest cover changes than in the lowlands of Terai. In this paper, we examine the evolving intersection between new forest transition and community collective action in Nepal. We draw our analysis on the comparative case study of four villages from three different ecological regions. Our findings show that the forest transition is not static, but a dynamic process shaped by diverse local and external factors. Further, declining utilization of forests for subsistence uses has led to a new dynamic in community collective action which has played a central role in driving forest transition. Community participation in forest management is also declining. Hence, we call for reconceptualizing local collective action in this changed context which can help revise forest policies and reimagine forest institutions that can better respond to the socio-economic changes of the mountain landscape and revitalize local collective actions.
•Nepal’s forests experiencing ecological changes.•Socio-economic changes in Nepal leading to shift in community collective action.•Interplay between forest transition and community collective action is discussed.•Community participation in forest management activities and utilization are declining.•Reimagining forest policies and institutions to respond these changes is urgent.
As developing countries around the world formulate policies to address climate change, concerns remain as to whether the voices of those most exposed to climate risk are represented in those ...policies. Developing countries face significant challenges for contextualizing global-scale scientific research into national political dynamics and downscaling global frameworks to sub-national levels, where the most affected are presumed to live. This article critiques the ways in which the politics of representation and climate science are framed and pursued in the process of climate policy development, and contributes to an understanding of the relative effectiveness of globally framed, generic policy mechanisms in vulnerable and politically volatile contexts. Based on this analysis, it also outlines opportunities for the possibility of improving climate policy processes to contest technocratic framing and generic international adaptation solutions. Policy relevance Nepal's position as one of the countries most at risk from climate change in the Himalayas has spurred significant international support to craft climate policy responses over the past few years. Focusing on the National Adaptation Programme of Action (NAPA) and the Climate Change Policy, this article examines the extent to which internationally and scientifically framed climate policy in Nepal recognizes the unfolding political mobilizations around the demand for a representative state and equitable adaptation to climate risks. This is particularly important in Nepal, where political unrest in the post-conflict transition after the end of the civil war in 2006 has focused around struggles over representation for those historically on the political margins. Arguing that vulnerability to climate risk is produced in conjunction with social and political conditions, and that not everyone in the same locality is equally vulnerable, we demonstrate the multi-faceted nature of the politics of representation for climate policy making in Nepal. However, so far, this policy making has primarily been shaped through a technocratic framing that avoids political contestations and downplays the demand for inclusive and deliberative processes. Based on this analysis, we identify the need for a flexible, contextually grounded, and multi-scalar approach to political representation while also emphasizing the need for downscaling climate science that can inform policy development and implementation to achieve fair and effective adaptation to climate change.
We provide an analytical contrast of the dynamics of secondary forest regeneration in Nepal and Peru framed by a set of common themes: land access, boundaries, territories, and rights, seemingly more ...secure in Nepal than Peru; processes of agrarian change and their consequences for forest-agriculture interactions and the role of secondary forest in the landscape, more marked in Peru, where San Martín is experiencing apparent agricultural intensification, than in Nepal; and finally processes of social differentiation that have consequences for different social groups, livelihood construction and their engagement with trees, common to both countries. These themes address the broader issue of the necessary conditions for secondary forest regeneration and the extent to which the rights and livelihood benefits of those actively managing it are secured.
Nepal's transition to federalism in 2015 involved a significant redistribution of authority across three levels of government, with a greater level of autonomy granted to provincial and local levels. ...We examine multi-scale climate policy and politics in Nepal, focusing on three elements that are important for policy development and implementation: (a) the authority to make decisions; (b) the knowledge and expertise to develop and implement policies; and (c) the ability to access and mobilize resources, primarily external funding, by government bodies at different levels. Our findings show that the newly decentralized local governments are constrained in their ability to develop and implement climate change-related policies and practical responses by a mismatch between the authority granted to them and existing institutional capabilities. These governmental bodies have limited opportunities to develop, access and mobilize knowledge of climate and development and financial resources, which are needed to put new policies into action. Based on this analysis, we argue that decentralization of governmental authority is not likely to produce effective climate policy outcomes if this mismatch remains unaddressed.
The ability of the provincial and local governments in federal Nepal to respond to climate change has been constrained by a pervasive mismatch between authority granted and institutional capabilities, in terms of opportunities to access and mobilize knowledge and financial resources.
The devolution of power is not adequate for effective climate change responses; rather, there is a need to strengthen the institutional capabilities and opportunities of the decentralized local governments to address climate change.
Formal allocation of authority is always blurred in practice, as agencies at different levels of governance engage in power struggles within and beyond formally delineated boundaries. This suggests the need for more operational clarity on policy implementation procedures.
There is a need for a clear exchange of knowledge and a flow of resources to the level where responsibilities lie to respond to climate change.
This paper investigates the ongoing reproduction crisis in Nepal. We utilize farmer context-specific actions of 'hanging in', 'stepping out' and 'stepping up' to unpack the pathways of de-activation, ...de-agrarianisation and re-agrarianisation in four spatially and socially differentiated landscapes. We detail a continuum of land use and labour use intensity, the microlevel variations and repertoires of actions in relation to landscape, shrinking farm sizes, labour shortages, forest expansion and increasing wildlife encroachment. The analysis focuses on specific landscape and social contexts and shows how smallholders are fine-tuning agricultural practices to meet subsistence needs. But account also must be taken of ecological variability and socially differentiated access to land to understand how households allocate labour between different land uses and between farm and off-farm activities. Household survival depends as much on the allocation of scarce labour resources as on that of scarce land. It suggests that household rather than just land has become a key unit of production.
The REDD+ literature in Nepal in its assessment of the likely impacts of REDD+ has paid little attention to the drivers behind the increasing forest cover and the changing role of forests in ...Nepalâs rural economy. This paper explores how changes in the agrarian economy in the Nepalese Mid-Hills have had locally specific effects on forest area, agricultural practices and ecosystem service (ES) provision and use. The contribution of agriculture to rural livelihoods has declined in many locations, and in parallel, the demands on community forests have changed. However, pockets of subsistence agriculture are likely to remain in the hills and these will remain dependent on forest-related ES provision. REDD+âs formulaic approach to forests and carbon sequestration fails to address the question of how forests in different contexts can support sustainable agriculture. The findings draw on field observation and interviews with officials and organisations, forest user groups, forest users and small-scale farmers in Dolakha and Chitwan districts.
This paper analyzes public discourse on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) as it is portrayed in the media and examines how this influences effective and equitable ...outcomes of REDD+ in Nepal. It draws on analysis of articles in three national newspapers and interviews with radio and newspaper journalists, governmental and non-governmental stakeholders, and technical experts. Findings show that REDD+ coverage has been limited in the Nepalese print media and overall reporting on REDD+ has declined over time. The discourse is currently dominated by a small number of experts and development project implementers who portray REDD+ optimistically as an opportunity to benefit from carbon markets, while contributing to sustainable forest management. There was limited representation of the interests and concerns of marginalized groups and local communities in the public debate, thus underplaying the complexities and challenges of REDD+ development and implementation in Nepal. While the absence of debate on potential negative impacts can be explained partly by the dominance of optimistic voices in the media, it was also attributed to journalists’ limited access to independent knowledge and understanding of the issue. The resulting lack of balanced information in the public domain could undermine both the effectiveness of REDD+ implementation and its equitable outcome.
At a time when many developing countries are preparing to implement REDD+, there is debate on the possible implications for existing community forestry (CF) governance. Drawing on a REDD+ pilot ...undertaken in Nepal, this paper seeks to investigate how REDD+ has been downscaled into the community forestry context and with what implications for CF governance. The analysis is guided by three research questions: how are the objectives and discourses underpinning REDD+ translated into actions at the local level; how do the proponents of REDD+ make the problems and solutions technical in order to design the interventions; and what are the implications of REDD+ design for CF governance and what changes in rules and practices on forest management might result from these? The study comprised a review of the pilot project documentation and field study. In-depth interviews, focused group discussions and observations were conducted with forest user groups both within and outside the REDD+ pilot area. Findings indicate that the pilot design and implementation was essentially to show that REDD+ could be implemented in CF and focused on developing a carbon monitoring mechanism which local people could be engaged in. The community forest user groups (CFUG) in the pilot sites have increased forest surveillance and tightened the rules regarding certain uses of forests. We argue that the technical and financial logic of REDD+ have had implications for CF governance, risks of co-opting local voices and has contributed to an ongoing commercialisation of community forests, at the cost of the livelihoods of the poorest people.
•Paper seeks to investigate how REDD+ has been downscaled into the community forestry context and with what implications for community forestry governance•Driven by the need to justify REDD+ in community forestry, interventions were directed to enhance carbon sequestration and rendering the complex social dimensions technical for interventions•These interventions have reinforced the ongoing changes in forest use values by local people towards commercialization and monetary benefits•Findings support the earlier studies suggesting that climate policy such as REDD+ can shift the control over forests from local to external actors undermining local benefits
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