Proactive beats reactive in the struggle to adapt to Climate Change

UNDP (United Nations Development Programme) is calling on Government's and the private sector to 'work to break the cycle of disaster-risk-and-recovery that forces developing nations to take reactive – rather than proactive – approaches when bad weather hits.'

The case for this more strategic approach is made by Pradeep Kurukulasuriya, the UNDPs head of Climate Change adaptation, in an article this week. His appeal is for improved resilience, so that those who live and work on the front line of Climate Change are better prepared and protected from devastating events like floods, landslides, droughts and disease. Emergency aid is vital when disaster hits, but if we can prevent disasters from happening in the first place we can save millions of lives and billions of pounds. As UNDP say, better to be proactive than reactive. 

Resilience has long been a buzzword in Climate Change and Sustainability circles and it sits at the heart of project design for The Glacier Trust and our NGO partners in Nepal. This is why, in Nawalparasi, we have just agreed to extend our project work in the district of Deurali. 

Earlier this year we funded the construction of a new water supply system in Deurali to serve the mountain villages of Durlunga and Baseni. As ICIMOD's excellent new report details, water availability (or rather a lack of it when it is most needed) is one of the most severe impacts of Climate Change in this region of Nepal. The water supply system in Deurali is an effective way to mitigate against sudden droughts. It creates a steady flow of water to farmers who were previously reliant on increasingly erratic and unpredictable rainfall to nourish their crops. 

Providing a new water supply system is one thing and we are very proud of that achievement, but it is not enough to do this and then leave. Farmers need regular, year round support, so that they get the training they need to maximise the benefit the new water system will bring. They also need support to maintain the new system, to fix any teething problems and to make the small adjustments needed to ensure a steady flow. Training and support will be provided by Jindagi, HICODEF's project officer who leads our work in Deurali. He is young, energetic and incredibly knowledgeable. He will be delivering monthly Farmer Field Schools in three villages across Deurali, teaching farmers how to grow, transport, market and sell crops like tomatoes, cauliflower and chilli. He will oversee maintenance of the water supply system and coordinate with local cooperatives to establish market mechanisms for the farmers. We are blessed to have him on the team. 

The life of the farmer can be fragile and incredibly stressful. This is true in the U.K. and true in Nepal. The difference is that in Nepal, the poorest nation in Asia, crop failure can mean a very fast descent into severe food poverty. By funding projects that have an eye on the long term and on resilience, we can guard against sudden shocks and prevent crises before they happen. 

We need funds now to extend our work in Deurali into 2018 and beyond. Please visit our donate pages and support our work if you can. 

Jindagi (extreme right of shot) our HICODEF project officer in Nawalparasi, with Dinanath Bhandari, a TGT volunteer and Programme Coordinator at Practical Action Nepal, and local farmers at the site of the new water supply system in Durlunga Baseni. 

All about the base..line global average temperature

Philip James de Loutherbourg (1801) Madeley Wood Furnaces, Coalbrookdale, Wikicommons

In discussions like those held at the UN Climate Change conference in Paris in 2015, we talk about limiting the increase in global average temperatures to 2C. But 2C warmer than what?

We are aiming to keep global average temperature to less than 2C higher than the pre industrial global average temperature. Or, more simply the global average temperature at the point just before the industrial revolution began in earnest. That is the baseline.

But what if we're not going back far enough in time? What if the global average temperature in the late 1800's, which is the period current baselines come from, were already an increase on a true pre-industrial average?

Evidence strongly suggests that greenhouse gases were already changing the climate in the late 1800's; global average temperatures were already rising compared to say the early 1700s. So the baseline temperature we are using was probably already 0.2C warmer than the true 'pre industrial' global average.   

What this means for our present day emissions and warming targets is explored by Michael Mann and others in a new paper published by Nature.  

DFID set out their 2017/18 programme for Nepal

The UK Department for International Development set out the UK aid strategy for 2017/18 last week. The country profile summarising how planned budgets of £92m and £82m will be spent in 2017/18 and 2018/19 respectively can be downloaded here. 

More detail can be found on DFID's development tracker pages.

Here are DFID's headline deliverables: 

Paint the roads white

Innovate. Innovate. Innovate! Californians are painting their roads white to reflect the sun's rays and cool the city! What do you think?

Summer Newsletter and appeal

If you are signed up to our mailing list (physical mail that is, the sort that comes through a letterbox) you should have received a printed copy of our latest newsletter by now. If you have not received it, but would like a copy, please contact us with your postal address and we will get one out to you asap. 

Meanwhile, we have uploaded the stories to our blog pages, so you can read them right here: 

From the Co-Director
Profile - Padam Thada - our work in Newalparasi
Our work in Solukhumbo
Improving health and halting deforestation in Sankhuwasabha
Higher Education and the Periglacial Environment

Here is how you can help TGT to achieve even more in 2017/18:

Make a donation: Visit www.glaciertrust.org/donate
Join our team at Velo Birmingham: We have secured five places at this year's Velo Birmingham cycle ride, if you would like to join our team please register here. 
Spread the word: We are on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Please like, share and retweet our posts if helps us to reach more people. 
Volunteer: If you have any time to spare, we would your your help. Please get in touch with us to let us know about your skills and interests. 

From the Co-Director

Six months have passed since I took over from Jamie as the UK Co-Director of The Glacier Trust (TGT). I have been learning the ropes, meetings partners and supporters and exploring the history of our work. It has been fascinating and invigorating. I have also been planning. We have developed a business plan, a budget and a fundraising strategy to take us through to 2020. We know what we need to do, how we are going to do it and what is required to achieve our goals. Exciting times ahead. 

When I visited Nepal in February, I followed in the giant footsteps of our founder Robin. My overriding impression was that what TGT does, works. The successes are a huge tribute to Robin’s vision and hard work. So, when it comes to Climate Change adaptation, our future plans are quite simple, lets do more, lots more, of what works. We can reach more people, in more villages and offer tailored solutions to the challenges they face. 

We have excellent partners in Nepal, they work tirelessly and diligently, it has been a pleasure getting to know them in person and via our regular early morning Skype calls. With their expertise and your continued amazing support, we can enable thousands of families and dozens of villages to flourish. 

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This is an article from our Summer 2017 newsletter. If you would like to receive a hard copy of our newsletter, please get in touch with us via our contact pages. Thank you for your support. 

Profile - Padam Thaka - Our work in Newalparasi

This is Padam Thada, he is a young farmer living in Durlunga, a small village perched on a ridge, high up in the Siwalik mountains of southern Nepal. Padam was born in Durlunga and grew up with his siblings and friends. He rarely left the village and spent his days helping with the farming, attending as much school as possible and, just before sunset, playing volleyball on the village square. When he grew into an adult he decided that he needed to move away, not just from Durlunga, but from Nepal entirely. He emigrated to Kuala Lumpar, the capital of Malaysia, and spent six years working in a huge commercial bakery. Like many Nepalese who feel compelled to migrate, he lived a life of long hours, low wages and frugal living.  

After six years in Malaysia, Padam felt able to return to Durlunga. He was attracted home by the projects TGT are funding; word had spread. Over the last six years, we have supported 353  families across ten villages this region. We have trained farmers, constructed irrigation systems and rebuilt houses that were destroyed during the 2015 earthquakes. This all adds up to improved livelihood chances and has enabled young adults like Padam to see a future here.  

Padam is now a ‘lead farmer’ in Durlunga, an important role in village life. He is teaching, inspiring and motivating others. When we met him in February this year, he had already sold 200kg of tomatoes, 125kg of cauliflower and 130kg of cabbage at the local market. The income is helping his family to invest in new seeds and equipment for their farm. For other farmers we met, their new income streams help pay school fees for their children and grandchildren. 

Over the next two years, we plan to continue our support in Durlunga as part of a broad programme covering the villages of Satakun, Tandi, Baseni, Shyamgha and Dhababa. We will continue working with HICODEF, a local NGO who will run monthly farmer field schools and workshops to train 100 farmers a year. In addition, we will provide equipment for farmers to enable them to grow new cash crops on their land and maintain their new irrigation system. We need to keep supporting Padam and other young farmers in Nepal so that they can adapt their farming practices to the impacts of climate change and the demands of their local markets. With your support, we can literally keep villages like Durlunga alive. 

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This is an article from our Summer 2017 newsletter. If you would like to receive a hard copy of our newsletter, please get in touch with us via our contact pages. Thank you for your support. 

Our work in Solukhumbo

The extent of our impact in eastern Nepal continues to grow. One of TGT's greatest achievements has been the establishment of the Deusa Agro Forestry Resource Centre (DAFRC). The DAFRC is a collaboration between our partner NGO Eco Himal, the Deusa community and The Glacier Trust. It is now wholly owned by the community, is nearing financial self-sufficiency and is an exemplary model of what can be done to enable mountain communities to adapt to climate change. The AFRC provides numerous functions; it is a training school, a plant nursery, a centre for livestock breeding, an agriculture demonstration plot, an innovation centre and a community meeting space. 

The AFRC is quickly becoming a focal point for the community and we will continue to fund its development and expansion for the next two years. Since starting work in 2013, we know that 2,296 people have directly engaged with the AFRC’s services, that is around 47% of the population of Deusa. The aim is to increase this to 70% by 2020. In 2017/18, there are plans to establish satellite nurseries in neighbouring locations to improve access to seedlings and equipment. We will also support more training, further improvements to the AFRC building and greater innovation in agricultural methods.  

In tandem with the DAFRC, we fund a brand-new outreach programme covering Deusa and its neighbouring district Waku. Through our partners, Eco Himal, we employ Hari Kumar Kharki, an expert agricultural technician and educator. Hari travels, on foot, to farms right across the Deusa and Waku. His role, as an educator, is to introduce farmers to improved agricultural methods. He enables farmers to change the way they farm livestock and crops, so that their efforts are more profitable and more resilient to the impacts of climate change. This work is in its early stages, so far we have reached just over 1% of the farmers in Waku. By combining Hari’s work with the expansion of the DAFRC we plan to reach 25% of the Waku population by 2020, some 1,480 people.

Hari Kumar Kharki with colleagues from Eco Himal and Deusa ARFC in Solukhumbo. 

On our most recent visit we observed how interactive and two-way this educational process is. Hari learns and teaches simultaneously as he travels from farm to farm. His learnings from one farmer are transferred to others as he takes the lessons one farmer has learned from the introduction of a new crop or technique and passes it on to others; he is a pollinator. In addition, Hari is fed new ideas by senior staff at Eco Himal and experts like Richard Allen, our Nepal based co-director who visit Solukhumbo regularly. Working with Richard, colleagues at the AFRC and the Eco Himal team, Hari is currently helping farmers to experiment with hazelnuts and coffee in Deusa and Waku. We are confident that conditions are right in this region to grow both; if successful they could become highly profitable new income streams for the community. 

Syana Maya Rai and Kamala Rai in Deusa. Training at the TGT funded AFRC has enabled Syana and Kamala to introduce new crops on their farm. 

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This is an article from our Summer 2017 newsletter. If you would like to receive a hard copy of our newsletter, please get in touch with us via our contact pages. Thank you for your support. 

Improving health and halting deforestation in Sankhuwasabha

Sankhuwasabha is the most remote community we support, it is close to the Nepal/Tibet border at an altitude of approximately 4,000 metres. The two village districts we support, Chepuwa and Hatiya, are at least four days walk from the nearest road. Due to its remoteness and the severity of the winter weather, we can only reach this district in the summer months. 

Households here require year-round fuel to heat homes, warm water and cook food. Traditionally, families gather around an open hearth in their main living space. This causes two problems, firstly the smoke from the fire stays in the room escaping only through small cracks around doors and in the roof. The negative health effects are obvious, many people suffer from debilitating respiratory illnesses.

The environmental impacts are also profound. Chepuwa and Hatiya are located in the Makalu Barun National Park, home to the Red Panda and many other rare animal and plant species. Traditional open hearth fires are incredibly inefficient, it takes a lot of wood to keep the fire burning. This means that a lot of wood needs to be collected, leading to excessive deforestation. If nothing is done here deforestation will lead to the complete destruction of unique habitats and ecological systems.

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Red Panda. Source: Wikimedia Commons 

We have worked with our partners, Eco Himal, to find a solution that will work in this unique environment. In Spring 2017 thirty brand new cooking stoves were transported to Sankhuwasabha. They are being tested during the summer months in thirty homes across Chepuwa and Hatiya. The stoves, if they work, will bring three key benefits:

(1) Healthier homes, free from smoke thanks to the introduction of a chimney;
(2) Improved ecology, the stoves burn wood a lot more efficiently the amount of wood needed will therefore fall significantly – this will help preserve habitats and endangered animal and plant life;
(3) More time, it takes families a long time to collect wood for the hearth, with less wood needed family members (usually women and children) will have more time for other activities, including education.
 
Eco Himal will revisit Sankhuwasabha in the autumn to assess how the stoves are working and report back to us. We are keen to learn if the families are comfortable using their new improved stoves, if homes are indeed healthier and if there has been a decrease in deforesting activities. We hope to extend the pilot and help fund the installation of more stoves in the future.

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This is an article from our Summer 2017 newsletter. If you would like to receive a hard copy of our newsletter, please get in touch with us via our contact pages. Thank you for your support.