Credit: Anu Manandhar
In the framework of the International Day of Rural Women and the Global Day of Action for Food Sovereignty, we had the opportunity to learn more about Anu Manandhar, her work and community in Balaju Height, a residential area of Kathmandu, Nepal.
Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal, is located in the subtropical region and has a temperate climate. The hottest time of the year is June with an average temperature of 30°C, and the coldest time of the year is January with an average temperature of 15°C. Anu says: “Our country is mostly mountainous, consisting of many glaciers and glacier lakes. With global warming our snow is melting faster resulting in avalanches, rapid melting of glaciers, and extreme flooding caused by glacial lake outbursts”.
About 30 percent of Nepal’s land is used for agriculture. Most farmers practice subsistence agriculture with traditional farming techniques, guided by the timing of the monsoon seasons. However, with the climate crisis, Anu shares that “soil erosion, flash floods, landslides, wildfires and droughts in all parts of the country have become a common occurrence. Nepal’s most expensive water supply project was washed away, forests and biodiversity have been lost due to wildfires, agricultural yield has been reduced due to droughts, and new viruses are emerging causing risks to human health and livelihoods”. For smallholder farmers, this has meant crop failures, reduced water availability and production losses, resulting in food insecurity.
Anu says that where she lives, Balaju Height, is a residential area that has recently been developed. It is very peaceful, pollution-free and the main economic activity of the population is subsistence farming. It is close to a national park, lush and green, with no trace of the impacts of climate change. However, in other areas of the country, which are being affected by climate change, there is a lack of environmental and climate awareness. For example, the Kathmandu Valley is characterized by pastoral landscapes, steep slopes carved with stratified terraces, formed through centuries of agricultural work by small farmers, closely linked to ancestral traditions of local communities. But with the passage of time and given the impacts of climate change, during monsoon periods, the risk of landslides in the Kathmandu Valley is always imminent, sweeping away farmland and homes.
Credit: Anu Manandhar
There are some NGOs conducting awareness programmes, where the issue of climate change is often discussed within different groups and communities. Serious work is being done at the government level: “the community forestry programs initiated in Nepal have been widely acclaimed as the most successful approach for participatory forest management and its governance. The success is described in terms of improving the supply of forest products, generating green employment, improving rural livelihoods, empowering women, poor and disadvantaged groups, rehabilitating degraded land and habitat and also increasing biodiversity. There are over 11,000 forest user groups”, says Anu. Furthermore, the government has also been especially strict on its conservation policies: 23% of the country has been declared protected areas (national parks, buffer zones, conservation areas, wildlife reserve, ramsar sites, etc). Furthermore, in the last UNFCCC COP26 Nepal’s goverment made a commitment to increase the country’s forest coverage to 45%.
Credit: Anu Manandhar
From her work and relationship with local communities, Anu highlights the importance of Analog Forestry. She mentions that it is a way to improve land management in Nepal that will restore not just their food production capacity, but also their biodiversity and disaster resilience:
“Analog Forestry is a sustainable approach to food production and simultaneously increases green cover to offset the damage caused by carbon emissions. In this sense, it is a system and practice of sustainable land use in which woody perennials (trees, shrubs) are grown with annual herbaceous plants (crops, pasture grass). It will not only support the conservation of genetic resources of the Himalayas, it can also continue to support the livelihood of people in local communities and provide a wide range of products such as food, fuel, fiber, and fodder for livestock. Even the landless farmers can sustain their livelihood with this system.”
The International Analog Forestry Network has been collaborating with Anu and her community since 2020 through virtual capacity building workshops on the Analog Forestry methodology as well as providing guidance and accompaniment.