The World Meteorological Organization’s State of the Climate in Asia 2024 report warns that the region is warming nearly twice as fast as the global average, driving more extreme weather and posing serious threats to lives, ecosystems, and economies. In 2024, Asia experienced its warmest or second warmest year on …
Hit by an acute water shortage, residents of Banepa in Kathmandu, Nepal look forward to gifts which include pots of water! Residents of the neighbouring village of Dhulikel -- in an effort to help out their thirsty countrymen in Banepa -- send pots of water to them mainly by the …
Over 250 medical experts recently met at a 2-day international symposium on diabetes, held in Kathmandu in Nepal. The country has a high incidence of people suffering from this crippling malady. The country has 9.5 per cent of all patients admitted to medical units suffering from diabetes. Although field studies …
Nepali environmentalists are elated over the comeback of rhinos in Chitwan national park, located 140 km south-west of Kathmandu. Almost wiped out by poachers a decade ago, the 1994 official census noted a revival: there are more than 400 rhinos and about 140 tigers in the reserve now. However, dangers …
• Over 60 per cent of the catchment area of the Arun river falls in Tibet; little is known about the hydrological behaviour of the river in this part. • inadequate study of the discharge pattern of the Arun river. critics say that the data collected does not go back …
"India would need power by the time Arun III dam stal1$; producing electricity," said Nepal's Prime Minister Man Mohan Adhikary in response to a question by Down To Earth during his visit to New Delhi in April. Although the viability of the World Bank-sponsored project hinges on India's purchase of …
LOCATION On the Arun river in Sankhuwasabha district,about 200 km east of Kathmandu TOTAL POTENTIAL OF THE ARUN BASIN 1,045 mw PRE-FEASIBlLITY STUDY March 1985 FEASIBILITY STUDY June 1987 DETAILED ENGINEERING STUDY December 1992 TARGET COMMISSIONING DATE April 1, 2001 TOTAL POWER GENERATION 201 mw (Phase I), 201 mw (Phase …
On January 16, 1994, 2 human rights activists, Gopal Siwakoti and Rajesh Gautam filed a public interest petition in the Supreme Court under Article 16 of the Constitution which recognises the right to information as fundamental. Siwakoti and Gautam went to court with the complaint that they were denied access …
IT is something of a paradox: no one seems to doubt the apparent merits of Nepal's 402 megawatt (mw) Arun III hydroelectric project, yet the scheme has become fraught with controversy. Almost invariably, the first comment in reply to any reference to the venture is: "Well, Arun III is a …
The smuggling of rare medicinal herbs out of Nepal is worrying environmentalists. Important herbs from the western region - including endangered ones like Panchaule, latamansi and Yarchagombu - are being carted to Nepalgunj, and then on to the rich North. Nepalese environmentalists are par '7 ticularly irked that the Pakhanbhed …
THE setting up ofthe Inspection Panel in September 1993 as a permanent body which will monitor World Bank-funded projects is a significant, far-reaching development. Unfortunately, the World Bank (WB) governing board of executive directors' mode of selection of sensitive areas was highly disappointing. There have been serious objections to the …
NARMADAs and, Tehris have been hogging the limelight in India, while a more dramatic and potentially devastating dam on the drawing boards of a neighbouring country - Nepal -has hardly been heard of here. The name of the dam is Arun in, a project designed to be constructed on the …
VILLAGLRS reading satellite images like the back of their hands: it's an absurd oxymoron. But this virtual impossibility is precisely what the Bangalore-based Actionaid team discovered in Nepal recently. The team had started with an unlikely hypothesis: that the local people, with their intimate knowledge of the vicinity's topography, would …
NEPAL'S newly-constituted Communist Party government is no longer opposing the controversial World Bank-funded Arun III hydroelectric project in the country's northeast. Even during its election campaign, the Communist Party had joined ranks with anti-dam Nepali environmental activists, who contended that it would wreak havoc on the fragile cloud forest ecosystem …
Helicopters have made mountaineering a less arduous prospect in Nepal, but chopped down the daily earnings of the Sherpas. While tourists can now wing their way up to inaccessible areas, mountaineers can fly out their heavy gears instead of hauling them. "With the helicopters, there is a danger that Sherpas' …
Nepal's controversial Arun III dam is scheduled to come under withering scrutiny. In early February, the World Bank gave its independent inspection panel a green signal to conduct a formal investigation of the project. The panel's mandate will focus on specific aspects of the Arun project which may violate the …
WHILE Indians hotly debate whether common folk can be entrusted with the management and control of their forest resources, local communities in several other developing countries are already entrenched in their idyllic fortresses. The results have been, to say the least, positive, even dramatic. In Nepal, village communities have been …
High-altitude cleaning efforts in the Khumbu region of Nepal have made trekking more pleasurable now, reports Himal. The Sagarmatha Pollution Control Committee (SPCC) is supervising a programme that ensures that garbage is not dumped at campsites and along the trek route. The SPCC is preparing rubbish pits, providing tourist information …
High mountains and deep gorges may no longer daunt the 3 million Nepalese who have to travel extensively in the trading season. A Swiss organisation, Helvetas, is building bridges there and training engineers. It was all praise for the indigenous bridge builders, especially from Baglung. "We studied the Nepali bridges …
Nepal is slated to become one of South Asia"s major power suppliers with the signing of the MoU with Australia for the West Seti project. What are the problems with the project? From the hydro-technical point of view, the project seems okay but other environmental issues like seismicity and sedimentation …
The one-horned rhino population in Nepal's Royal Chitwan National Park has crossed the 450 mark despite widespread poaching, a recent rhino census carried out in the park indicates. The eradication of malaria strains in the Chitwan valley in the '60s opened it up for human settlement. The casualty was the …
