The Climate Change Issue in Nepal

We all know how climate change has become one of the biggest global concerns that man has ever faced. It is an issue that leaves no person unaffected. As it is a global problem, it is expected that there should be a global solution and that it is the responsibility of every nation to address. Having left Canada and my job at Climate Change Central for a marketing position in Nepal, I didn’t really expect to be doing climate change work, but as it turns out climate change has become a pretty big policy issue in Nepal. Of course there are a lot of pressing needs that the government must address that concerns more basic needs (poverty, education, electricity etc..), addressing climate change is still emerging as a major problem and an opportunity in Nepal.

Some background… Nepal is a highly rural country with 80% of the population living in non-urban centres. In addition, the GDP per capita of Nepal is among the lowest in the world. Don’t quote me on this, but I believe that it is the 11th poorest nation in the world. As such, the overall ghg emissions from this country and on a per capita basis are undoubtedly one of the lowest in the world. Even though Nepal produces relatively little ghg emissions, it stands to be affected a lot by climate change. Being a mountainous nation, the Himalayas provide an abundance of water to Nepal and neighbouring India. With the melting of glaciers, floods could become a larger issue in the short term and in the long term drought may occur when glaciers melt away. Being a highly agrarian society, changing weather patterns will also greatly affect Nepal in that agricultural crops may suffer from drought or flooding or even just shifts in temperatures and growing seasons. Subsistence farmers may face a situation where they are no longer able to subsist.

Impacts aside, a strategy needs to be adopted in Nepal that not only addresses adaption, but also to look at mitigation strategies that reduce ghg emissions for the greater global good, and that also can benefit Nepal financially. Possibilities exist to leverage action on reducing ghg emissions into revenue for certain sectors on the Nepalese economy. This may be done through mechanisms like the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) process through the Kyoto Protocol, or other voluntary measures like the Voluntary Carbon Standard (VCS). Simply put, a developed country (that has binding ghg reduction targets) or an organization (that has a regulatory obligation to reduce ghg emissions) can, in effect, reduce emissions by investing in projects in developing nations (Annex II countries signed on to the Kyoto Protocol) or projects that are outside regulated activities. There are many complicating factors that make things quite convoluted, but this is the gist of it.

So, for example, if a company is looking to reduce it’s emissions but implementing process changes internally to reduce emissions are cost prohibitive, they may look to other ways to reduce emissions in a more cost effective manner. This might include investing in an “emissions offset” project which would reduce emissions in a developing nation. The emission reductions that are created due to the project would then be counted as an emission reduction for compliance by that company. Because climate change is a global issue, it theoretically does not matter where the emission reductions take place, as long as they truly take place…

So, if a community forest area in Nepal manages to reduce it’s carbon output through sustainable harvesting practices and they “sell” their emission reductions to a private firm from North America, both parties stand to gain. The Community Forest User Group gains a economic benefit for their sustainable harvesting practice, and the company gets carbon offset credits which help it achieve regulatory compliance at a cheaper rate than investing in costly upgrades to reduce emissions internally. Simple right?? Well, not really, but that will be a discussion for another day. There are always other complicating factors such as risk of project failure or reversal, problems of additionality (whether the project is truly incrementally reducing ghg emissions), project implementation and documentation… the list goes on.

So where does Nepal stand? Well, things are in the fledgling stages, but theoretically there is plenty of opportunity for carbon offset projects including: carbon sequestration through forestry practices, energy efficiency and renewable energy projects (ie. using bio-briquettes for heating, biogas and biodiesel for alternative fuels). There is a great deal of interest currently and projects will have to be initiated on a pilot basis to determine feasibility and cost viability, but there is no doubt as there is increasing worldwide carbon constraints the viability will continue to rise….

What am I doing in Nepal??

There are days when I ask myself that repeatedly, but really I am enjoying myself being here.... on a serious note.

I have not written much about my work yet, so this is an opportunity to let people know what I am doing here in Nepal. I am working for a natural products processing and trading company called Himalayan Bio Trade. The main products that they sell are essential oils (7 types including wintergreen, juniper, rhododendron, jatamansi, zanthoxylum, Artemisia, and abies) and handmade paper products (books, stationary, gift bags and gift boxes, picture frames, lanterns etc.). My job is to assist with their marketing efforts by putting together a marketing plan and helping with international marketing.

One of the many challenges that small essential oil producers face is capacity and ability to deal on an international level. This has been made easier through the increasing popularity of the fair trade movement where the value chain is shortened and the producer comes in more direct contact with the retailer of the product. By cutting out middlemen (wholesalers), producers can take home a bigger piece of the pie!

One of the great advantages that the Himalayan Bio Trade has is that their essential oils are wild crafted and not cultivated. This means that the raw materials are harvested from the forest and not grown in cultivated crops. When harvested in a responsible manner, this is a much more environmentally friendly and sustainable way of utilizing resources. In addition, Himalayan Bio Trade has certified organic products, so consumers can be assured that there are no unnatural chemicals (ie. Pesticides) applied to the raw plant material or the oils.

An objective in Himalayan Bio Trade’s mission is to provide economic benefit to the rural communities and rural disadvantaged groups. Often it is difficult to make a living in rural Nepal as it is a heavily agrarian society with often difficult terrain and marginally arable land. The challenge is to find ways to bring economic prosperity to these communities. Himalayan Bio Trade offers employment to many rural poor by giving a fair wage to those who harvest the raw materials for both production of essential oils and handmade paper.

Himalayan Bio Trade also does what we call “value add” processing which sees the distillation of essential oils and also paper manufacturing in the rural areas. Where other operations may ship raw materials to the city or even sell and export raw materials, more value can be derived by exporting processed products, but also shipping costs can be reduced by processing in the field.

So… my job is to develop a marketing strategy and messaging that can help Himalayan Bio Trade grow. To increase market presence, but not so much that they cant deliver “the goods” so to speak. The organic certification and Forest Stewardship Council certification will help in creating a unique selling proposition. Overall it’s been a really good experience so far and I am proud to help a company that has it’s heart in the right place.

Update and General Goings On

It’s been a while since I last updated the blog, and I have no specific topic to address, but thought I would give a little update on our status here in Nepal.

On living conditions…. Things have shaped up in our apartment. We no longer live as complete minimalists and we have replaced our plastic patio table and chairs with a real dining room table. We now are the proud owners of a spare bed, so all those who stay with us can sleep on a real bed!

Electricity has been the biggest inconvenience so far, as we are now operating on 8 hours of electricity per day. We get 4 hour chunks of electricity interspersed between 8 hour outages. Very difficult to get work done, or anything done for that matter! Sometimes that 4 hour chunk will come at 4 in the morning, so the useful hours of electricity in one day can sometimes be only 4 hours!! Crazy! I have heard that the hours of electricity will increase come March, but I will have to see it before I believe it.

On the weather…. Things are warming up here in Kathmandu. It feels as though the winter is over. The days are warming up (although the days never really got that cold), and the nights are definitely not as cold these days. We do not need to use our heater nearly as much and I have stopped wearing my long underwear! This must mean that winter is over right???

On friends…. We have seen quite a few friends come and go now that we have been here for over 3 months (getting close to 4!). It is a bit of a transition period for the Uniterra Program that I am working for. The program is up for renewal and until the minister signs off on the program, there will be no more recruitment of volunteers here in Nepal. So, the numbers of Canadian volunteers is dwindling as people finish up their mandates. Since Jenn and I arrived we have seen about 7 long term volunteers leave and only one arrive! They have been a good support group though and have definitely made our transition to Nepal easier. We also have made friends with a number of wonderful Nepali people and have spent some time visiting with them in their homes… I will write about that another time.

On language… Jenn and I have started taking Nepali language lessons. It’s pretty slow going, but we can do some counting (ek, dui, tin, char…), ask people their name and how they are doing (tapai: ko naam ke ho?) and conjugate a number of verbs. It’s not very useful yet, but we’ll get there.

On entertainment… Sometimes it is difficult to entertain ourselves when we are sitting in the dark, but we have been able to keep up with recently released movies. Nepal has a thriving bootleg DVD market with numerous shops around the city selling recently released movies on DVD. So, we have seen a number of the Academy Award nominee films on DVD already including Slumdog Millionaire, Revolutionary Road etc. The quality can be somewhat suspect, but for the most part they are watchable. Jenn and I have also been catching up on television series that we had previously missed, such as Heroes and Carnivale. We are trying to keep up with the Lost series as well, but it takes us forever to download the files off the internet. The first two episodes took me 4 days to download! The power kept cutting out, so it would interrupt my downloading…

On health… I have been very healthy (knock on wood), but Jenn has had difficulties adjusting to the polluted Nepali environment. For the first two months, Jenn really suffered with a very bad case of sinusitis and one cold after another. She felt better for a little while and since then has gotten sick again. It’s been really frustrating for her, as she wants to do the things she had planned but her health has been getting in the way.


It’s been a difficult past couple of weeks and at times both Jenn and I have been Nepaled out. The electricity situation can be demoralizing, and on top of that the constant onslaught of pollution. Recently Jenn got her hair cut and she had asked for just a trim (less than an inch). What she got was 6 inches cut off and a Nepali style haircut called a "step cut", which is apparently just 4 chunky layers (not even blended). She was horribly upset as it had taken her sooo long to grow out her hair to a length that she liked.

To make things worse, we had purchased a very expensive Thangka (Tibetan religious painting) a while back. It was a beautiful piece of art! We were heading out to get it framed and we got distracted as we got out of the taxi… we forgot the thangka in the back seat and he drove off. By the time we realized it, he was long gone. There are so many taxis in this city, that there is no way we could ever find him again. C’est la vie! It just kind of topped off our week. In protest of our rough week, we went with a friend out for dinner and had a nice big helping of steak and beef burgers!