Biodiversity and Conflict in Nepal

How to cite this journal: Author, Date of the post, WMO Conflict Insight, Title of the post, ISSN: 2628 6998, https://worldmediation.org/journal/

ABSTRACT *

This article examines conflicts over forest resources and biodiversity in Nepal through the dispute over the planned Nijgadh international airport. After outlining the significance of the Terai forests for rural livelihoods and the tensions arising from protected area management, the author describes the airport project, its scale, its economic justification and the environmental objections raised against it, including the court order of December 2019 halting construction. Two sets of reflective questions are then developed, addressed to the government and to environmental campaigners respectively. The author concludes that mindfulness offers both sides a means of understanding each other’s perspective and recommends its inclusion in any future mediation.

KEYWORDS *

Nepal, Nijgadh airport, forest resources, biodiversity, Terai, environmental conflict, infrastructure development, mindful reflection, protected areas, public participation

INTRODUCTION

The Government of Nepal is planning to construct a new international airport as the capacity of Nepal’s currently only international airport in Kathmandu has reached its limits. Apart from the presently constructed airports in Lumbini and Pokhara, government officials claim that an alternative to the capital’s Tribhuvan International Airport is urgently needed. Nijgadh, an area covered in forest, therefore, should become an additional airport within a short distance to Kathmandu. As a reaction, groups formed and started to protests against the government’s plans (Sah 2019).

This report will explain forest resource and biodiversity conflicts in Nepal through the current dispute on the planned airport in Nijgadh. Furthermore, I will create a list of mindful questions that could help as a tool of reflection. I will end the report with a short conclusion.

MAIN CORPUS

FOREST RESOURCES, BIODIVERSITY CONSERVATION, AND CONFLICT

The forests of Nepal have always been of great importance to the country’s people. Forest is an essential basis for livelihood, provides food, building material, medicine, water, and animals to eat for thousands of rural-based Nepali families. In Nepal’s southern region, the Terai forests always served as a source for livelihood; however, forests are increasingly shrinking. Forests in the Terai are more and more affected by illegal tree harvesting, e.g., by Indian smugglers, the Maoists, and villagers (Schweithelm, Kanaan, and Yonzon 2006, vi).

Furthermore, there are many protected areas with rich biodiversity in Nepal. Conflict about biodiversity increased as people started to use protected areas for agriculture and livestock. Communities were resettled to buffer zones around the protected areas. Therefore, biodiversity and forest resources are still sensitive topics in Nepal and have the potential to fuel conflicts (Schweithelm, Kanaan, and Yonzon 2006, vii).

NIJGADH AIPORT

The Government of Nepal is planning to construct Nijgadh airport, highlighting economic benefits. The airport would cover 8,045 hectares of land and would thereby become the largest airport in South Asia.

The plans to construct more airports in Nepal initially came to the table in 1992, when several tragic airplane clashes took place around Nepal’s only airport. When a Turkish Airlines flight crashed into Nepal’s international airport runway in 2015, discussed got more serious. The airport is, however, highly controversial due to environmental concerns. Environmentalists argue that the damage of the project will damage forests and biodiversity irreparable. On December 6, 2019, the activists reached a court order forcing the government to put constructions on hold. The basis for the court order was a petition signed by the opposition of the project. Currently, the case is reviewed by the court (Sah 2019). As a result, protests on the streets and social media against the planned airport are common phenomena.

MINDFUL REFLECTION

Mindful questions have the potential to help conflict parties reviewing their viewpoints, identify reasons for patterns of thinking, and understand each other better. The ongoing conflict is not yet a case of mediation. However, this might be a possible outcome of the court order. Mindfulness, as a part of finding a mutual agreement, could include different possible questions.

The Government of Nepal could ask themselves:

• How can we build Niijgad airport from an environmental perspective?
• Why do we believe that the airport needs to be built? Which values and motivations are behind our viewpoint?
• How can we cooperate with opposition groups and find common ground?
• How do we set our priorities, and what is the basis for our strategy?
• How could an alternative look like? Why Nijgadh?
• How can we be mindful of our decision-making process?
• How can we include opposing positions in our plans?

Environmentalists could ask themselves:

• Why do we think we are right and ‘they’ are wrong?
• How should we show our protest?
• How does our mind influence our position and reaction?
• How can we better cooperate with the government?

SUMMARY *

The article situates a single infrastructure dispute within a wider pattern. Forest in Nepal is not scenery but livelihood, and decisions about it have repeatedly displaced the communities that depend on it, whether through protected area designation or through development projects. The Nijgadh case brings that pattern to a point: a project justified by aviation safety and economic need, on a scale that would make it the largest airport in South Asia, in an area whose value to those who live around it is not captured by either argument. With the courts now involved, the author sees an opening for a process in which the parties examine their own reasoning rather than only each other’s.

CONCLUSION

The conflict about Nijgadh airport is a very controversial dispute, currently going on in Nepal. I have talked to different people from Nepal and heard very opposing viewpoints. Some believe that the airport is needed and beneficial; others believe that the price of deforestation is too high. Mindfulness brings chances for both parties to understand each other and uniquely their perspective better. Therefore, I would highly recommend including the state of mindfulness in possible mediation efforts.

POTENTIAL SOLUTION *

Environmental disputes of this kind are more tractable than they appear, because the positions are usually further apart than the interests. The government needs additional aviation capacity, and the reasons given, congestion and the safety record at Kathmandu, are real. The objectors need the forest, its watershed function, its wildlife corridor and the livelihoods it supports. Neither of those needs is the negation of the other. What makes the dispute intractable is that it has been framed as a single decision about one site, so that any outcome delivers everything to one side.

Unbundling the question is therefore the first move. Where should capacity be located, how large must it be, what would be lost at each candidate site, and what mitigation is possible: each of these can be examined separately, and each admits of compromise where the composite question does not. A jointly commissioned assessment, with the scope of study and the choice of experts agreed by both sides rather than by the proponent alone, converts a contest of assertions into a shared body of evidence. This is the single most reliable technique available in environmental conflict, and it works because parties rarely dispute findings they helped design.

The community whose forest is at issue deserves particular attention, since it appears in this account mainly as the object of other people’s arguments. People living in and around the Nijgadh forest have interests that align with neither camp: they may want employment and connectivity, and they may want their land, water and firewood, and they are entitled to be heard on both. Free, prior and informed consultation, with resettlement and compensation terms negotiated rather than announced, and with a share in whatever benefits the project generates, is both a legal obligation under Nepal’s own framework and the practical condition for a project that is not resisted for a generation.

Two further elements would close the gap. Where loss is unavoidable, compensatory measures negotiated in advance, protection and restoration of comparable forest, secured wildlife corridors, watershed safeguards, monitored by an independent body with the objectors represented on it, address the environmental objection in the only currency that answers it. And phasing matters: a project built in stages, with capacity added as demand is demonstrated rather than in a single decisive clearance, reduces both the environmental footprint and the financial risk, and it keeps future options open.

Finally, a note on the role of the courts. The litigation has produced a pause, and pauses of that kind are the moment when mediation is most likely to succeed, because both sides face uncertainty and neither can be confident of winning. Court referred mediation, with the proceedings held in abeyance rather than abandoned, would allow the parties to negotiate under the shadow of a judgment neither controls. That is usually a more productive setting than either the courtroom or the street.

* Added by the WMO Editorial Team

REFERENCES

REFERENCES

Sah, Laxmi. “Nepal Needs Another International Airport. So Why Is Nijgadh Being Held Up?” 2019. https://kathmandupost.com/province-no-2/2019/12/19/nepal-needs-another-international-airport-so-why-is-nijgadh-being-held-up. Accessed March 17, 2020.

Schweithelm, Jim, Ramzy Kanaan, and Pralad Yonzon. Conflicts over Natural Resources at the Community Level in Nepal: Including Its Relation to Armed Conflict. 2006. Kathmandu, Nepal: United States Agency for International Development.

Supplementary references added by the WMO Editorial Team

Supreme Court of Nepal, interim orders and judgment in the public interest litigation concerning the Nijgadh International Airport project.

Environment Protection Act, 2019, and Environment Protection Rules, Nepal, provisions on environmental impact assessment and public hearings.

Environmental Impact Assessment Report, Nijgadh International Airport, Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal and Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation, Kathmandu.

International Union for Conservation of Nature, assessments of forest and biodiversity values in the Nepalese Terai.

International Finance Corporation, Performance Standard 6 on Biodiversity Conservation and Performance Standard 5 on Land Acquisition and Involuntary Resettlement.

Susskind, L., & Cruikshank, J. (1987). Breaking the Impasse: Consensual Approaches to Resolving Public Disputes. Basic Books, New York.