Mindful Reflection on Resource Conflicts 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 natural resource conflicts in Nepal and considers how mindful mediation might address them. After setting out the country’s poverty, rural dependence, caste hierarchy and the causes of the civil war, the author analyses three resource domains in turn: water, where irrigation, drinking supply, pollution and hydropower generate competing claims; forests, where community forestry has brought benefits but is held to favour wealthier groups while excluding the landless; and biodiversity, where protected area designation has displaced communities into buffer zones. The article then sets out the qualities of mindful mediation, deep listening, critical thinking and wise speaking, and argues for inclusive multi stakeholder processes prepared carefully and grounded in self reflection.

KEYWORDS *

Nepal, natural resource conflict, water, forests, biodiversity, community forestry, hydropower, mindful mediation, deep listening, inclusion, multi stakeholder process, conflict ripeness

INTRODUCTION

Nepal is a South Asian country well-known for its impressive mountains, natural beauty, and cultural diversity. Surrounded by its giant neighbors and global players India and China, the country is one of the poorest in the world. Nevertheless, its natural treasure is impressive. Water, forests, and natural biodiversity are crucial for the country, people, the economy, and the environment. Nevertheless, these factors also contribute to conflict and have mainly added to Nepal’s civil war, but they still play a key role in current disputes.

This paper is a part of the World Mediation Organization’s training program on mindful mediation. The paper will start with an introduction to what natural resource conflicts are and how they affect Nepal. Moreover, a summary of mindfulness will be given. Afterward, the concept of mindfulness will be applied to challenge the situation of Nepal’s natural resources, and recommendations will be provided. The paper will end with a conclusion.

MAIN CORPUS

CONTEXT OF NEPAL

Nepal is one of the poorest countries worldwide, ranked 147 out of 189 on the Human Development Index of the countries worldwide. An estimated 42 percent of the country is living under the poverty line, in some cases, even severe poverty. Most of the Nepalese community, 80 percent, live in rural areas. Many rural households suffer from insufficient access to food due to a lack of land for agriculture or other reasons such as climate change.

A significant part of the country is hilly, marked by forests that have been increasingly cut within the last decades. Degradation of mountains is, additionally, a challenge. Growing populations in Nepal that come along with shrinking natural resources have the potential to destabilize the country.

The societal structure of Nepal is marked by the caste system, which is rigidly hierarchical, causing social inequalities. Furthermore, ethnic diversity and deep-rooted traditions remain dominant characteristics of the country. Additionally, poverty and a lack of education contribute to challenges such as child marriage, early pregnancy, unemployment, and gender injustice (Schweithelm, Kanaan, and Yonzon 2006, iii – viii).

Furthermore, the country went through a decade-long civil war, which ended in 2008. The causes of the conflict were:

• A fastly growing population which resulted in degradation of the environment and scarcity of resources;
• Inequality in the society, which furthermore contributed to unfair access to natural resources;
• Limited access to education, which additionally contributes to unemployment;
• Limited job opportunities outside the urban centers;
• Failures of Nepal’s monarchical government back then (Schweithelm, Kanaan, and Yonzon 2006, vi).

RESOURCE CONFLICTS IN NEPAL

Michael T. Klare writes that resource conflicts have become increasingly prominent worldwide. Resource conflict is often mixed with religious, ethnic, and tribal antagonism. Resource conflicts have become an increasing threat to local, national, and international peace (Klare 2002, 1 – 10).

a) Water and conflict

Nepal is one of the world’s most significant water resources and has the potential to produce large quantities of hydropower. The irrigation systems in the southern Terai are mainly fed by river systems. As the river flow depends on the monsoon and temperature, agriculture is seasonal and limited to water availability. In hilly regions, access to drinking water is challenging.

Additionally, water sources within Nepal are increasingly polluted, especially in nearby urban centers like Kathmandu. Poorly managed water irrigation systems, mainly found in the hilly regions, fuel conflict potential. Moreover, only a small part of Nepal’s hydropower potential is utilized. Constructing hydropower facilities often comes with conflict between the people from the dam side and downhill part, as well as pollution during the construction. Furthermore, a conflict exists around fair water use: drinking water, industrial use, hydropower, or agriculture (Schweithelm, Kanaan, and Yonzon 2006, vii).

b) Forest and conflict

Nepal’s forests are traditionally crucial for livelihood. Villagers find food in the woods; building material is abstracted. Many trees are cut by smugglers from India, the Maoists, and other individuals and groups. Nepal has established a wide range of community forests. Over 13,300 groups, including 35 percent of the nation, have been formed, managing the community forests. However, it is believed that wealthier and socially dominant groups benefit more from the woods than others. Landless or impoverished community members are often excluded. Therefore, community forest groups are believed to contribute mainly to inequality. The benefits of community forests include access to healing plants, timber, and fiber plants (Schweithelm, Kanaan, and Yonzon 2006, vii).

c) Biodiversity and conflict

Nepal offers a wide range of areas protected due to its biodiversity treasure. However, conflict potential increased when communities started to utilize the protected areas for agriculture or other purposes that might harm existing biodiversity. Communities were forced out of the protected areas and re-settled in buffer zones. It is believed that the Maoist party, a key player in the civil war, had a plan to use the buffer zone for their purposes, such as utilizing displaced people for their ideas and strategies. Wildlife poachers are still hunting rare animals, fueling conflict potential further (Schweithelm, Kanaan, and Yonzon 2006, viii).

MINDFULNESS

a) What is mindful mediation?

Mindfulness is a mindset that can contribute to conflict resolution in resource-related conflict. Erdmann writes that mindfulness is an essential core skill found in everyone. Buddhist traditions offer different techniques of mindfulness, often related to greed as the source of suffering and the solution of detachment.

Being a mindful mediator requires the following:

Deep listening: A mediator must listen carefully throughout the mediation process, understand the situation itself, and help reveal what lies behind statements, behavior, positions, and demands. As a part of this, a mediator can use question techniques such as open questions, reframing, and paraphrasing. Critical thinking: Mediators must reflect on mediation processes critically, questions used, and statements given while maintaining transparency. Everything happening in mediation might have an impact on future developments. Wise speaking: Furthermore, mediators can support fruitful mediation processes by asking questions wisely, taking positions, dynamics, and the cultural context under consideration (Erdmann 2018).

b) Mindfulness in the mediation of resource disputes in Nepal

The three natural resources have, as explained above, contributed to Nepal’s civil war but still affect recent tensions. Utilizing mindful mediation brings many benefits that should be considered when resolving existing issues. Reaching the state of mindfulness includes understanding oneself, patterns, behavior, and the origin of emotions by listening to inner voices and self-reflection. Nevertheless, mediators do have the potential to guide and support mindful reflection.

Water is a sensitive factor for conflicts in Nepal. All parties using and arguing about water use in Nepal should ask themselves questions, focusing on finding what influences them in their position, behavior, and primary use of water. From my perspective, the same counts for the use of forests and the conservation of biodiversity. A mediator applying the principles of deep listening, critical thinking, and wise speaking can challenge current viewpoints and help to change patterns. I strongly recommend bringing representatives of relevant stakeholders to one table to resolve the disputes. Most importantly, processes must be inclusive, leave no one behind, and enhance self-reflection through wisely chosen question techniques.

SUMMARY

No one in Nepal wants to live in a scenario in which forests are destroyed, water sources are polluted or unequally used, or Nepal’s biodiversity has vanished. Nevertheless, as mediation is a voluntary process, parties must be committed and actively participate. Identifying the matching stakeholders might be an additional challenge. Considering the complexity of the conflicts and the high number of people involved, the process would need time and proper preparation. Mediators can also enhance the conflict ripeness.

In case parties agree to commit to mediation, the mediator must understand the conflict correctly. This paper gave a short overview, which could be utilized as the first step of preparation.

CONCLUSION

Natural resources are limited but too often taken for granted. The government of Nepal, political parties, the private sector, smugglers, communities, and individuals should reflect on the use of resources. The goal should be to act responsibly and take the preciousness, limited existence, and collective need for resources under reflection, understanding own and opposing positions. Abuses of political power, societal privileges, economic benefits, environmental aspects, and natural preservation need to be considered equally while using natural resources.

The effects of misused natural resources in Nepal cannot be ignored. Natural resources affect every part of the lives of Nepali people. In times of climate change, forests are more important than ever before. Water is the source of life, and every human has the right to access clean drinking water to stay healthy and productive.

From my viewpoint, it is high time to initiate mediation processes of natural resources in Nepal, focusing on mindfulness. Nepal, a country with many spiritual practices, is very tolerant towards Buddhism, which might serve as an ideal ground to apply mindfulness as a mindset.

POTENTIAL SOLUTION *

The article’s most useful observation is one it makes almost in passing: community forestry, widely regarded as a success and often cited internationally as a model, is held to have deepened inequality because wealthier and socially dominant households capture its benefits while the landless are excluded. That finding deserves to be central rather than incidental, because it identifies the difference between devolving a resource to a community and distributing it fairly within one. Where a community is stratified by caste, landholding and gender, handing management to the community as such transfers the resource to those who already hold power in it.

Design remedies exist and are well tested. Guaranteed representation on user group executive committees for Dalit, landless and women members, with quorum requirements rather than nominal seats, changes who decides. Differentiated entitlements, in which the poorest households receive rights to firewood, fodder and non timber products at no cost while commercial timber revenue is shared, changes who benefits. Public audit of user group accounts and an accessible appeal route for excluded members changes whether the rules are followed. None of this requires new legislation in most cases, only serious attention to the internal governance of bodies that already exist.

The water question needs a different instrument, because its parties are separated by geography rather than status. Upstream and downstream users, irrigators and drinking water users, hydropower developers and river communities each hold claims that are legitimate and mutually limiting. River basin level forums, in which allocation is negotiated among all users of a single system rather than settled sector by sector in Kathmandu, are the standard response and have worked in comparable settings. For hydropower specifically, benefit sharing arrangements agreed before construction, a defined share of revenue or free electricity to affected communities, compensation negotiated rather than assessed, and independent monitoring of construction impacts, convert a project imposed on a valley into one the valley has an interest in seeing completed.

On protected areas, the article records displacement into buffer zones without recording what those communities received in return. Conservation that depends on exclusion generates the resentment that poaching and encroachment express; conservation that shares tourism revenue, employs local people as rangers and guides, and involves them in management decisions converts the same population into the resource’s most effective protectors. This is now mainstream conservation practice, and Nepal has itself pioneered parts of it.

Finally, the author’s remark that mediators can enhance conflict ripeness deserves emphasis. In resource disputes, ripeness rarely arrives on its own, because the party benefiting from the status quo has no reason to negotiate. What creates it is usually a shift in the surrounding conditions: a court ruling, a funding requirement, a change in the law, or simply the accumulated visibility of a problem. Mediators working in this field spend much of their time preparing for such moments, mapping stakeholders, building relationships across divides, assembling shared data, so that when the opening comes, a process is ready rather than still to be invented.

* Added by the WMO Editorial Team

REFERENCES

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Erdmann, Daniel. “Section: B) – Syllabus 1 – World Mediation Organization,” 2018. Accessed March 12, 2020. https://worldmediation.org/.

Klare, Michael T. Resource Wars: The New Landscape of Global Conflict. 1st edition. United States of America, New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2002.

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

Supplementary references added by the WMO Editorial Team

Forest Act, 2019, and Forest Regulations, Nepal, provisions on community forest user groups.

Water Resources Act, 1992, and National Water Plan, Nepal.

Department of Forests and Soil Conservation, Nepal, community forestry programme data and guidelines.

Ojha, H., Persha, L., & Chhatre, A. (2009). Community Forestry in Nepal: A Policy Innovation for Local Livelihoods. International Food Policy Research Institute, Washington, D.C.

Agrawal, A., & Gibson, C. C. (1999). Enchantment and Disenchantment: The Role of Community in Natural Resource Conservation. World Development, 27(4), 629 to 649.

United Nations Environment Programme (2015). Natural Resources and Conflict: A Guide for Mediation Practitioners. UNEP and UN Department of Political Affairs, Nairobi and New York.