A social scientist who previously worked for several ministries and international organizations, Secretary Krishna Gyawali has just completed his third week at work with no previous experience or background in the field. [break]
He tackles some questions from The Week as he is all set to ban plastic from Singha Durbar this weekend. Excerpts:
Your Ministry’s budget and projects?
When we’ve to talk about the government, the budget is comparatively low. Annually, it’s about one hundred million Rupees. Our backbone has always been international funding. For this fiscal year, most of the international funding is in the commitment stage.
Usually, resources come in bulk, which is spent over a period of time. For climate change, we’ve access to about 300 million Rupees, which will be spent over the next three to five years. But let’s clear up something: We don’t have resource crunch.
We have the opportunity to assess the funds, but accordingly we haven’t been able to design and implement the projects.
Projects in the pipeline?
Nepal is an apt location to study climate change because of its climatic diversity. As we have a lot of prospects in terms of research in this area, we’re working on it. At present, the other major initiative of the Ministry is to implement and localize National Adaptation Program of Action (NAPA).
This involves mitigation of and adaptation to climate change effects. Thus, we’ve started Local Adaptation Program of Action to Climate Change to generate awareness at the grassroots.
As a start, we’re banning plastic weighing less than 20 micron inside the premises of Singha Durbar from June 5. (Note: Such thin variety of plastics isn’t durable, thus aren’t reusable. Besides, it has no resale value owing to its weight.
However, the use of such plastic is rampant, adding to environmental pollution).
Gradually, we’ll move ahead to ban the import-export and production of such plastics. Currently, however, the law allows the export of such plastics but we plan to have dialogues with the industries to move ahead with the prohibition.
Negligence in monitoring and follow-ups regarding different environmental projects is quite apparent, and for that we even don’t have to step out of the Valley. For instance, the machine that was installed in Basantpur to measure air pollution has been out of function for quite a while now.
As far as I know, the machine was set up with the help of the Danish Government. But it’s our misfortune that when the project phases out, we lack the capacity and skills to give continuity to it. Well, the case isn’t only limited to this particular project.
We aren’t being able to internalize the skills that international expertise can impart to the locals to become self-sustainable. We need foreign expertise, but to cope up with the situation, we should minimize their numbers but simultaneously enhance the skills of local officials. It’s high time to acknowledge local knowledge.
Challenges faced by the Ministry?
At present, whatever projects and programs we implement, we have to rely on other Ministries because we don’t have regional and district offices. And basically, we’ve to depend on District Development Committees (DDCs) for the works to be completed.
The Ministry does have renewable and environment section offices and units in 72 districts, but due to inadequate manpower, works are often delayed. Our next move is to consecutively prepare human resources and fund them so that they work on climate change issues as well.
Apart from it, there is no definite department that looks after climate change and environment issues. That’s why there is hiatus in most of the works concerning air, water, and sound pollution.
A Department of Environment, however, is in the pipeline, whose main responsibility will be EIA (Environmental Impact Assessment). As we don’t have a separate dedicated agency for EIA, which is needed for the quality checks of any development and construction projects that mobilizes natural resources, the quality of work has often been questioned.
The performance level has been affected, as the Ministry shoulders a lot of responsibilities, and our manpower at the moment totals 69.
There’s a lot of Carbon credit debate. But there have also been questions regarding its impact on Nepal and other developing countries’ climate. What’s your say?
This issue should be globally addressed.
Related story
COVID-19 has forced us to reimagine biodiversity conservation
