A few weeks ago, farmers who used water from the Rainastar Irrigation System (RIS) to irrigate their land protested at the construction site of Champawoti Hydropower in the Chepe Khola river that flows on the borderline of Lamjung and Gorkha in Gandaki Province. Over 500 people reportedly visited the hydropower office and vandalised it. Although the 5 MW run-of-river (RoR)-type project claimed that discharge from the hydropower plant would be 200 metres above the intake of the irrigation canal, the farmers said it would be below 200 metres after construction. Built in 1994 AD, the RIS has an initial command area of 850 hectares. The jointly managed irrigation system (JMIS) is fed by the same perennial river—Chepe Khola—and the irrigation system has a semi-modern system with a permanent headwork.

This is just an example of conflict in water use. Disputes among the government, hydropower construction companies and local communities have been common in almost all power plants during construction and occasionally during the operation of plants. The disputes mostly concern environmental protection, compensation and distribution, benefit sharing, and resettlement of displaced communities. Some catch national attention while others are resolved through mutual negotiations. In 2016, violent conflicts and accusations of police brutality flared up around the Khimti-Dhaldkebar Plant, which was mired in a court case, and additional complaints were filed with Nepal's Human Rights Commission (NHRC). Conflicts will increase with the development of multiple projects in the same river corridors.

Hydropower development

Nepal's water resource endowments are extraordinary, with approximately 6,000 rivers totalling 45,000 km. The average water runoff from these rivers is about 220 billion cubic metres annually. Based on the water resource availability, Nepal's technical potential for hydropower has been estimated to be 83 GW, but due to several constraints, only about 42 GW is considered economically viable. The Marsyangdi river basin, with tributaries like Chepe Khola and Dordi Khola, has almost a dozen hydropower projects in operation. Moreover, nearly two dozen have already secured licences for construction or applied for them, as of 2020, within the catchment area of 4,074 square km, as per a datasheet prepared by the Department of Electricity Development. Like the Marsyangdi basin, almost all river basins are being explored to develop hydropower plants.

In the long run, expanding hydropower will help increase domestic income, lower domestic energy prices, alleviate poverty, and provide insurance against rising oil prices. An increase in power supply will contribute not only to the domestic development of Nepal but also to providing environmental services to the South Asian region by delivering clean, renewable energy while mitigating climate change.

Controversies and concerns

Hydropower development has significant environmental and social impacts, and hydropower plants have different risks. Studies have shown that run-of-river projects are more affected than storage-type projects due to flow variability in the river basins. Assessing the future impacts of climate change on the hydroelectricity sector in Nepal is challenging due to a complex climate and hydrology, as well as the significant elevation changes that occur across the country. The final report on Adaptation to Climate Change in the Hydroelectricity Sector in Nepal 2017 identified four key risks to the hydropower projects based on the vulnerability assessment: Low flows, floods, sediments and geo-hazards including glacial lake outburst flooding (GLOFs) and landslides dammed outburst flood (LDOF). Several studies have shown summer discharge is projected to decrease. Thus, by reducing energy production, high and intense rainfall during the monsoon can lead to increased peak flows risking the structures of hydropower projects. Heavier rain due to future climate changes, along with man-made interventions and watershed degradation, are expected to aggravate the sediment problems. GLOFs and LDOFs are projected to increase with extreme climate events.

As suggested by various research and opinion pieces including the Thrive, access to and exploitation of water resources has always been challenging, causing water conflicts and struggles, and even wars within and between societies and countries. Freshwater demand in low-and middle-income countries is likely to increase with economic growth and include industrialisation, energy production, health, and sanitation in arid regions, even without substantial population pressure. Most of the river basins support not only energy production from hydropower and withdrawals for irrigated food production but also many other uses, such as for households and industries, fisheries and the environment, cultural values and aesthetics, etc. Energy demand from hydropower is often high in the dry season when crops are also thirsty. In Nepal, most conditions identified as consequences of water conflicts have socio-economic and agro-environmental aspects.

The process of Environmental Impact Assessments (EIA) has been projected to contribute to the mediation and resolution of conflicts. The EIA procedure has emphasised the role of natural and technical sciences and data in the identification or amelioration of the adverse or unintended outcomes of the proposed plan. However, social impacts and social sciences should be integral to this evaluation, as the broad definition of environmental impacts and sustainable development require. Ever since Nepal started to use EIAs in 1997, after enacting the Environment Protection Act, more than 180 among a total of 550 EIAs till November 2022 were of the hydropower sector as of the Ministry of Forests and Environments. In Nepal, EIA procedures have been taken by the hydropower construction companies as just a procedural step before implementing the project rather than a tool to mitigate environmental impacts and safeguard investments. They often blame the procedure for delays in project implementation. A consensus in the case of EIA procedures in Nepal seems to be this: The intentions are good but implementation and monitoring are extremely weak.

Government roles

Nepal's water sector is fragmented across several institutions, and sub-national governments' water management roles and responsibilities still need to be defined under the federal system. On one hand, unclear and ambiguous government policies regarding compensation, benefit sharing and resettlement issues and the lack of institutionalised dispute resolution policies and mechanisms are highly contributing factors behind escalating hydropower disputes. On the other, there needs to be a powerful mechanism to coordinate basin planning for rivers that span multiple provinces, municipalities, and districts. Limited capacity within the local bodies for water resource management impedes the implementation of existing policy.