The closing of brick kilns, stone quarries, a cement factory, and river-sand mining in the Kathmandu Valley were the fruits of a successful environment movement that started in the mid-1980s. The movement also helped remove smoke-belching three-wheelers from the streets and made “pollution-free” certificates mandatory for vehicles to keep the city’s air clean. However, the drive to protect rivers and other water sources wasn’t as successful. Despite investments in treatment plants, along with over four decades of “raising awareness” and over five years of voluntary cleaning campaigns, Bagmati—the major river that flows through the valley, not only remains as polluted as ever but is as good as dead from a hydrological point of view.

These examples show that efforts to close brick kilns or stone quarries were successful because they were fights against specific business outfits that could be identified and targeted. But environmental issues resulting from multi-layered, multidimensional factors with no one or two outfits to point to aren’t as easy to address, water pollution being one of them. Failing to infuse the movement to save water sources with a greater hydrological understanding and dedication has led to deepening water crises on all fronts.

This past year has been worrisome for water managers. A dry winter last year was followed by a rain-deficit summer due to El Niño, with groundwater in Tarai plummeting. It looks like winter rain is going to fail or arrive quite late this year, too. With insufficient summer rain and a dry winter, it’s not only a question of water shortage and its effects on the economy but also the daily lives of people or the likelihood of forest fires for which we can prepare in the short term. What’s more worrying is the emerging trend due to the changes in temperatures and precipitation patterns that might have lasting impacts on every aspect of our ecology and, eventually, the natural environment that sustains what is around us. In places such as Kathmandu Valley, where water demand is high, the situation could deteriorate abruptly.

Valley’s water

Water sources in the valley are diminishing fast. Downtown Kathmandu may get a steady water supply from Melamchi when it finally arrives, but there are many other parts that Melamchi's supply won’t reach. Those areas are already suffering from scarcity. Ensuring adequate water supply to communities has become a major priority for elected representatives. But what can they do under the current circumstances with increasingly unreliable and unpredictable rainfall? Moreover, the situation could worsen because groundwater levels have been depleting for years due to overdrafts.

As more watershed areas get sealed off by roads and buildings preventing infiltration, groundwater recharge during the monsoon has been reduced to a minimal level. There are no plans in place to adopt artificial recharge practices. The remaining surface water sources have been polluted by a growing urban sprawl. Rivers aren’t capable of augmenting groundwater even during monsoon because i) riverbeds have turned impermeable due to the loss of sand, and ii) farmlands in the flood plains have been covered by roads and buildings. Facilitated by newly built stone walls on both sides of the rivers, flood water is forced to leave the valley as fast as possible. We may continue to remain complicit to these wrongs as long as our water needs are met by the water market. Sadly, we aren’t doing anything meaningful to address the water issue.

In the past, rainwater from the city areas went into the rivers through a network of drainages. But as more city areas became impenetrable, the runoff increased, requiring bigger pipes to drain it. The sewer, along with stormwater, is taken out of the city through the same drainage network. And in this process, not even a drop of rainwater is allowed to seep into the ground. In a valley where groundwater used to be the major source of water for domestic and agricultural use, as well as the local ecology, this is the worst strategy one could adopt to disrupt the natural system of rainwater distribution.

The loser in the race

Our traditions and myths served a larger purpose than simply cultural reverence. Celebrating Nag Panchami, offering oil lamps to the river on Narke Chadurdashi, or cleaning wells on Sithi Nakha helped protect water sources and keep the ecological environment intact. Unfortunately, that is not so anymore. Aquifers are empty, springs have dried, and streams flow only when it rains. Additionally, when climate change issues started to gain importance as a major environmental problem at the official level, local environmental issues, such as the loss of water sources, were pushed aside. Subsequently, river pollution increased unabated, sand mining continued in the foothills, and air pollution control was largely left to the mercy of the rain.

The drying of streams, springs and aquifers isn’t an isolated event but a result of a composite problem of changes in the natural environment worsened by anthropogenic influences over a long time. Needless to say, rampant abuse of the landscape in the name of development, the choking of drainage channels, diverting natural water flow to new areas and sealing off the soil with construction projects have only added to the complexity. Unfortunately, addressing the impacts of changes in temperature and precipitation isn’t within the scope of any of our institutions. Worse, we don’t know how this emerging trend will change the ecology we grew up with if it hasn’t already.

Now, we face the problem of failing to distinguish between an environmental problem and a climate change-induced problem—and sometimes a convoluted combination of both. This hasn’t only weakened the traditional or communal ways of protecting the environment but also made our institutions that had been established to address these visible problems helpless. We now face environmental problems largely amplified by climate change. Therefore, these local environmental problems are seen across the landscape. It has affected those in the precariat who try to make a living with limited resources. For that reason, they haven’t been able to draw as much attention as many other politically charged short-lived issues.

These lasting and widespread environmental issues will only get worse if not addressed with the required level of urgency. In the current dispensation, no clear path forward seems to have been pursued to manage what is manageable and save the local environment from the menace of climate change beyond the rhetoric of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.