Dr Hari Kumar Shreshta is an engineer, teacher, and a passionate crusader for healthy rivers. On a recent visit to India, he spoke with India Water Portal about the efforts to introduce the concept of environmental flows in hydropower-focused Nepal.
However, hydropower developers only give the information that is convenient for them. We want to enable the local communities to ask the right questions by providing them with information. Local journalists help in this regard by publishing news of hydroelectricity projects. Nepal has a lot of FM stations; they broadcast news related to this issue. Hydropower developers know what land is needed and buy it in advance of the project announcement at rates above the market price. This makes people eager to sell, and they do not hold out for a better price, or benefits such as shares in the dam. Afterwards, it is difficult for the previous landowners to say 'we have been tricked'.
IWMI in collaboration with the Himachal government has developed a software called the 'Ganga e-flows calculator'. This was taught at the program, which received a positive response. The delegates said that the concept that 'E-flows should mimic a natural hydrograph and not be just a flat line' was new to them. Now, Nepal Engineering College and the Department of Electricity Development are jointly organising a training programme for the Ministry of Energy (formerly Ministry of Water Resources).
Since I am a teacher, my ideas are biased towards teaching. If the skills for environmental flows assessment can be incorporated into the curriculum, the process will go on for years. This will produce a cadre of officials who have the skills and the understanding to implement this. I tried my best to achieve this. I talked with university officials, submitted a curriculum to the university and finally got the approval. From this semester onwards, we will be offering technical management courses at the graduate level on environmental flows assessment.
District officials are an important group that need to be included in generating acceptance of environmental flows. Each year they have to prepare a resource book and development plan for their district. The officials of various sectors such as agriculture and irrigation revealed that they have no idea of either what is happening with downstream releases from various dams or the climate change impacts in their area. I offered to provide them the data concerning change in temperature, precipitation and river flows in their respective districts. Using this, they can determine the trends, which will allow them to determine the availability and demands for the next decade. I also explained how this data can be used to determine the water available to generate peaking power. The challenge now is to enable them to plan. For this, we need go to the field offices and provide them with created spreadsheets and the training to use those spreadsheets. So far, this has received a positive response from both the officials at the district level and those at DOED.