Upendra Shrestha
Recommended reading: http://practicalaction.org/region_nepal
Posts by Upendra
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According to the World Health Organisation, nearly 2 million people die each year from diseases caused by indoor smoke from cooking fires.
Practical Action, in a new partnership with Bosch Siemens Household Appliances (BSH) is working with communities in the high hills of Nepal to reduce the impact of indoor smoke. By installing Healthy Smoke Hoods this toxic smoke can be reduced by 82%. This technology also increases the stove’s efficiency, reducing firewood consumption.
Practical Action and BSH are demonstrating this Healthy Hood technology at Rio+20 and have successfully engaged the attention of visitors, who are impressed with its simplicity and with the fact that it can be manufactured and maintained locally.
Our stand is in the Technology in Action Pavilion, along with many other technological solutions, with a strong focus on energy, building materials and communications for emergencies.
At an event on the stand on 16th June Siemens together with social entrepreneurship organisation Ashoka launched an empowering people award, which will focus on appropriate technology solutions for developing countries.
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The wind of change – decentralised energy system in remote village, Nepal
Kathmandu 44600, Nepal, Kathmandu
January 24th, 2012“Our children now even do their homework in the evening and we do our household chores” – “we do not have difficulties moving around the village in the night with provision of the street light” – “we now have televisions in our village – this has improved our access to information and children can enjoy the entertainment programmes”.
A view of the wind-solar hybrid system in Hurhure Dada
These are some quotes of our beneficiaries in Hurhure Dada, Nawalparsi – West Nepal where I recently visited. This village was declared as a Renewable Energy Village by Practical Action and provided various energy options to the villagers. The Dada top of the hill is a windy hill – Practical Action captured all year wind data of the Dada and installed five small scale wind turbines together with some solar PVs with support of Livelihood Forestry Programme of the DFID. The system provided solar lantern charging facility to the villagers. Earlier the villagers were depending on kerosene wick lamp for lighting which was unsafe and hazardous for health. Now, the village has 24 hour dedicated grid electricity supply covering 46 households from the wind-solar hybrid system. The windy Dada now has two 5 kW turbines and 2 kWp solar panels, which is first of its kind in Nepal. Although I was in remote village the 24 hours electricity supply made me happy since Kathmandu the capital of the country is under huge power cut (14 hours) in a day. This follow up project was implemented by the Alternative Energy Promotion Centre (AEPC) of the government of Nepal with technical assistance of Practical Action and financial assistance of the Asian Development Bank (ADB).
With facilitation of Practical Action the villagers are organised and establishing a cooperative to run this renewable energy system sustainably. The user group has already identified two individuals as operators who are currently under on-the-job training. The enthusiastic villagers are planning further to use the electricity for the productive end use during the off load time. This demonstrates the success of decentralised energy system and possibility of community managed wind and solar power harnessing in Nepal.
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2011 Blog Action Day on 16 October – World Food Day – is, naturally, themed around food
The hill and mountain districts of far and mid-western Nepal have been hit by persistent food insecurity. The agricultural produce is not sufficient for household consumption in many areas of the country due to high dependency on subsistence agriculture, very small land holdings, inequality in land holdings, low productivity, limited agricultural infrastructure, use of traditional tools and lack of appropriate technologies.
In my recent visit to one of the Practical Action’s project sites in mid-west Nepal I saw a ray of hope where people were continuing the land leasing approach for food production introduced by Practical Action.
A women land leasing group (Jhumka Land Leasing Group) sharing their experiences in mid-west Nepal
Practical Action, with support of the European Union, implemented a food security project in this area, focusing on a land leasing approach targeting smallholder farmers who owns less than 0.05 hectare of land or are landless.
The project has supported the group of small land-holding or landless farmers in accessing the land through a land leasing approach. The project has also people in accessing various appropriate agricultural technologies, extension services, agri-infrastructures and linking with markets.
A survey indicated that the proportion of project households having food sufficiency for less than three months has been decreased to 6.7% from 58.3%. The study also revealed that the food sufficiency for three to six months, six to nine months and more than nine months have been increased to 41, 33.8 and 18.5% from 28, 10.7 and 2.9 per cent respectively.
The smallholding farmers, who I met recently, were very happy and were continuously practicing the plastic house technology and micro irrigation technology in their leased land. They were receiving support from the local agro-vets and local resource people developed by the project. It is encouraging that from the selling of the vegetables and other agricultural produces, they were able to buy some pieces of land on their own where they can grow more produce to fulfill their food need.
With this evidence, I think the land leasing approach can be a sustainable approach that can be replicated elsewhere while working with the smallholders or landless farmers to secure or improve their food security conditions.
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Bio-dykes saving lives
February 24th, 2011
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Nepal is a disaster prone country exposed to the various types of recurring hazards like floods and landslides, causing annual loss of about 300 lives, and properties worth over one billion Nepali rupees. Every disaster has been leaving messages for an urgent need for mitigation measures and early warning systems.
Practical Action in Nepal with financial support of the ECHO (DIPECHO) introduced bio-dykes as one of small scale mitigation components of its larger flood early warning system project. Earlier, the community people were not convinced that this small intervention really can protect them and their properties from the nasty floods. After testing this appropriate technology at some sites and seeing it working, community people were happy to replicate and scale it up to other vulnerable areas.
Experience from these projects demonstrated that the sand filled bag works effectively than the rock filled gabion net. The technology is very simple and affordable; using bioengineering measures it protects the river bank from erosion and ultimately reduces the vulnerability of the marginalised poor ethnic people who usually settle near the river bank for their livelihoods. -
Scarcity of water for irrigation is one of the hindrances to increase their farm productivity that people are facing in the hills of Nepal. Earlier water sources use to be available most time of the year and water table was higher but now due to the unpredictable rainfall pattern these water sources only lasts for few months. To increase the coping capacity of the poor smallholder producers Practical Action in Nepal is promoting low-cost water harvesting ponds and irrigation canals. Recently in the remote areas of Nepal with financial support of the European Union the HELP Food Security project constructed 42 irrigation schemes in three remote districts of Nepal. These irrigation schemes provided irrigation facilities to 450 hectares of land. Local user groups are managing these infrastructures with very low level of external supports. Due to the facility crop intensity and diversity has increased which has ultimately resulted in better production and ensured food security of the target households. We hope the New Year will bring prosperity and build confidence of the poor households to come out of the vicious cycle of poverty.
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Climate change has become a global issue now and coping with it is one of the major challenges the world faces today. Though Nepal contributes very little to the overall change in terms of carbon emission, the effects faced here are no less. In fact with more people under the poverty line and less equipped to deal with the changing scenario, people here end up being exposed to more adverse conditions. The lack of information and awareness tends to make the whole scenario even worse.
Practical Action in Nepal is demonstrating various approaches to strengthen community’s coping capacities with impacts of climate change. The community based adaptation approach implemented by Practical Action along with the local authorities is mainly focusing interventions in – a) natural resource management for reducing climate change effects; b) adaptation to changing farming systems and practices; c) strengthening coping strategies of the communities and enhancing complementary livelihood options; and d) establishing the monitoring systems of climate change at the community level considering the social, economic and natural resource parameters.
Practical Action in recent years well integrated Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) and climate change adaptation activities in its projects. Integrated DRR approaches have proved to be appropriate for sustainable coping of multiple stresses which require linking different sectors and stakeholders for devising and addressing development priorities along with early warning system and DRR. During 2009 -10 more than 2,500 households benefited from small scale infrastructure, adaptive farming practices, alternative livelihoods and increased awareness.
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