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Western science is lauded as the ultimate arbiter of knowledge. When it comes to climate change, they are often quoted as the experts, with people from all fields urging the irrational: “Listen to the science!”
The only problem: scientists are limited in their imagination and cannot see beyond the 1.5 degree threshold. Much like Tom Friedman’s “The World is Flat,” they imagine the planet to be flat, warming at an even rate all over like a nice tortilla, from mountains to Himalayan glaciers, from Antarctica to the Gulf.
But the world is not shaped like a tortilla. It has immense geographical, environmental, social, political and policy variations, even a few kilometers apart.
In some parts of India, peak summer temperatures already reach 50 degree centigrade. This is unsustainable for human habitation. Some of this heating is caused by global climate change, but other reasons for warming and drought are local deforestation, extraction of water without rain recharge, and industrial application of chemical fertilizers which turn soil into fine dust. Cities and tenements built without planning for greenery exacerbate the urban heat effect. All are catalysts for heating.
A policy decision can create a thriving, water rich, forest dense community living sustainably while another can be a desert only a few minutes drive away. I visited one such community in Nepal in 2009. A village of Khadgas, poor but still educated, were tending a community forest from which they harvested herbs for essential oils. They had plumes of water from groundwater to grow corn. Their lives were on the upswing with one
liter of essential oil bringing in Rs 30,000 in income. The next community of Chidimars, a Dalit community which made a living off trapping birds, were living in an desertified environment—they’d been encouraged to put in a tubewell by a development agency, had stopped building traditional gadda to store rainwater, and had cut all their trees to build a schoolhouse. The community was on the edge of migrating due to desertification caused by bad policy and
environmental distress.
How poor communities build up resilience to survive the global as well as local warming effects will depend heavily upon local policy decisions. In Nepal, local governance structures like ward offices and village development committees have been
annihilated by the Loktantric regime. In my own neighborhood in Handigaon, I have been hard pressed to find an elected representative who could address my concerns about huge numbers of motorcycles driving through a historic area. I would like to stop this onslaught. But who do I turn to? There is no clear
local representative.
This lack of local governance means special stress and vulnerability for poor communities, who are often at the mercy of outside actors. Often current policy decisions, made ad hoc and on the spot, are driven by external Kathmandu-based NGO actors who might be more motivated in showing a progress report to a donor agency rather than in addressing the community’s concerns. Tubewells and now solar pumps that pump up riverwater, which are unsustainable in the long run, are being introduced (to much applause) at the expense of long-term sustainable water harvesting and irrigation systems. As the traditional methods fall apart, and the people have no way to maintain expensive polythene pipe systems, a rural community can plummet into drought and distress.
This sort of development-triggered distress is never accounted for in M and E reports, a genre of writing which documents glowing successes. “Is this policy sustainable in the long run?” is not a question asked of development practitioners. Grant burn rates (throw money at people who can use it up fast), flashy new technology, hot button themes, progress reports and deliverables drive policies, rather than long-term environmental stewardship.
Fossil fuel needs to be phased out, as do plastics. But central to people’s survival in the climate heating era will be local governance. A strong network of local governance existed in Nepal in the past. This is quickly being eradicated as crony communism takes hold. If we don’t address this, this will be a threat to the very existence of local communities.

 It is clear that the city of Kath­mandu cannot depend on drinking water ferried on fossil fuel tankers, even though the cur­rent government seems to have embraced this model as a perma­nent one. Not only do the millions of trips made per month foul the already polluted air, it also adds hugely to poor people’s water and health bills. Nepali parliament must pass a resolution that makes it mandato­ry for landlords to provide water to residents before they rent a room. In Kathmandu, landlords are rapidly putting up buildings with no running water, kitchen, toilets, or electricity provided. These rooms are rented from Rs 5,000 to Rs 10,000 each. The women renting them are often single mothers whose husbands are in the Gulf. The women man­age their finances and run their household by holding down small jobs. They do domestic work, construction, laundry, and other part-time work while taking care of school-going children. Trying to source water from tankers or plastic canisters can be a big bur­den on women who are already overworked with loans, house­work, cooking, laundry, and care responsibilities.

It is unethical and wrong of rich landlords to force poor sin­gle mothers to carry canisters of water five floors up to their rooms. Often the landlord hasn’t provided water not because they don’t have the money—these busi­nessmen own multiple buildings and are cashing in lakhs in month­ly rent—but because they believe their tenants are from the villages and therefore can manage with­out running water. A pump may be provided in the yard which pumps up groundwater. These water sources are inadequate or they do not provide clean water. Tenements of this nature have sprung up freely without govern­ment regulation and control all over Kathmandu and other cities of Nepal since the Loktantric gov­ernment came to power.

The government does the hard­working citizens of Nepal a dis­service if it doesn’t put regula­tions in place which ensures no ghaderi or apartment building can be rented out till the landlord has put in essentials, including a water-harvesting system, toilets with adequate water, electricity connection, and gas canisters, in place. Any building with more than three rental families should be legally mandated to have a water harvesting system with a filter. The government must sent a health inspector to ensure such a system is in place before they give permission to rent. The gov­ernment must also train ward offices to install these systems in a cost-effective manner, with a technical team there to deal with maintenance issues.

A Housing Agency which keeps track of all tenants in Kathmandu, along with a database of landlords, must be created. This ensures that the government can keep track of water harvesting com­pliance. Any complaints about toilets, electricity etc should also be addressed through the agency, which should act as a mediator between landlords and tenants. Tenants are at the mercy of land­lords at the moment. They have no recourse to justice and are liv­ing in what in Western countries are 19th century tenement style buildings with very poor infra­structure. As with the past, these conditions are not inevitable, but a consequence of greed by those who are setting up large build­ings with the explicit intention of cramming as many tenants as possible into small spaces while providing them with the least number of amenities. This kind of exploitative business model is unacceptable in a democratic sys­tem where citizens have rights, including rights to safe housing, clean water, and human dignity.

Meanwhile, by 2025, all water in Kathmandu should come from water harvesting systems and revival of traditional gravity-fu­eled wells. Fossil fueled water tankers must be phased out. Not only are we losing huge amounts of foreign currency earned abroad on ferrying water into the cities, we are also giving this money right back to the oil-rich Gulf states where our citizens are currently working in near bond­ed conditions, and to India which continues to control Nepal’s economy with a vice-like grip.

Australia is on fire. Who is to blame for the millions of acres burnt to cinder, the lives lost and properties destroyed, the almost half billion animals killed?Australia is a major producer and user of fossil fuel. Australia Energy Update 2018, from Austra­lian Government’s Department of Environment and Energy (ener­gy.gov.au), says coal, oil and gas accounted for 94 percent of Aus­tralia’s primary energy mix in 2016-17.

Sixty-three percent of elec­tricity was generated from coal. Out of this, 11 percent was from brown coal, a source of energy environmental activists have long opposed due to its harmful health and ecological effects. Coal min­ing releases methane, a potent greenhouse gas that is one of the main causes of global heating.

Scott Morrison, Prime Minister of Australia, brought a lump of coal to Parliament in 2017. He sang the virtues of coal and its links to Australian prosperity, and said: “Those opposite have an ideological, pathological fear of coal. There’s no word for ‘coalo­phobia’ officially, Mr. Speaker… but that’s the malady that afflicts those opposite.” Morrison, who critics say also cut funding for fire­fighters, was later seen enjoying his holiday in Hawaii as Australia went up in flames. Volunteer fire­fighters died trying to contain the massive fires.

Economic “growth” almost always leads to more stress on the environment, leading to worse economic conditions for people in the long run. The Australian economy grew by two percent in 2016-17 to reach $1.7 trillion. Ener­gy consumption was 6,146 peta­joules in 2016-2017 for 24.6 mil­lion people. To compare, Nepal with a population of 27 million consumed 428 petajoules in 2010. Assuming two million Nepalis are working abroad at any given time, and the population being roughly equal in size, an average Austra­lian citizen uses 14 times more energy than a Nepali.

It is clear Nepal needs to increase its energy use if we are to run industries and be self-suffi­cient in articles of daily consump­tion. But does Australia need to reduce its energy levels? Is there a balance between the First World and Third World that could be struck, which puts us somewhere in the middle?

Australia also has large tracts of industrial farming lands which are saturated with glyphosate, a herbicide first created by Mon­santo and now sold by Bayer. Glyphosate is used to desiccate crops after they’ve been cut. This means it’s an agent that dries out organic matter. Now imagine mil­lions of acres full of grain and stalks saturated with this sub­stance, drying out the land across an entire continent. How could it not catch fire?

Then there’s Bolsonaro’s Brazil, encouraging cattle farmers to set the Amazon on fire. Australia and Brazil are both in the Southern Hemisphere. In the map, they appear to be separated only by an ocean. In other words, they are upwind and downwind from each other. Without doubt, hot winds of Brazil’s Amazon fires played a hand in temperature increas­es in Australia. The firestorms look more like tornados than for­est fires, which suggest heated air currents.

Last but not least, there’s euca­lyptus. Although the literature assures us that eucalyptus is native to Australia, are there plantations that have been put together in neat rows by human hands which have dried out groundwater? In Nepal, this tree was introduced in the 80’s by the Australian aid agency. It quickly became known for depleting groundwater levels for miles around. A similar situ­ation developed in India where eucalyptus had been planted in plantations. Is there human agen­cy behind the reshaping of seem­ingly virgin land which created conditions perfect for water table depletion and drought?

Poignant photographs of chil­dren staring at dead koalas and kangaroos are making their rounds on Twitter. Many species of animals, birds and insects may never recover their population and go extinct after this cata­clysmic event. For those who are children or in their teens, there is a sense of a world lost which can never be recovered.

Which is why it was enraging to see this tweet from Exxon Mobil Australia: “Stay safe and have fun this new year, from all of us at ExxonMobil Australia.”

One person responded: “Jesus Christ this is pure evil.” Another said: “Exxon needs to be prose­cuted for crimes against human­ity. Blood is on your hands. #GreenNewDeal now.”

And this may be the only way to respond to this apocalyptic fire which has devastated an entire continent. Can ecological crimes finally be taken to the World Court of Justice, as another Twit­ter respondent suggested? Are the actions of big corporations not leading to genocide in many places, with people being affect­ed in mass numbers by climate triggered events?

In Australia, people are shifting out of homes and neighborhoods they may never return to in their lifetime. It will take decades for forests to revive and restore. Where will all these fire-affect­ed people go? Who will help them rebuild their lives? Surely it won’t be the fossil fuel cor­porations who made billions of dollars in profit, but paid zero tax to the country.

A sobering note to begin the new decade with, but we must remember Nepal is one of the most climate change-af­fected countries in the world. Our people are also being dis­placed, through the slow deplet­ing of glaciers, ice and spring melt in the Himalayas. Who is to blame?

A few weeks ago, I wrote an op-ed called “Disband the UN.” A former senior UN official wrote to me and said he disagreed with my thesis. Had I looked at the possibilities of reform within the UN? I explained that my reasoning went beyond looking at the possibilities of change within the UN—the time for that is long past.What I am asking for is a radi­cal re-haul of our contemporary financial system. This system is based on colonial underpinnings of Western countries exploiting the economies of the East, and forms a complex, invisible mesh of international financial modali­ties which underpins the present inequality of nations.

This drama of inequality is kept in place by a “fourth wall” which maintains the illusion, or a theat­rical play, of a just international system. This play is embodied by the likes of the UN (“the actors on the stage”), and the reality of twenty-first century poverty (“the spectators”). Much like a play, it is funded by benefactors which have political leverage and finan­cial clout, as we saw in the COP25 meet in Madrid last week. Protest­ers and advocates against climate change were the spectators, while the actors on stage maintained the fourth wall with the illusion of international legality.

As the COP25 drama unfold­ed, oil producing Qatar proudly tweeted its support of the UN, say­ing it is one of its biggest financial contributors. How can a system whose survival depends on the financial support of oil-produc­ing states be expected to pass a global fossil-fuel ban? Which is what the COP25 should have done—hand down a 2030 dead­line for the phase-out of explora­tion, extraction and distribution of fossil fuels worldwide.

Yale University’s E360 website published “The Plastics Pipeline” by Beth Gardiner on December 19, 2019. The article discusses how Exxon, Shell, Saudi Aramco and other big petroleum companies are gearing up for massive plas­tic production in expectation of lower demand for fossil fuel. A fracking boom has led to high pro­duction of ethane, and they need a way to dispose of this feedstock. Millions of tons of new plastic are in the pipeline.

Plastic is the most destructive product we have ever invented. It clogs up our waterways, soil and air. It is found in every living being on earth. Birds, whales and deer are found dead with their stom­achs full of plastic. Plastic should be phased out as soon as possible. We should not be talking about “recycling,” a feel good euphe­mism that rich people in the West use for dumping their trash.

UN Secretary General Anto­nio Guterres expressed his dis­appointment in the COP25 out­comes—but disappointment is an inadequate response for a crisis in which the survival of humankind as well as all of life on the planet is at stake.

It is clear that the planet can no longer be governed in this man­ner—with opaque financial net­works, TNCs and special interest nation-states dictating the terms of international policy and law. With the effects of climate change exploding across the planet and tearing through the lives of mil­lions of people, we can no longer ignore the reality of a handful of destructive corporations which have chosen to deceive people and destroy the planet.

Australia has been burning with bushfires for the past few months. About 7 million acres of land have gone in 2019 alone. Lyn Bender, a 72-year-old psychologist from Australia, writing in Independent Australia.net, says “The human race is engaged in a murder-sui­cide pact of gigantic proportions.” She states the old methods of grief management is no longer adequate for this moment: “As someone who has worked with grief and trauma, I now find the age-old concepts of grief man­agement hopelessly puny and inadequate. The enormity of the growing evidence of environmen­tal destruction is now unfolding worldwide.”

In Nepal, the Himalayas are melting with each passing year. Each winter is warmer than it used to be. A billion and more people depend on spring melt water from the Himalayas for drinking water, cooking, irriga­tion, washing, laundry, animal husbandry, and other daily needs. When snow no longer covers the mountains, there will be mass migration of people seeking more livable environments, as Marty Logan (“Mt. Everest is Melting: Are you Moved?” December 20, 2019) pointed out in the Nepali Times. We are already starting to see this in our lifetime.

With certain environmental apocalypse awaiting us in 30-50 years, it is genocidal to allow a capitalist system which sees petroleum profit as “wealth” to dictate what money is, what value it should have, how it circulates, and where it ultimately ends up. As a post in the Extinction Rebel­lion blog recently pointed out, the valuation of Saudi Aramco as the world’s most valuable com­pany literally equates planetary destruction as capitalism’s most profitable endeavor.

We need a radical overhaul of the financial mechanisms that underpin the inequality of nations. The Bank of Internation­al Settlements, the World Bank and the IMF, the opaque finan­cial committees and gatherings, all of this needs to be examined and disbanded. Why do some nations get to print trillions for war and trillions for their citi­zens, while other countries can only print enough to sustain starvation and death? Surely there is a fourth wall between “actors” and “spectators” here that we need to dismantle. Only then will we be able to halt our current lethal stride towards planetary destruction.

The UN was set up after WWII with good intentions. Fifty-one countries got together and entered a network whose aim was “maintaining international peace and security, developing friendly relations among nations and promoting social progress, better living standards and human rights” (UN website). Nobody could disagree with such a mandate.

But then cracks began to show in this ideal utopian vision. While the rhetoric assured the world that the unique international character of the UN meant it was open to all 193 member nations, it also stated: “The Organization can take action on a wide range of issues, and provide a forum for its 193 Member States to express their views, through the General Assembly, the Security Council, the Economic and Social Council and other bodies and committees.”

The Security Council is made up of 15 (mostly) wealthy countries which have used their muscle power to dominate and invade small countries. They also apply sanctions to nations that they deem rogue—although the criteria for a rogue nation appears subjective, at best. At worst, an objective observer may argue that the wealthiest nations have ganged up on regional powers because they don’t want them to dominate some capitalistic sector (energy, military, or otherwise) that they themselves have an interest to monopolize.

The workings of the UN is neo-colonial. Members of a monied bureaucratic class dominated by Europeans, North Americans, Australians and Japanese are posted to various outposts in the world. Through these postings, they tell the governments of various nations how to conduct themselves on all sorts of internal issues like governance, finance, justice, and security. Interference of this sort which would never be accepted by Western nations is meted out to Third World nations on a daily basis. These nations are seen to be intransigent if they refuse these 'favors'.

No questions are accepted on why a skewed economic system which allows Western nations to dominate financially continues to operate in the 21st century.

If we are to truly follow the spirit of the UN, we need to dismantle the current system and set up an alternate system of global governance. This new UN—let’s call it the United Planet—would prioritize environmental health of the Earth over military, economic or demographic superiority of nation-states. It would not see military might as the arbiter of authority, but would follow the spirit of liberalism, in which the equality of all human beings would be the touchstone for creating a just and ethical economic policy.

The work done by the UN has been exemplary in many regards. But in no way has it brought social change fast enough for the seven billion people who are suffering from lack of basic needs (food, housing, education, health, and a living, sustainable environment.) Urban poverty besets Western nations, despite talk of great wealth. Financial and monetary policies continue to favor the rich, with certain layers of society getting the crème de la crème access to credit and cash, while those at the bottom do all the work and get very little.

None of this is working, for either the rich or the poor. It was working well for the rich till the environment started to collapse and excessive exploitation of resources led to a planetary crisis. Even the very wealthy become subject to climate change, air pollution, and water shortages. There are expensive bunkers to retreat into, but in the end there is no escape as the collapse of biodiversity may wipe out all humans.

Our world is more unequal than ever, despite glowing optimism. Technology, including AI, rears its ugly head as a means of surveillance and state control. One war, one natural disaster, and millions of people can be displaced, starving, bonded to labor, trafficked, enslaved, with no oversight or system in place to stop such an event. We’ve seen such events in our lifetime—the Rohingya genocide, migrants risking their lives in dinghies to reach Europe, the slavery of African immigrants in Libya, the detention of children of Latin American families on America’s borders, the cultural erasure of Uighurs in China.

Technology has gotten a free pass for too long. It needs to be regulated with great oversight (although we have already opened a Pandora’s box.) Covert military programs will continue to misuse technology, on a scale we cannot imagine now. Any international organization that replaces the UN must be alert to this possibility. It must constantly seek to find and delete these fascist impulses.

What we need now is a radical new system to replace the old and outdated. The new union of governments will govern in a just and ethical manner, treating all nationals of Planet Earth with equal dignity. The new union will ensure fair distribution of money and resources, prioritize environmental protection over capitalistic gain, and reward simple living over excessive consumption. All of this will happen through a system of global governance which will replace entrenched systems of racial and gender inequality, nation-state dominance, and exploitation of capital and labor.

The MeToo Movement from women, Extinction Rebellion, Greta Thunberg and all the children of the world who call for an ethical deal on sustainability—all these movements point to a time in history when change is inevitable. Governance can no longer be left to a group of elderly men. We need to ask for, and get, a radical overhaul of the way governance is imagined, and conducted, on this planet.

There are many ways in which China and Nepal can sustainably co-operate and boost trade both ways. Healing herbs have always been a major export from Nepal’s mountain areas, especially the Karnali. Nepal needs to regulate the trade and give back the benefits of this trade to local communities. Right now, it requires a license to harvest the herbs. Indian businessmen who pay for the license can legally harvest while the locals can be prosecuted for picking herbs from their own forests. This system must be dismantled and greater autonomy given to locals to steward and sustainably harvest their own forest resources. 

China’s traditional healing herbs and medicines are world-class, and Nepal can learn a lot from them. Our government should request the Chinese government to provide an exchange program which trains people in acupuncture techniques as well as traditional Chinese herbs so we can give low-cost traditional herbal alternatives to our people. Following a gruesome injury, I have gone to an acupuncturist and experienced first hand the wellbeing that comes from acupuncture. I have also seen people with paralysis and other life-crippling events recover in this healing center. 

China and Nepal should also work on ecological tourism, in which people are taught about the benefits of maintaining wild areas and wildlife. Without our forests and animals, we will not survive for long. Nature can do without humans, but humans cannot do without nature. We need to understand this and work towards rebuilding mixed forests which give importance to old growth trees. 

The trees of Kathmandu have been decimated, killing thousands of old growths in road expansion programs. We faced the consequences of those actions including an epidemic of dengue, which is spread by mosquitoes.

Everyone from the Mayor to our most valued doctor Sanduk Ruit came down with this disease. The mosquito’s natural predators, including dragonflies, birds and bats, all live in green areas, and with cement and asphalt everywhere, Kathmandu is prime “real estate” for mosquitoes to breed in. We know the wages of ecological sin is death, and in current scenario of climate change it might quickly become mass death unless the environment is given top priority. 

Kathmandu needs to reforest itself quickly, and that means picking the right species of hardwood tree (not the tropical palm trees that the government quickly planted along President Xi’s route from the airport). Of course a two year old tree will never exhale the thousands of tons of oxygen a stand of century-old old growth trees give out, but at least it would be a start towards thinking about a more sustainable city. 

China should think about how it could support Asian cities to re-green, not just concretize. Concrete is turning out to be an unviable material due to the way we have recklessly destroyed mountains for lime and riverbeds for sand. China should also conduct research on green building materials which are sustainable and which do not harm the environment. 

The one area in which Nepal could support China is in helping it adopt its very successful community forestry model. Nepal has been in the news as one of few countries where the total landmass of forests is increasing. This is not just due to mass migration of people from villages into cities (although that is a factor), but also because of an extremely successful community forestry program that been operational since the late 1970s. Late King Birendra’s “Hariyo Ban, Nepal Ko Dhan” (Green Forests are Nepal’s Wealth) program was instrumental in this reforestation in Nepal. 

As the global economy slows down due to the disruptions of climate, there has to be new ways to think about creating prosperity. The old model of relentlessly pumping out objects and materials toxic to the environment and harmful to living things has to change, if industries and economies are to survive. 

China can play a key role in this moment. It has the capacity to quickly shift to new, green materials, as it has shown with its manufacture and adoption of electric vehicles which outnumber those in Western economies. China’s solar industries are the best in the world, and Nepal should also court solar power and electric vehicle support to Nepal, not just focus on stalled hydropower. We should lobby for a government exchange program in which Nepali engineers are trained in solar and EV technologies in China.

President Xi’s visit was a prestigious moment for Nepal, for whom both its giant neighbors are equally important. We were honored. Our cultural and historical ties are long, and will last through the ages. We should use this moment to think about long-term benefits for both to help the two citizens survive the turbulence of planetary and economic changes . 

This is the third and concluding part of the author’s three-part article on Nepal-China ties
 

There’s talk about “people to people exchange.” This is never entirely defined, other than in tourism. As a writer and filmmaker, I also want the Nepal government to formalize some agreement on intellectual copyright issues. How can Nepalis translate and get their works published in China with legal protection—other than by going through the circuitous route of an American or Western literary agency, which is currently the only option? How can we show our films in China in a way that makes it profitable for both sides? Currently there are no formal agreements between Nepal and China on intellectual property rights in books, films and music. This is something we should think about, as our young filmmakers are increasingly making better films and music videos. We should also be able to compensate the filmmakers in China by watching their films on the big screen, and not just on pirated DVDs.

A government exchange program which takes teams of Nepali filmmakers to China to expose them to their world-class filmmaking industry, including on short-term training programs, would be extremely welcome.

For women and young people all over the world, the viability of the planet and its survival has become a huge concern. China is a major emitter of greenhouse gases. Nepal must definitely raise this issue, including ways in which China could phase out coal and shift to clean energy. With global warming, we are losing our glaciers and Himalayan rivers. About 1.3 billion people (Nepalis and Indians) depend on these rivers for drinking water, irrigation and livelihood. They are also sacred to Hindus. We cannot afford to lose these rivers. What can China do to offset its carbon footprint so that we can slow down and stall the melting of the glaciers?

This brings me to plastic. China has long depended on the plastic industry to boost its exports and create the new wealth which has uplifted its population. However, plastic can no longer be the material on which China builds its prosperity. Plastic’s impact on people, animals, birds and all living creatures is now well-known. We are being inundated with this material which neither biodegrades nor provides any value to soil, air and water, other than causing their desecration. China has to move away from plastic as its backbone, and look for new materials that ideally nourish the soil and air, or at least do not cause harm. It has already stopped the import of plastic waste from America and other countries, citing pollution. Now it needs to stop the manufacture of plastic, and quickly reinvest in new green options to stay ahead in the plastic alternative game.

I was at my local shop the other day when a young teenager walked up with one of those disposable coffee containers ubiquitous in the West, but which we hadn’t seen in Nepal so far. Now with Chinese goods being sold through websites, we are seeing these lethal objects in Nepal. The only way to dispose of these single-use plastic containers is to incinerate them. This contributes to Kathmandu’s deathly pollution, as well as to the region’s global warming. This has to stop, on both a moral and ethical level. This is not development or prosperity. This is madness. We are destroying our future generations when we choose these materials as our base.

In addition, there are several points of disagreements which Nepal as a democratic country has with China. We cannot support the kind of state-endorsed surveillance commonplace in China. People should not be monitored by these surveillance programs—this is a fundamental violation of people’s rights to privacy. These surveillance technology are now commonplace in Hong Kong as well, which is alarming.

China must resolve its differences with Hong Kong peaceably, including respecting the terms and conditions with which Hong Kong was handed over by the British. In addition, Nepal cannot support China’s treatment of the Uighurs. These programs of coercion and indoctrination must end, and programs which encourage Uighur youths to start small businesses and move away from radicalization must be put in place instead.

Also Nepal cannot support any program of extradition which may affect Tibetans. Tibetans who came as refugees are one of Nepal’s most hardworking communities, tirelessly bringing in the foreign exchange through the many entrepreneurial ventures that they run. The biggest export from Nepal to China may be Tibetan hand-knotted carpets. Tibetan Buddhist teachers run religious institutions and give lectures on Buddhism which also attract many international visitors, including many from mainland China. Nepal, as a country dependent on tourism, sees them as a valuable part of national life, not just due to their contribution to the economy but especially for their role in keeping alive the Buddha Dharma. They are valued citizens and we cannot put them at risk in any way.

This is the second of a three-part article on Nepal-China relations

There is a lot of talk of infra­structure in Nepal-China dealings, as was the case during President Xi Jinping’s recent Nepal trip. There is the trans-Himalayan railway, a much desired infrastructure project after India’s blockade on Nepal. There are hydropower projects of mega-scope, billions of dollars and thousands of megawatts, in the pipeline. China has always been a big builder of roads in Nepal, and with the BRI this is definitely in the equation. Invest­ment in cement factories is also a big one.As we invest billions of dollars every year on roads that wash away each monsoon, the viability of roads in mountain areas has become even more questionable to me as the years progress. It is clear ropeways, which require much less invasive infrastructure and which can be quickly rebuilt in the case of a natural disaster, has been neglected and wiped off the Nepali policy map for decades.

We need to revive the idea of goods-carrying ropeways, which in the long run may be more sus­tainable and viable than a railway through extremely mountainous areas of Tibet and Nepal. The cost of maintaining a railway would be astronomical. Nepal will be stuck with a White Elephant which takes us more money to maintain than it brings in. There is no doubt the lines would erode over a few win­ter seasons and which may never repaired later, due to Nepal’s lack of trained technicians. A ropeway on the other hand would always be operational, and require mini­mal maintenance.

Our main goal is to bring and take goods, not people, from Chi­na. After I saw a Chinese man in a motorcycle with a Chinese num­ber plate and army costume wan­dering in Dhulikhel, it occurred to me that bringing in people from the border areas might not be such a great idea. We should limit tourism to high end and middle class tourists who come by plane.

Hydropower projects, especial­ly on the mega-scale that China is talking about, is contested for environmental reasons. Nepal has fragile mountains, whose ecology has to be carefully stewarded. Nepal is also a democratic coun­try and it’s not easy to empty habited lands—the lands have to be bought, and with speculators rushing to the proposed sites and buying up land cheaply from vil­lagers, the government is faced with a big gold-rush crowd waiting to cash in on their dividends when the hydropower projects com­mence. This means more costs for Nepal, and which is one of the issues which stall these projects. All of these have to be resolved before the projects can be put in operation.

With global climate change and rivers running dry, the other due diligence that Nepal should do is look at how viable these projects will be in 20 or 30 years, when we may have much less water due to climate change melting our gla­ciers and ending the spring melt which feeds the rivers.

A more viable policy issue to discuss with China in the day of climate change might be better management of Himalayan riv­ers, including ways to ensure their longevity. Also the two countries should discuss the pos­sibilities that those rivers could one day dry up, leaving a lot of highland communities with very little water. How would they sur­vive?

What are indigenous local methods of water conservation which could stall this possibility? How can China support those initiatives so that rivers are con­served on both sides of the bor­der? These sustainable conserva­tion issues should also be on the agenda, although they are not as glamorous as the prospect of a huge hydropower dam.

Nomadic communities on both sides of the border should be able to graze their sheep and yaks in the way they have done for centu­ries. These indigenous people are the stewards of the land, and they know how to keep the ecology in balance. They should be treat­ed with respect and acknowl­edged for their knowledge of stewardship.

This is first of a three-part article on Nepal-China relations