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 On April 29 last year, Minister for Land Management, Coop­eratives and Poverty Allevia­tion Padma Kumari Aryal tabled the Guthi Bill in the upper house of the federal parliament. The intent was to regulate Nepal’s guthis—the cen­turies-old local associations that take care of cultural sites and temples—by effectively nationalizing both the private and public guthis.The proposed legislation met with stern protests from the valley’s Newar community, who look after most of the guthis. The protests grew with public support from across the country, snowballing into the largest mass movement after the second Jana Andolan of 2006. Two months later, the government was forced to withdraw the bill.

Concerns are high again as the government is planning to table a new guthi bill.

“We are trying to table it at the earliest. If things go as planned, we will present the bill in the current parliament session,” says Janak Raj Joshi, spokesperson of the Ministry of Land Management, Cooperatives and Poverty Alleviation. He says the ministry has been in constant touch with concerned people and organi­zations over the bill.

Minraj Chaudhary, the chairman of Guthi Santhan, the government body responsible for overseeing all guthis, seconds Joshi. “The ministry is frequently consulting guthiyars [trustees] and other concerned peo­ple on the new guthi bill,” he asserts.

But the ‘concerned people’ are not pleased.

Ganpati Lal Shrestha, a guthi campaigner, says the government has kept the stakeholders in the dark about the contents of the new bill. “It is true that the min­istry has organized meetings with us and other concerned bodies. But we haven’t been told what’s in the bill,” says Shrestha, conve­ner of National Identity Protection Joint Struggle Committee, a group that spearheaded last year’s guthi movement.

“We have asked the government to make the draft public before tabling it in the parliament. Surely, it’s better for everyone to know now than to see protests later,” Shrestha adds.

The committee has also warned the ministry not to call perfunctory meetings.

Last year’s bill drew widespread flak as soon as it was tabled. Sec­tions 23 and 24 of the bill were most problematic, as they allowed for a new commission to take away all the rights of guthis and their trustees. Protestors claimed the government was trying to erase the 1,500-year history of guthis by subverting the Guthi Sansthan. They thought the bill benefited only ‘land mafia’ at the cost of Nepal’s cultural heritage. The government, for its part, was unable to come up with a convincing answer on why the bill was tabled to start with. Guthiyar Gautam Shakya, who heads Kathmandu’s Kumari Ghar and Indra Jatra Management Committee, is unhappy with the gov­ernment’s hush-hush attitude.

“A few days back, the ministry had summoned the concerned bodies to discuss the bill. But we are yet to see the draft,” says Shakya. “We believe the guthi properties should be han­dled by guthiyars. The government should limit itself to the role of a guardian.”

Ministry spokesperson Joshi says rumors that the government would take away the guthis’ rights and assets are baseless. “The govern­ment has never thought of interfer­ing with their assets.”

Campaigners agree that the gov­ernment can help the guthis gov­ern themselves better—even with­out exercising total control over them. Social activist Anish Baid­hya says many people are misus­ing Guthi assets, “threatening our culture and identity. So we need some regulation to ensure transparency”.

“We should also be able to estab­lish new guthis,” adds Baidhya. “We recently had problems managing a new Ganesh Mandir. We wanted to do it through a guthi, but existing laws don’t allow that.”

He thinks that if their concerns are overlooked people will once more have no option but to protest. 

 ‘National security’ is perhaps one of the most nebulous concepts in statecraft. Broadly defined, and borrowing from US Legal, an American legal information provider, “it refers to the protection of a nation from attack or other danger by holding adequate armed forces and guard­ing state secrets.”According to US Legal, the term encompasses “economic security, monetary security, energy secu­rity, environmental security, mil­itary security, political security and security of energy and natural resources.”

Sticking with this broad definition of national security, many countries now consider climate change, which imperils the securities mentioned above, a national security threat and are stepping up efforts to cope with its adverse effects. That sadly is not the case in South Asia, and particularly in Nepal, even though the country is highly vulnerable to climate change-induced disasters.

The issue is frequently discussed among academic circles of South Asia, but not at the government or inter-governmental levels. In sharp contrast, the United States incor­porated climate change threats in its 2015 National Security Strategy. In 2019, the US Congress finalized the Climate Change National Secu­rity Strategy Act, directing “Federal departments and agencies to per­form certain functions to ensure that climate change-related impacts are fully considered in the develop­ment of national security doctrine, policies, and plans, and for other purposes.” Such focused attention on the security implications of cli­mate change has been missing in South Asia.

Our regional bodies like the SAARC and BIMSTEC also overlook this important aspect. For instance, the fourth BIMSTEC summit held in Kathmandu in 2018 expressed serious concern over environmental degradation. Its declaration talks about adverse impact of climate change and global warming on the fragile Himalayan and mountain eco-systems. But it stops short of recognizing climate change as a security threat. Likewise, the SAARC has an action plan on climate change but it too does not mention climate change as security threat for South Asian countries.

Elephant in the room

Climate change can result in large-scale loss of lives and homes. Besides inducing water scarcity and food and electricity crises, it could create fertile ground for terrorist groups and other criminals, posing obvious threat to national security. Floods, wildfires, and other disas­ters can contribute to social insta­bility and conflict in affected areas.

With this in mind, “we have finally incorporated the issue of environ­ment security and its link to national security in the recently formulated National Security Policy,” says Major General (Retd) Purna Bahadur Sil­wal, a member of a taskforce formed to draft the policy.

He bemoans the inadequate understanding of national secu­rity in government agencies, as climate change is still viewed exclusively through the lens of environmental degradation and natural disasters.

The national army should, Silwal argues, study potential threats of cli­mate change, ensure weather-resil­ience, and plan for the deployment of its personnel during climate-in­duced disasters.

The security forces would do well to prepare. In the future, cli­mate-induced natural disasters may put Nepal’s military installments and assets at risk. Climate change is also likely to affect the move­ment of security forces in times of conflict. The lives and livelihoods of rural folks have already been hit hard, which may lead to large-scale domestic or foreign migration, another potential source of conflict in these xenophobic times.

Maheshwor Dhakal, head of the climate change division at the Minis­try of Environment and Population, accepts that climate change is a seri­ous security threat. “Yet this fact is not reflected in government policy documents.”

Home truths

Perhaps Nepal is more vulnerable to a changing climate compared to other South Asian countries. Its glacier lakes may burst and cause floods, destroying infrastructure and people’s lives in lower lands. According to a report prepared by the International Center for Inte­grated Mountain Development (ICI­MOD): “One of the more spectacular effects of recent atmospheric warm­ing in the Himalayas has been the creation of melt-water lakes on the lower sections of many glaciers… many of these lakes have burst their natural retaining dams and moraines.”

The report recommends region­al-level meets of experts and leaders in order to develop a more coordi­nated approach to reduce the risk of glacial lake outburst.

All current institutional frame­works focus on disaster manage­ment, with the primary responsi­bility for it falling on the Ministry of Home Affairs and its disaster man­agement unit.

Krishna Prasad Oli, member of the National Planning Commission, also confesses to not seeing climate change as a security risk. “We have a disaster-risk reduction framework from the center to the grassroots,” he says. “Our official documents are yet to portray climate change as a national security threat”

Short answer: yes! But read on… Recently someone sug­gested I try Ethiopian cuisine. It came as quite a surprise that there was such a thing in Kathmandu. But I thought, well why not? Later I discovered the two ladies responsible for producing, what turns out to be delicious food, are in my Pilates class. The city is indeed small! Betty Attfield and, her business partner, Halima, both came to Nepal a year ago when their spouses transferred here. Both being from Ethiopia it didn’t take long for them to meet up and become friends. From this friendship, Addis Ethiopian Cuisine Kathmandu was born!

“Often I have found work in the countries we have been posted to but this is the first time I have been involved in food. We started Addis Ethiopian Cuisine more as a hobby and a way to intro­duce people to our culture,” states Betty. “We both pre­pare the food, but Halima is the real chef here.” So what exactly does Ethiopian food consist of? Like rice is central to Nepali cuisine, a flatbread known as injera is central to Ethiopian food. With a slight spongy texture and made of teff, a gluten-free grain found in Ethiopia, this bread is pre­pared in a way not dissimi­lar to an Indian dosa. Spread out over the plate, the food is both laid on the bread (like a banana leaf ) and scooped up with the bread (like a roti). The bread has a slightly tangy, lemony flavour as it is fermented. I wondered if teff was available in Nepal or was in imported? “We bring teff from Ethiopia but obvi­ously we cannot bring huge quantities. So we combine teff with millet from Nepal to make it go further. Halima is the expert on producing the injera,” Betty.

Wot is the collective name (like ‘curry’) of the spice-filled vegan and meat based stews which are then ladled onto the injera. Lentils, split peas, chickpeas, potatoes, carrots, cabbage, green beans and spices are found in the dif­ferent types of wot. Salads, spinach, kale and ayib (cot­tage cheese) are served as side dishes. The meat dishes can be chicken, beef or mutton. Somewhat like the masala used in Nepali dishes, berbere serves as the base for many of the wot. Berebere is a com­bination of powdered chilli and other spices. We find familiar spices in this cuisine such as cardamom, cloves, cinnamon, cumin and ginger, so as I was told, it is not so very different on the local pal­ate. Which might be one rea­son for its success. Although the chefs report it is mainly foreigners who come to eat their food. We should change that right now!

A traditional alcoholic drink is also available from Addis Ethiopian Cuisine – tej. Tej is a honey wine not unlike mead that you can still find in parts of the UK. Made of honey and gesho (as spe­cies of buckthorn) it is the gesho that gives it a slightly bitter, fermented taste. And like all good wine, the longer you store it the better and more potent it becomes! If you don’t like wine, then there is also Ethiopian cof­fee served black, in small cups, and in a traditional cof­fee ceremony. Halima roasts some coffee beans (Ethio­pian of course) in a pan and infuses the whole room with the aroma.

If you would like to try some of this unique, yet very popu­lar now in USA (according to the New York Times) because of its vegan and gluten-free properties, Halima and Betty can be found every Friday evening from 6pm at Top of the World in Jhamsikhel (and I loved the fact recorded Ethio­pian music is thrown in!) and at the Le Sherpa Saturday Market. Reservations should be made in advance for dinner as space is limited. 

For further information please see Addis Ethiopian Cuisine Kathmandu on Facebook.  

 The Monkey Temple restaurant over­looks the real Monkey Temple (the Swoyambhunath Monastery), and half of Kathmandu, from its property at Chakdol height, Swoyambhu, and the view is mes­merizing, especially in the evenings. Getting there can be a little tricky and we recommend using Google Maps to find the restaurant but when you do get there, the search will be worth it. Young­sters throng the cozy multi-cuisine restau­rant on weekdays as well as weekends to enjoy the servings of moderately priced food and the great view that the restau­rant offers. If you’re lucky, you’ll also have some good photos clicked by their in-house photographer for their social media pages.

PS: We know for sure that the Monkey Temple is a frequent hangout for one Nepali television actress. Who knows? You might just bump into her for a photo op.