Project In Nepal Research Articles

Conflict dynamics in a dam construction project: a case study

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to present a model for a comprehensive and integrated approach to managing interface conflict from the early stages of a dam construction project.Design/methodology/approachA case study methodology is adopted. Following comprehensive literature review, qualitative data were gathered from case studies through interviews conducted on the Middle Marsyangdi Hydroelectric Project (MMHEP) dam project in Nepal. Causal loop diagrams on the typical evolution of key indicators of interface conflict were then developed and a simulate‐able model of interface conflict was derived using system dynamic modeling technique. The model was then simulated to derive viable policies for future management of dam construction projects in developing countries.FindingsThe study reveals that interface conflicts at the construction stage of projects are caused mainly by lack of effective Environmental Impact Assessment, public participation and mutual consultation, on timely basis and accurate information from the early stages of projects. The system dynamic model is able to replicate general behavior of evolution of interface conflict in a dam construction project. Furthermore, the study explored three viable policies to avoid and minimize interface conflict in the construction stage of a dam project. The policies were tested and demonstrated to be useful in improving the value of projects to stakeholders. It is demonstrated that a combination of policies is better than adopting a single policy to stakeholder management.Originality/valueThe paper demonstrates the utility of system dynamics as a modeling tool for understanding the dynamics of conflicts on dam construction projects. The model should be helpful to policy makers on large projects, especially those likely to be subject to social and environmental conflict. Policies derived from the model have the potential of being used to assess and take proactive measures to manage conflicts effectively and efficiently from early in a project's life.

The Role of ICT Actors and Networks in Development: The Case Study of a Wireless Project in Nepal

AbstractThe role of ICT actors in the formation and extension of ICT4D projects is important. The actors through their extended network and aligned interest can enhance the effectiveness of the project which in turn enables socioeconomic development opportunities. However, few studies have been conducted to understand the role of these central players. The objective of this paper, therefore, is to address this knowledge gap by conducting a qualitative case study in the Myagdi district in the mountain region of Nepal. In this study we explored the Nepal Wireless Networking Project (NWNP) and examined how an activist started it from one mountain village and gradually extended across more than 150 villages. The formation and extension of information and communication technology for development (ICT4D) projects goes through different phases of identification of relevant ICT actors, roles, negotiations, and their interest alignment. To understand the various phases, we employed Actor‐Network Theory (ANT) and explored how a social activist, in the midst of challenges, initiates the wireless project to facilitate educational and healthcare services to the mountain regions. In continuum, the study found how the activist identified relevant actors and enrolled them to form a network of aligned interest. The study also identified several challenges such as high illiteracy rate, over dependency on focal actor, and poor physical infrastructure that may impede the network building process. Furthermore, we identify some implications for research and practice based on insights from the case study.

National Scale-up of Zinc Promotion in Nepal: Results from a Post-project Population-based Survey

The World Health Organization and the United Nations Children's Fund recommend using a new oral rehydration solution (ORS) plus zinc supplementation for 10-14 days for the treatment of diarrhoea in children aged less than five years. The Social Marketing Plus for Diarrhoeal Disease Control: Point of Use Water Disinfection and Zinc Treatment (POUZN) project in Nepal was one of the first zinc-promotion projects to move beyond pilot efforts into a scaled-up programme with national-level reach. This study used data from a survey conducted in 26 districts in Nepal in 2008 to examine zinc-use behaviour, knowledge, and beliefs of caregivers of children aged less than six years, other diarrhoea-treatment practices, and recollection of project communication messages. The results of the survey indicated that, by six months following the onset of a zinc-promotion campaign, the majority (67.5%) of children (n=289), aged less than six years, with diarrhoea were treated with ORS, and 15.4% were treated with zinc. Over half (53.1%) of all caregivers (n=3,550) interviewed had heard about zinc products; most (97.1%) of those who had heard of zinc knew that zinc should be used for the treatment of diarrhoea. Zinc-related knowledge and behaviours were positively associated with recall of communication messages. Children whose caregivers recalled the mass-media message that zinc should be used for 10 days [odds ratio (OR)=2.02, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.85-2.19] and whose caregivers perceived that zinc is easy to obtain (OR=1.76, 95% CI 1.49-2.09) were more likely to be treated with zinc for 10 days, along with ORS. The findings demonstrated that mass media play an important role in increasing caregivers' knowledge about zinc and encouraging trial and correct use. Future efforts should also focus on understanding the factors that motivate providers to continue recommending antibiotics and antidiarrhoeals instead of zinc. These findings are being used for informing the design and implementation of zinc programmes in other developing countries with a high prevalence of diarrhoea.

Determination of Significance of Environmental Impacts of Development Projects: A Case Study of Environmental Impact Assessment of Indrawati-3 Hydropower Project in Nepal

The environmental impacts are commonly quantified in the EIA studies by rating, ranking and scaling. The National EIA Guidelines, 1993, Nepal provides a guideline to score the impacts in terms of magnitude, extent, and duration. This step is commonly known as impact prediction in the EIA process. The predicted scores are multiplied by the weightage value of the resource; likely to be affected. The application of the weightage transforms the predicted values of the impacts into their “significance”—a concept used in the environmental decision making. In other words the significance value entails assignment of relative judgment values to the impacts. The impacts, thus, can ranked based on their significance. The impact ranking is more useful in evaluating the socio-economic impacts. Unlike air, water and noise quality, which can be assessed against established standards; the socio-economic impacts do not have standard scale and are difficult to rank. Importance weighting of socio-economic impacts are commonly determined by the consensus obtained from the interaction with the local people, agencies, NGOs and experts. The impact ranking in the EIA process is unavoidable, firstly to prioritize the urgent environmental issues and design mitigation measures accordingly and also provide coherent linkages among the issues, and plan monitoring and auditing linkage with the proposed mitigation measures. Furthermore, it also provide strong basis of decision making, and thus facilitate the decision makers. The process of impact prediction, determination of significance and ranking were applied in the EIA of Indrwati-3 Hydroelectric Project, which is one of the successful cases of EIA in Nepal. The authors believe that the impacts predicted and quantified through this method are being focussed to more on the local concerns, since it seeks an active involvement of the local people who are likely to be affected.

The Role of Interpersonal Communication in Preventing Unsafe Abortion in Communities: The Dialogues for Life Project in Nepal

Legal, procedural, and institutional restrictions on safe abortion services—such as laws forbidding the practice or policies preventing donors from supporting groups who provide legal services—remain a major access barrier for women worldwide. However, even when abortion services are legal, women face social and cultural barriers to accessing safe abortion services and preventing unwanted pregnancy. Interpersonal communication interventions play an important role in overcoming these obstacles, including as part of broad educational- and behavioral-change efforts. This article presents results from an interpersonal communication behavior change pilot intervention, Dialogues for Life, undertaken in Nepal from 2004 to 2006, after abortion was legalized in 2002. The project aimed to encourage and enable women to prevent unplanned pregnancies and unsafe abortions and was driven by dialogue groups and select community events. The authors' results confirm that a dialogue-based interpersonal communication intervention can help change behavior and that this method is feasible in a low-resource, low-literacy setting. Dialogue groups play a key role in addressing sensitive and stigmatizing health issues such as unsafe abortion and in empowering women to negotiate for the social support they need when making decisions about their health.

Rhetorical routes for development: a road project in Nepal

Rhetoric is adopted in this paper as a lens to look at the claims made by a road-building project in a region of Nepal characterised by ‘remoteness’ and underdevelopment. The notion that the road connecting to the infrastructure on the Chinese side of the border will improve the livelihoods of the poor on the Nepalese side is discussed with a range of people in different villages along the proposed route. By attending to vernacular articulations of poverty and globalisation, it is argued that a method of rhetorical sensibility offers greater ethnographic value for understanding development's entanglements with social life than does the notion of discourse.

Anne Mills—nurturing a generation of health economists

Anne Mills—nurturing a generation of health economists

Advocacy Strategies for Promoting Greater Consideration of Climate Change and Human Rights in Development Activities: The Case of the West Seti Hydroelectric Project in Nepal

Advocacy Strategies for Promoting Greater Consideration of Climate Change and Human Rights in Development Activities: The Case of the West Seti Hydroelectric Project in Nepal

Women's rights in climate change: using video as a tool for empowerment in Nepal

An innovative Action Aid-supplied project in Nepal has seen women's empowerment make rapid progress through the use of video discussions about climate change. In this exploration of the project, we ask what we can learn from the use of such technology, and consider the implications for international development agencies and their efforts to support women's rights.

Water rights of the head reach farmers in view of a water supply scenario at the extension area of the Babai Irrigation Project, Nepal

The farmer managed irrigation systems (FMIS) represent those systems which are constructed and operated solely by the farmers applying their indigenous technology. The FMIS generally outperform the modern irrigation systems constructed and operated by the government agencies with regard to the water delivery effectiveness, agricultural productivity etc., and the presence of a sound organization responsible to run the FMIS, often referred to as the ‘social capital’, is the key to this success. This paper studies another important aspect residing in the FMIS: potentials to expand the irrigation area by means of their proper rehabilitation and modernization. Taking the case study of the Babai Irrigation Project in Nepal, it is demonstrated that the flow, which in the past was used to irrigate the 5400 ha area covered by three FMIS, can provide irrigation to an additional 8100 ha in the summer, 4180 ha vegetables in the winter and 1100 ha maize in the spring season after the FMIS rehabilitation. The “priority water rights” of the FMIS part have been evaluated based on relevant crop water requirement calculations and is found to be equal to 85.4 million m 3 per year. Consequently, the dry season irrigation strategy at the extension area could be worked out based on the remaining flow. By storing the surplus discharge of the monsoon and autumn in local ponds, and by consuming them in dry period combined with nominal partial irrigation practice, wheat and mustard can be cultivated over about 4000 ha of the extension area. Furthermore, storage and surface irrigation both contribute to the groundwater recharge. The conjunctive use of ground, surface and harvested water might be the mainstream in the future for a sustainable irrigation water management in the region.

The Dynamics of Social Inequality in the Kali Gandaki ‘A’ Dam Project in Nepal: The Politics of Patronage

This research article utilizes concepts from the ‘Anthropology of Clientelism’ to explain the dynamics of social inequality after the construction of the Kali Gandaki ‘A’ hydroelectric dam project. As Nepal’s rural societies are largely agrarian, Scott’s (1976) moral economy theory, positioned against Popkin’s (1979) political economy approach acts as the basis of argumentation of how patronage politics links the different social strata at the local level. The access to the KG ‘A’ project resources (financial in terms of compensation and project employment and natural in regard to access to land and water) and the acquired outcomes explains the strategies that local actors took to gain from the project intervention eventually changing the dynamics of social interaction and levels of inequalities internal and external to their own social groups.
 
 Key words: Dam, clientelism, compensation, Kali Gandaki ‘A’, patronage, resettlement, social inequalities, Nepal
 
 Hydro Nepal: Journal of Water, Energy and Environment Vol. I, Issue No. 1 (2007) pp. 22-28

Film review: Sita, A Girl from Jambu

Children, Youth and Environments Vol. 17 No. 4 (2007) ISSN: 1546-2250 Film review: Sita, A Girl from Jambu Illène Pevec University of Colorado Citation: Pevec, Illène. (2007). "Film review: Sita, A Girl from Jambu." Children, Youth and Environments 17 (4). Retrieved [date] from http://www.colorado.edu/journals/cye/ Producer, co-writer, director, editor: Kathleen Man Released: 2006 In Nepal, 7,000 to 10,000 children, mostly girls, are kidnapped or lured into the sex trade and sold into brothels in India each year. Nepalese girls from small villages live lives of hard work gathering fodder for livestock, carrying water, tending crops, children and households. Men, pimps for the brothels of India, lure the girls with promises of fame and easy work as actresses or models. Sita, A Girl from Jambu, filmed entirely on-location in Nepal, introduces us to one such girl and her tragic and all too-common tale. Kathleen Man, the producer, director, editor and co-writer with the children in the cast, worked with the Free A Child Bitali Project in Nepal (www.freeachild.org) to develop and film this documentary. The cast comes from a girls’ street theater company, part of the Bitali Project, which exists to heighten awareness of this danger to girls as young as ten in rural areas of Nepal. Facilitators work with the girls to help them write scripts and songs, to perform dramas at market places—literally in the streets—to alert girls and their families to the constant danger of the sex trade. The girls call their street play Bitari Sita (Poor Sita). The film moves deftly from street theater to film story and back again to show the contrast of young girls having fun together working on a creative project performed in their community market places, to the treachery and fear that awaits thousands of girls trapped in the international trafficking of children for sex. The girls in the street theater program, young teens from the community with no training 443 in drama before their participation in this project, wrote not only the script but also the songs they sing. The original soundtrack won an award at the Moondance Festival. This award-winning video highlights a problem infamous in the Nepal/India border region. But Free A Child has also worked in Denver, Colorado since 2006 because homeless teens in the U.S. are also at risk of being solicited into the sex trade. These frightening problems affecting children also exist in countries considered to be “developed.” Man’s film brings the child-sex trade problem into vivid color for international audiences, and gives those showing it the opportunity to tie it to local information, lest people think only far-away places harbor such crimes. Development organizations, schools, youth groups, and teachers, can use this vivid and touching portrayal of children trapped in a cycle of poverty, ignorance and constant danger to heighten awareness and stimulate discussion. Sita, A Girl from Jambu has won Jury Award for Best Documentary at the University Film/Video Conference at Chapman University, CA; an Award of Commendation by the jury of the Society for Visual Anthropology/American Anthropological Association Film and Video Festival (SVA/AAA); Best Documentary and Best Score at the Moondance International Film Festival in Hollywood; and Best Documentary at the Bare Bones International Independent Film Festival in Muskogee, OK. From Salmon Film’s websitehttp://www.salmonpictures.net/links.html, downloaded July 10, 2007: Currently, Kathleen is co-directing and editing a feature-length documentary entitled Beauty Mark, a film that examines American society’s obsession with unattainable beauty and perfection. Kathleen was an Iowa Fellow at the University of Iowa, where she received an M.F.A. in Film and Video Production and an M.A. in Communication Studies. At YaleUniversity, she received a B.A. with honors and distinction in Film Studies and the Howard Lamar Prize in Film Studies. Kathleen has been a professor of film production in the Film Studies Program at the University of Colorado at Boulder 444 since 2001, where she teaches fiction and documentary filmmaking, directing, cinematography, editing and screenwriting. In Fall 2007, Kathleen will join the faculty of the...

The Case of the Radio Communication Project in Nepal: A Culture-Centered Rejoinder

The authors set out to examine the claim made that the Radio Communication Project in Nepal provided a participatory platform for community members and demonstrated using the culture-centered approach that so-called participatory health education efforts such as the Radio Communication Project are not too different from the top-down models of health education in the realm of opportunities of democratic participation of communities. The culture-centered approach interrogates the logic of success as defined within the realm of effectiveness of health education programs and it suggests that we seek out alternative paradigms for constituting and evaluating health education efforts. The goals of the culture-centered approach are to examine the ways in which health education and promotion efforts respond to the needs of the community and the extent to which community members voices are present within the discursive space; the key element here is the identification of community needs as articulated by the members of the community through the active participation of community members in dialogical platforms where they have opportunities to voice their concerns. (excerpt)

The Radio Communication Project in Nepal: A Culture-Centered Approach to Participation

Considerable research has been conducted on the topic of entertainment-education (DD), the method of using entertainment platforms such as popular music, radio, and television programming to diffuse information, attitudes, and behaviors via role modeling. A significant portion of the recently published EE literature has used the example of the Radio Communication Project (RCP) in Nepal to demonstrate the effectiveness of EE and to argue that EE campaigns can indeed be participatory in nature. In this project, we apply the culture-centered approach to examine the discursive space created by the RCP and its claim of being participatory, A critical examination of RCP discourse brings forth an alternative lens for approaching RCP and its participatory claim.

Community Participation, Cultural Discourse, and Health Education Projects in Developing Areas: The Case of the Radio Communication Project in Nepal

Early entertainment-education programs based on the diffusion of innovation model were relatively unconcerned with community participation. New information and technology in health and agriculture was communicated from one group of elites to another. The indigenous or local elites were the targets for these programs because it was assumed that their education socioeconomic status and other resources made them innovators. When a new concept or product from an industrialized donor was transferred to them they quickly implemented it. Furthermore it was believed that the innovation would diffuse or trickle down to the lower strata of the developing nation and ultimately everyone would benefit. As social scientists documented the limited benefits in developing societies of top-down education programs local and international policy makers called for a more participatory approach. When fully implemented this meant community participation in a health education projects goal formation method of delivery and evaluation. Dutta and Basnyat (in press) provide us with an insightful and comprehensive critique of a United States Agency for International Development (USAID) entertainmenteducation program The Radio Communication Program (RCP) in Nepal which has been reported to be highly participatory. Despite the contention that this family planning project was built from the ground up with the full participation of rural Nepalese the authors using a conceptually based critical approach make a convincing case that the entertainment-education project was in reality a oneway hierarchical project primarily generated by national elites and foreign donors. This analysis is derived from the culture-centered approach to participation which assumes that community members and health educators are equal contributors to a project including joint participation in problem definition goal specification intervention development and evaluation. (excerpt)

Design Errors: Inefficiency or Carelessness of Designer?

Design defects are experienced in many projects; the difference is only in the extent of occurrence. This technical note discusses a design error case in a building project in Nepal, where the designer made the wrong assumptions in roof treatment work for waterproofing as well as for heat insulation purposes. From the investigation of the problem, it was found that the waterproofing polymer was not applied directly over concrete slab top. Use of heavy concrete block as a heat insulation material also helped to increase the leakage problem. The problem evoked loss of prestige for project officials, the design consortium, and the contractor.

DESIGN ERRORS: TRAGIC FOR THE CLIENTS

This paper discusses a design error case in a building project in Nepal, where the designer made the wrong assumptions in roof treatment work for waterproofing as well as for heat insulation purposes. Due to the design error, the project had faced profound roof leakage problems over 6000 sq. meters building area. The worst case was that the instructors and the students had to conduct training programs under the leaking roofs. Water proofing polymer not applied directly over concrete slab top and use of heavy concrete block as a heat insulation material were found to be the technical causes of roof leakage. However, carelessness from designer and supervisors also was profound for the leakage. The paper concludes with the lessons to be learned from the problem.

Problems of Nepalese hydropower projects due to suspended sediments

Nepal has high potential for hydropower due to glaciers in the Himalayas, regular monsoon rain and local topography. Himalayan Rivers contain large quantities of sediment with hard abrasive particles, which is a hurdle for the economic exploitation of hydropower resources. Erosion of the earth's surface takes place because of influence of climatic, tectonic and human activities. Almost all the power plants in the Himalayan region are affected by excessive sediment in rivers that reduce the life of plants either by filling reservoirs or by erosion of turbine components. The design and operation of headwork components in hydropower plants can only manipulate sediment particle size and hence only sediment concentration in the water. The erosion of hydraulic machinery depends on eroding particles, that is, their size, shape and hardness; on substrates, their chemistry, elastic properties, surface hardness and surface morphology; and on operating conditions, velocity, impingement angle and concentration. The shape, size and mineral content of sediment vary at different locations of the same river system depending on distance traversed by particles, gradient of the river and the geological formation of the river course and catchment areas. The Khimti hydropower project in Nepal represents a typical high head power plant in the Himalayan River that is affected by river sediment. Erosion tests of turbine material carried out at Kathmandu University revealed the dependence of erosion rate on mineral content. The erosion tests have shown trends relative to the quartz content present in samples from river basins in different parts of the country. There was some indication that the shape of particles had some effect. Sediments in the hydropower projects are normally considered as a burden, but there is scope for industrial use of these sediments.

Stimulating policy debate on blood transfusion services through the work of an emergency obstetric care project in Nepal

Purpose To improve the quality and accessibility of emergency obstetric care (EmOC) at district level. Methods As the availability of safe and reliable blood transfusion services is a critical component of EmOC, financial and management support was provided to the blood transfusion service centers in the 3 project's Phase 1 districts. Evaluation An evaluation after 3 years showed that, with modest financial outlays and the development of supportive district level partnerships, substantial improvements in quality and management of services had been achieved. The evaluation also identified limitations imposed by lack of legal frameworks and central support; although the Nepal Red Cross Society has a government mandate to supply the national blood needs, the operating procedures and guidelines have no legal base. The evaluation report was widely circulated, and the findings used in national policy discussions. Results Following this a task force was commissioned to develop a legal policy framework to ensure standardized quality blood services with defined management and monitoring roles and responsibilities.

An economic reappraisal of the Melamchi water supply project - Kathmandu, Nepal

This paper examines whether the benefits of the Melamchi water supply project in Nepal are likely to exceed its costs, assuming that high-quality municipal water services can be delivered to households and firms in the urbanized part of the Kathmandu Valley. Monte Carlo simulations are used to explore the sensitivity of the net present value and economic internal rate of return calculations to a wide range of assumptions and input parameters. We find that extreme assumptions are not required to generate large differences in economic feasibility; quite plausible differences in the values of some key parameters can lead to large differences in the economic attractiveness of the project. The results reveal that the three most important influences on net present value and economic internal rate of return are: (i) the discount rate and discounting procedure; (ii) the magnitude of monthly benefits for households connected to the new water system; and (iii) the annual growth rate in monthly benefits of connected households after the project comes on line. Our contribution lies in illustrating, with an actual case study in a developing country, the degree to which cost-benefit calculations of large infrastructure projects are influenced by key economic modeling assumptions and input parameters.