Exploring a Human-Oriented Conservation Model in Nepal

Upon finishing the CC Block A course in Nepal, my venture grant plans had officially fallen through. I had proposed to study the effects of new road construction in the Himalayas, but my partner had bailed, and my budget had originally accounted for a local assistant to translate which I could no longer afford. The day before the course ended, I visited my professor in his hostel room, who seeing my state of disarray decided to make a call to one of his friends, a director at a conservation area in Eastern Nepal. It happened that this friend was leaving Kathmandu the next day, and would be open to taking me along back up to his headquarters. Thus it begins..

So it's 9am and I'm at one of the craziest intersections in the city, waiting for Jeep with a logo reading "National Trust for Nature Conservation." A towering backpack rests on my shoulders and I have a flip-phone in my pocket on which I'm supposed to get a call when they're 5 minutes away.

At 9:30am, a car flashes its lights and pulls up beside me. I get in and we head for the mountains.

The friend my professor had put me in touch with was named Madhu, a PhD biologist and director of Gaurishankar Conservation Area/Project (GCAP). During the six hours we meandered through the foothills of the Himalayas, I chatted with Madhu about his work, who at first impression possessed a friendly seriousness that was neither intimidating nor relaxing.

GCAP is one of 6 conservation areas in Nepal, among 20 total protected areas including national parks and other reserves. What sets conservation areas apart in Nepal is that they are owned and managed by a non-governmental organization established by a legislative act, called the National Trust for Nature Conservation, thus making their leadership ideally less susceptible to corruption.

My primary methodologies for this project were interviews and observation. Interviews with GCAP staff were conducted in English; all others were with the help of a translator. Observations were made primarily through interacting with people and space, rather than sitting back with a notepad. I thank a few key people for connecting me with their communities and making this kind of inquiry possible.

I spent four days at the headquarters, conducting in-depth interviews with staff in the mornings, exploring the small foothills town of Singati in the afternoons, and eating and laughing with the GCAP team in the evenings in the dining hall adjacent to the small building they all called home.

My essential question was: How do land management agencies and local communities work together to achieve conservation goals? The roots of what some academics have called “settler conservation” stem from the erasure of indigenous peoples, but in Nepal, indigenous communities are a vital and abundant presence in government-established protected areas. So how does Nepal reformulate the Western conservation paradigm to fit their reality?

One of the first things I noticed about the headquarters was that people were in and out all day. Locals were in the office talking to staff about anything from crop damage by wildlife, to reporting illegal logging, to requesting aid for a broken bridge.

Armed with western academic backgrounds in ecology and biology, the staff were constantly putting into motion processes of addressing indigenous communities’ needs, concerns, and goals, which were formulated through localized and traditional knowledge of the land and social dynamics. This site was a crossroads for two epistemologies to come together to create action.

The many conversations with GCAP staff left me with a ton of information that was simultaneously fascinating and overwhelming. I felt I needed to see the ideas I was digesting in action, as much as I desired the ice cold wind of the high Himalaya again on my face. So with my massive backpack and notebooks overflowing with scrawls, I caught a bus that wound its way up the road towards the Tibetan border, met my guide on the bank of the Tamakoshi River, and together, huffing up an endless meandering stairway, we began the ascent into the Rolwaling Valley of the eastern Himalaya.

My guide’s name was Nyima Sherpa, a member of the well-known Sherpa ethnic group. As we stumbled into Nyima’s native town of Simigaun on the first day, I felt overwhelmed and riddled with self-doubt: would I be able to interview people, would they even want to talk to me? Would they see me as an annoyance or an intruder?

But soon enough, I was met with an invitation to help on the field, as it was high season for planting millet. As I got kicked around to various jobs, from picking the soil with the men (not strong enough), to planting sprouts with the women (too slow...), to carrying baskets of sprouts strung from my forehead in traditional Nepali style (too dangerous!), to washing dishes after mealtime (well done), I began to understand that interacting and connecting with people was as fundamental to my research experience as anything else. Folks turned out to be incredibly welcoming because I was a novelty, taking genuine interest in their community.

After spending a few days in Simigaun "helping" out on the fields, drinking tea and chang (local grain wine) into the night over endless Nepali conversations, and getting lost on the trails that wove through backyards and terraces, Nyima and I took to the trail and spent a week backpacking to the top of the Rolwaling river valley and back.

Nyima knew most everyone in every village, and we stopped at each lodge on the way to drink tea and share long exchanges with friends. Every now and then, I was able to nudge Nyima enough to sober up from jovial conversation to translate some questions about GCAP and locals’ relationships with land.

Obviously I can't report everything I learned here. But I'll try to describe here some things I gleaned in the villages, mixed in with information I gathered from interviewing GCAP staff.

In the village of Dongang, we interviewed a lodge owner who told us about the assistance he had received from GCAP for agricultural developments like greenhouses. He expressed a lot of hope about GCAP's involvement in improving livelihoods in the valley. Rolwaling has gotten a lot of assistance from a variety of sources, including the Nepali government, NGOs, hydropower companies, and bilateral aid from Switzerland. GCAP is another source that locals can draw on, and it's perhaps the most immediate and prepared to address the needs of communities in the region.

What do livelihoods have to do with conservation? Especially in light of massive out-migration to cities, people’s needs are intimately tied with environmental needs; without robust communities present to care for what they consider their ancestral homeland, the land is vulnerable to exploitation by outsiders. GCAP's central goal is that people (basically meaning local and indigenous societies) should be the "primary actors and beneficiaries" of conservation, recognizing the inevitable link between economic, ecological, and societal health.

In Thangding, we talked with our lodge host about how GCAP had leveraged their political sway to create a legal means for exportation of locally harvested medicinal plants, which formerly involved a nearly insurmountable permitting process. Our host Aarati, pictured above in the doorway, possessed an intimate knowledge of the edible landscape, whipping up meals for us comprised of foraged mushrooms, bamboo shoots, tea leaves, and wild greens.

She also was a forager of medicinal herbs, the sale of which provided an important source of income for many families. Previously, the Ministry of Forestry presided over the land now in GCAP's jurisdiction, and they did not offer any help to locals with enabling legal sale of medicinal exports.

On another day, as I bushwacked up a densely jungled hillside following a snow leopard researcher retrieving a camera trap, I learned how these elusive cats were gradually inhabiting lower elevations, producing many uncertainties about how to respond to increasing livestock predation and conflict with humans.

The subject of human-wildlife conflict, particularly with snow leopards, was the most contentious topic I encountered, as locals blamed GCAP for these problems given their role in protecting the endangered species’ habitats. This produced some interesting questions for me: Where do human needs align with ecological needs, and where do they run contrary? It’s easy to romanticize about absolute harmony between indigenous societies and the environment, but the task of balancing the preservation of habitats and biodiversity with addressing human realities is actually much more complex.

Throughout the trip, people talked with me about how huge hydropower developments were taking place in the region, which often failed to deliver on their promises to offset the cultural and ecological impacts of their projects.

There are currently 66 hydro projects proposed or in construction within GCAP, and each of them is required to conduct a lengthy Environmental Impact Assessment, which includes collecting the requests of local communities as compensation for altering their ecosystems. GCAP also has a variety of requirements for companies to offset impact, including planting a certain acreage of trees, but both of these dimensions are difficult to enforce given widespread corruption in Nepal's government.

The final stop before we descended back down the valley was Tsho Rolpa, the world's highest moraine-dammed glacial lake. It was an incredible body of water to behold, but it's also known for being an intense flood risk for the area. As the glaciers that feed the lake recede, the lake fills up and the moraine that holds it back becomes increasingly unstable. Scary!!

Back in Singati, I revisited my central question: How do land management agencies and local communities work together to achieve conservation goals? I obviously felt and still feel unprepared to fully answer this question, but one idea stood out to me: GCAP seems to occupy the gap between indigenous knowledge and governmental authority. Much like many indigenous peoples across the globe, these communities are subordinated within a governmental bureaucratic system that they often lack the resources and capital to navigate or resist.

As a non-profit, GCAP is able to gracefully mediate between government, developer interests, and the needs of local communities. And what’s more, GCAP is actively trying to close the gap between indigenous and government power, by insisting on transferring increasing responsibility for governance of the organization into local hands.

The future of conservation is headed in a different direction than the "Yellowstone Model" model conceived generations ago in the U.S. The decolonization of conservation necessitates the involvement of indigenous peoples at the forefront of the movement, and the recognition that the wellness of human societies depends on the health of our ecosystems. It was very impactful to see these ideas at work in a conservation model different from the dominant one at home in the U.S.

The experience left me with the indelible impression that preserving biodiversity while ensuring the self-determination of indigenous peoples is one of the most urgent challenges of our world. And in the thick of this challenge, amidst the immense national pressures of corruption and extractive economies, the integrity of a few people trying to make a difference was incredibly inspiring.

THANK YOU to the Keller Family for making this experience possible.

Big love to Madhu Chetri, Nyima Sherpa, Professors Brot Coburn and Miro Kummel, the family of Shankar Sherpa for generously hosting me, GCAP staff for your time and friendship, and the communities of Rolwaling for opening your doors to strangers.