South Asian Nations Meet to Combat Climate Threat to Himalayas

South Asian nations are discussing how to prevent climate change in the Himalayan mountains, the world’s highest range, bringing more natural disasters to an area where 750 million people regularly face floods and drought.

“This is the first time these nations are coming under one roof or a comprehensive platform to discuss and fight climate change,” said Mani Muthu Kumara, senior environmental economist at the World Bank and one of the organizers of the meeting in Nepal’s capital, Kathmandu. There is an “urgency for the whole climatic dialogue.”

Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka will be represented in Kathmandu, Kumara said by telephone from New Delhi.

The Himalayan mountains are the source of India’s holiest river, the Ganga, the Yangtze River, China’s longest, Nepal’s main river, the Karnali, and Pakistan’s longest, the Indus. Melting glaciers will reduce the flow of water to these waterways, threatening health, agriculture production and power projects and may lead to food and water shortages.

The rivers “supply the world’s most densely populated flood plains,” according to a statement on the conference Web site. “Climate change is predicted to increase the variability and frequency of extreme events in ways that are outside the realm of experience.”

The Himalayan range stretches 2,400 kilometers (1,488 miles) across Bhutan, China, India, Nepal and Pakistan.

Copenhagen Conference

The two-day meeting, called “Kathmandu to Copenhagen” is a prelude to theCopenhagen conference in December, where an expected 192 nations will meet to replace the Kyoto Protocol. The accord set emission targets for developed nations and expires in 2012.

Fast-shrinking glaciers in the Himalayas and on the Tibet- Qinghai Plateau may soon reduce water in rivers that irrigate regions producing grains and rice, saidLester Brown, president of the Washington-based Earth Policy Institute, which studies environmental issues.

That may lead to food shortages and spark social unrest in China and more deaths from malnutrition in India, Brown said. Supply disruption in India or China, the world’s most populous nations and the top two producers of wheat and rice, could drive food prices higher around the world, he said.

Food shortages caused riots in Pakistan last year, a nation where, according to the World Bank, two-thirds of the population lives on less than $2 a day. Frequent drought, aggravated by a poor economy, weak infrastructure and food insecurity, poses a serious threat to communities in Afghanistan, the United Nations said in March.

Afghan Wheat

Afghanistan’s cereal harvest, especially wheat, will be the lowest since 2002 and the UN’s Central Emergency Response Fund has earmarked $1.5 million to distribute wheat seed for this year’s planting season. Last year, rising food prices left 1.2 million children under the age of five at risk of severe malnutrition, according to the UN.

Food, water and energy shortages threaten India’s future and these should be addressed on a priority basis, Indian prime minister’s security adviser,Shekhar Dutt, said on Aug. 27. Inadequate rainfall this year has led to a drought in as many as 278 of the nation’s 626 districts, according to the farm ministry.

Rising sea levels are endangering the Maldives, the Indian Ocean island republic and its population of about 390,000 people and could disrupt economic activity for about 100 million people living in the coastal belt of South Asia, according to the Kathmandu conference Web site.

Water Shortages

Water shortages will be the order of the day in the region if glaciers melt at the current pace, Purushottam Ghimire, joint secretary and chief of environment division in Nepal’s Ministry of Environment, said in a phone interview from Kathmandu. “Hydropower generation will start suffering in Nepal, India and then other countries.”

Of the 720 megawatts of electricity Nepal produces a year, hydroelectricity accounts for 650 megawatts, Kumar Panday, general secretary of the Nepal Hydropower Association said from Kathmandu.

“The main focus will be on the Himalayan issue,” Ghimire said. “There will be a Kathmandu declaration at the end of the conference.”

The Kathmandu conference, which include representatives from China, won’t have anything to do with the broader government negotiations on climate change, the World Bank’s Kumara said. Kathmandu is just a lead up to Copenhagen, he said.

India, China

India and China, the world’s two fastest-expanding major economies, are key to a successful outcome in Copenhagen. India wants the U.S., Europe and other developed countries to reduce carbon emissions by 40 percent from 1990 levels by 2020.

Both countries would have to “respond very positively” if rich nations such as the U.S. agreed on reducing the levels, Jairam Ramesh, India’s environment minister said on Aug. 25 in Beijing, after meeting with Xie Zhenhua, China’s top climate change negotiator.

Meeting India’s negotiating stance would entail an overhaul of climate change laws in developed countries. In the U.S., legislation passed by the House of Representatives sets the goal of a 17 percent reduction from 2005 levels by 2020.

Melting glaciers threaten 'Nepal tsunami'

Nepal —

Over two decades, Funuru Sherpa has watched the lake above his native village of Dengboche in Nepal's Himalayas grow, as the glacier that feeds it melts.

The 29-year-old, who runs a busy Internet cafe for tourists visiting the Everest region, remembers his grandfather telling him that 50 years ago the lake did not exist.

"Before, it was all ice," he told AFP in the eastern Himalayan town of Lukla, in the shadow of Mount Everest.

"This is proof that the glaciers in the high Himalayas are melting. And that must be because the temperatures have gone up."

Scientists say the Imja Glacier above Dengboche is retreating by about 70 metres (230 feet) a year, and the melting ice has formed a huge lake that could devastate villages downstream if it bursts.

The trend is not new. Nepal's International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), which has studied the Himalayas for three decades, says many of the country's glaciers have been retreating for centuries.

But ICIMOD glaciologist Samjwal Ratna Bajracharya said this was now happening at an alarming speed, with temperatures in the Himalayas rising at a much faster rate than the global average.

"Our studies of the past 30 years show that the temperatures (in the Himalayas) are rising up to eight times faster than the global average. Melting is taking place higher and faster," Bajracharya told AFP.

"The melting of glaciers and formation of glacier lakes is a key indicator of the temperature rise. And lately, we have seen massive ice melt."

Nepal has more than 2,300 glacial lakes and experts say at least 20 are in danger of bursting.

At almost one square kilometre (0.38 square miles), the Imja lake is the country's second biggest, estimated to hold 36 million cubic metres (47 million cubic yards) of water, and is considered the biggest flood threat.

It is a subject close to the heart of Nepalese mountaineer Apa Sherpa, who has climbed Everest a record 19 times.

In 1985 Apa Sherpa lost his house and farm when the Dig Tsho glacial lake burst, causing a giant wave to flow down the mountain.

Seven people were killed by the flood, which swept away bridges and houses and destroyed a new hydropower station.

"For me, climate change is personal," said the climber, who dedicated his latest Everest expedition to raising awareness of the impact of climate change on mountain communities.

"There's probably no one who can relate to this issue in the way that I can."

Information about how many people would be affected by a glacial lake bursting remains limited, but experts say the floodwaters could reach as far as Nepal's southern planes and beyond.

Environment secretary Uday Raj Sharma said last week the bursting of the Imja lake would be like a "Nepalese tsunami," comparing it with the 2004 Indian Ocean disaster in which around 220,000 people died.

The government has asked international donors for help in tackling the hazardous glacial lakes, which will be discussed at regional talks here next week aimed at highlighting the dangers climate change poses to the Himalayas.

But experts say there are no easy solutions.

The mountain communities most at risk are often reluctant to leave their homes, while draining the lakes is expensive and dangerous and does not always work.

Ten years ago Nepal launched a three-million-dollar project funded by the Dutch government to lower the water level in the country's biggest glacial lake, Tsho Rolpa, in the eastern Himalayas.

The lake had grown from 0.23 square kilometres in 1957 to 1.65 square kilometres in 1997 and threatened villages and a major hydropower plant under construction downstream.

Engineers cut a channel 70 metres long and seven metres wide into the side of the lake and successfully lowered the water level, reducing the risk of it bursting its banks.

But ICIMOD's Bajracharya said the project was expensive and had only reduced rather than eliminated the risk of a flood.

"We spent three million dollars without actually solving the problem," he said, calling on the government to focus instead on creating awareness programmes and early warning systems for communities at risk.

Pasang Omo is a father of three who lives in the village of Shomare in the eastern Himalayas, which experts say would likely be wiped out if the Imja lake burst.

He agrees that the government has not done enough to help the mountain communities most at risk.

"Everyone comes to us and tell us a Glacial Lake Outburst Flood will sweep through our villages. But it doesn't do us any good," said Omo, 45, who works as a porter for trekkers.

"It?s like telling someone they are sick but not giving them a cure."

Climate change causing food shortages in Nepal

Global climate change and its effects on crop production threaten the food supply of millions of people in Nepal, an international aid agency warned Friday.

Nepal will likely suffer more frequent droughts because of climate change, Oxfam International said in a report released in Kathmandu. River levels will decline due to the reduced rainfall and glacial retreat, making it harder to irrigate crops and provide water for livestock.

"The predicted impacts of climate change will heighten existing vulnerabilities, inequalities and exposure to hazards," the report said.

More than 3.4 million people in Nepal are estimated to require food assistance, and food stocks in farming communities will last only a few months, it warned.

Meanwhile, environmental activists from China and India gathered in Beijing on Friday, saying the rapid meltdown of glaciers in the Himalayas threatens the water supply for two billion people.

With 100 days before the climate change summit in Copenhagen, Greenpeace, unveiled 100 melting ice sculptures of children to symbolize the "disappearing future" of the people in Asia.

The melting sculptures were made from Himalayan glacier water from the source of Yangtse, Yellow and Ganges rivers, Greenpeace said.

Denmark conference critical

"A climate tipping point is unfolding in the Himalayas. The rapid melting of glaciers caused by global warming is jeopardizing the water supply for 1.3 billion Asians who live in the watershed of the seven great rivers that originate in the region," the environmental organization said on its website.

"If we cannot stop runaway climate change, babies born today — at this moment — will face a very different reality when they grow up, where water availability would be a serious problem."

Vinuta Gopal, a spokesman for Greenpeace, said politicians who will meet in Denmark will have a duty to reach a substantial agreement because the water supply for two billion people is vanishing.

"Unless world leaders take personal responsibility at Copenhagen to ensure we have a strong deal, we are consigning the planet to catastrophic climate change," Gopal said.

But both China and India have refused to accept binding emission-reduction targets to sacrifice their economic development, arguing that developed countries were able to pollute for years.

Nepal plans to lift restrictions on recruitment of maids to Mideast

Nepal is considering lifting a ban on the recruitment of housemaids in the Middle East, said Mohammad Aftab Alam, the Nepalese Minister of Labour and Transport Management.

Alam who is in Dubai for the third two-day Non-Resident Nepalese (NRN) conference, said this would being done to counter unregistered recruitment agencies who get Nepalese women to the Middle East via neighbouring countries India and Bangladesh.

However, key Nepalese participants at the conference were of the opinion that prior to lifting the ban on housemaids, their government should ensure that Nepalese diplomatic missions in the Middle East were given the capacity to assist to Nepalese housemaids who approach the embassy in times of need.

Nepal opened an embassy in the UAE in 2004. It was then headed by a Charge d'Affairs, but a year and a half ago, Arjun B. Thapa was appointed as the first ambassador to the UAE.

There are 125,258 Nepalese citizens in the UAE. Of this number, 75,000 are in Dubai.

"We are encountering certain problems because of the non-registered agencies in Nepal who target women from villages.

"These women, when they end in a problem, approach our diplomatic missions. We are unable to track down the culprits who were behind recruiting them in illegal manner.

"By lifting the ban we will be able to streamline the recruitment of housemaids to this part of the world and will also be able to bring their agents to book if we come across an irregularities," said Alam.

The NRN conference will also serve as a curtain-raiser for the Global NRN conference that is scheduled to take place in October in Katmandu this year.

Ambassador Thapa said its was difficult to check monitor the illegally recruited Nepalese housemaids in the Middle East.

He said the embassy had received cases and had tried to solve them.

"It is often the case [that] victims, when they approach us, do not even know who had exactly recruited and sent them here to the UAE. As a result we are unable to get to the culprits and refer them to the law," Ambassador Thapa said.

He also added that Nepal facilitates orientation programmes for its nationals who travel overseas for employment.

'[The] majority of Nepalese in the UAE are employed as construction workers, security guards and in the hospitality sector," said Thapa.

A Nepalese citizen has to pay 70,000 Nepalese rupees (Dh3,352) to accredited recruitment agencies to register for an overseas employment. This amount is fixed by the government.

Nepal villagers on climate change frontline

Nepal — Three years ago Naina Shahi's husband left their small village in rural Nepal to seek work in neighbouring India, leaving her to bring up their three children alone.

The dry winters and unpredictable monsoons Nepal has experienced in recent years had hit crop production on the couple's land plot in the foothills of the Himalayas, forcing them to look for other ways to feed their family.

For the past two years, their crop has failed entirely and Shahi now buys rice on credit from a local shopkeeper while she waits for her husband to return to their village with his earnings.

"My husband stopped farming because this place is not good for growing crops. We needed to earn money to feed the children," Shahi, 35, told AFP in the remote village of Bhattegaun in mid-western Nepal.

"There is not enough rainfall for the crops to grow well and we have to walk for two or three hours every day to get water."

International aid agency Oxfam says Nepal's changing weather patterns are threatening the livelihoods of hundreds of desperately poor communities already struggling to produce enough food to survive.

In a new report released Friday, 100 days before a conference in Copenhagen aimed at sealing an international accord on fighting climate change, Oxfam warns of the potentially devastating effects on people in the Himalayan nation.

"The majority of Nepal's population are poor farmers reliant on rainfall and occupying small parcels of land that can barely produce enough food for the family," it said.

"They often live in areas most at risk to floods and landslides and are more reliant on local natural resources such as forests and water.

"Even small changes to rainfall patterns can have devastating consequences on their crops," said the report, based on interviews conducted in rural communities across Nepal in February and March this year.

Almost a third of Nepal's 28 million people live below the poverty line and the UN's World Food Programme said recently there had been a "sharp and sustained decline in food security" in recent years.

It blamed a rise in food prices and a series of unusually dry winters.

This year Nepal's winter rains failed altogether, leading to severe water shortages and power cuts of up to 18 hours a day in the capital as hydro-electric projects struggled to meet demand.

There is no firm scientific evidence linking the winter droughts to climate change, and rapid population growth and a lack of development during the 10-year civil war have contributed to Nepal's rising food shortages.

But low winter rainfall and the late onset of the monsoons are in line with what climate change scientists have predicted for the region, and Oxfam says Nepal must act now to help its citizens adapt.

"There is no time to waste and nothing to lose," country director Wayne Gum told AFP.

"The government needs to do more to support local communities. Even if we're wrong about climate change -- and I don't think we are -- people will always benefit from better water management systems."

The residents of Bhattegaun, a settlement of around 150 mud huts deep in the forest, know little about the science behind climate change.

But they say changing weather patterns are already forcing them to change their way of life.

"These days, the weather is getting much hotter and the rains don't fall when they are supposed to," said 59-year-old Ram Bahadur Himal.

"Landslides washed away our last plot of land so we moved here and settled in the forest. We ploughed the land, but since we moved here, there has been no regular rainfall."

Most men of working age have left to seek casual work, leaving the back-breaking tasks of fetching water and firewood to the women.

Padam Bahadur Sunar works in India for between five and eight months of the year, earning up to 25,000 rupees (330 dollars) a month which he sends home to feed his parents and eight siblings.

The 31-year-old recently got married, but he will soon be forced to leave his new bride behind when he returns to his work as a driver on Indian construction sites.

"There has been less rainfall over the years and there is no irrigation for the farmland," he said. "Without going to India I wouldn't be able to feed my family."

Nepal abhors a vacuum

Yubaraj Ghimire in Indian Express

Political parties have not yet been able to elect the new chairperson for the constitution drafting committee of the constituent assembly. The post has been vacant for the two months since Madhav Kumar Nepal’s election as prime minister. Baburam Bhattarai, key ideologue of the Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist (CPN-M) has already announced his candidature, while 22 other parties, part of the government coalition, insist they must have someone from their side. The election, slated for August 17, was deferred by a week till Madhav Nepal returned from Delhi, but the stalemate continues; no date has yet been fixed. Bhattarai is certainly more qualified than most others in the pro-democracy parties. But doubts about the CPN-M’s commitment to the peace and constitution-writing process — and Bhattarai’s public statements, implying that ultimately the Maoists alone will decide the content of the new constitution — have weakened his case. But almost every political party agrees that without the Maoists neither the new constitution nor the peace process can be pursued to a logical end. And the Maoists refuse to respond positively.

Prachanda, under pressure from political parties at home and resentment from India, retracted his recent speech that he made in front of 700-plus cadres in a closed-door training session that blamed an Indo-US conspiracy for his ouster as PM. But both he and Bhattarai have been repeating the accusation of destabilising Nepal openly, which is bound to have an effect. Although India’s Nepal policy is being perceived as a failure — the peace process it mediated is faltering, democracy in a practical sense has failed to take root — India did tell PM Nepal that it was ready to extend any help its northern neighbour wanted on the peace and constitution-writing process.

But what will this mean when the country gasps in a political vacuum? A heavy toll has already been taken on the government’s authority. People are asking questions: will the constitution be done by the stipulated deadline of May 2011? Will the peace process move smoothly? If not, what will be the consequences at home and abroad?

Nepali Congress leader and former PM G.P. Koirala, largely credited with bringing the Maoists to the peace process, recently warned Maoists they may have to face the wrath of the state as did the LTTE in Sri Lanka and as Islamists in Pakistan currently do. The Maoists declared then that now that the monarchy’s fallen, the Nepali Congress is their biggest enemy and needs to be eliminated. Just as they managed to get every other party on their side while eliminating the monarchy, the Maoists may also try to unify all parties of the Left for the limited purpose of going against the Congress — a trend of the past three years. Koirala had refused to allow any debate within the Congress on whether to keep supporting the “constitutional monarchy” after Prachanda asked him “How can you become the first President of the Republic of Nepal without first removing the king”? Having accomplished that, the Maoists are now exploring another political equation: exploring Left unity with Jhalnath Khanal, chairman of the Communist Party of Nepal-Unified Marxist Leninist (CPN-UML), the party that PM Nepal belongs to. It has moved far enough to, say, form a government together, as Khanal does not command majority support within his party. But that has already weakened PM Nepal enormously.

If at all that happens, that will mean total isolation of the Nepali Congress, and a much more marginalised role in the peace and constitution-writing process. What many Nepal-watchers, including India, did not realise was that the removal of the monarchy in haste, without securing the Maoists’ firm commitment to not fiddle with the independence of the judiciary or media and to not politicise or demoralise the Nepal army, would lead to the power vacuum we see today. Filling it up appears difficult, if not impossible.

On India’s part, despite the initiative it took in bringing Maoists and the pro-democracy parties of Nepal together for peace and stability in the neighbourhood that obviously goes in its own interest, it failed on four counts clearly. That the Maoists, once they signed the 12-point agreement, will act like pro-democracy forces and shun violence, and that G.P. Koirala who took power from the king in April 2006 will act like a statesman, were the two major miscalculations. Third, India also underestimated the likely strength of the Maoists in its pre-election estimate — that they wouldn’t win not more than 20 of the 601 seat — and clearly, India also failed to gauge the growing presence and interest of China in Nepal as the resultant power vacuum prevails. Madhav Nepal is back with assurance from India of any support in the peace and constitution-writing process, but the power vacuum and the imminent parting of the Maoists and pro-democracy forces — partners in the promised peace and democracy — make things more uncertain.

Saving Tibet’s culture with education

In Tibet, there is a trail called the Kailash kora, which loops around Mount Kailash n revered in Buddhism, Hinduism and other eastern religions.

The path is 32 miles long. The journey n preferably done in a day n is said to give good fortune to the participants.

For Dianne Campbell, who made the journey in 2005, it gave more than that n it gave her new purpose in life.

Campbell, 67, moved to Bozeman in 1989. She had agreed to fly to Tibet for the journey after meeting a Tibetan monk from northern Nepal in a cafeteria in Colorado during a Buddhist seminar.

A friendship blossomed over several meals shared there, as the monk told Campbell about the plight of Tibetans in northern Nepal.

By virtue of living in Nepal and not Tibet, the ethnic group avoided the persecution of Chinese when the communist country took the country over in 1950. But it faces its own raft of challenges. By speaking Tibetan and not Nepalese, the people have trouble working with their government. Due to the sheer remoteness of the region n the main trade routes came from Tibet and where shut down by the Chinese n the Tibetans were cut off from both their culture and their grazing economy.

“When the Chinese closed the border and no longer allowed learned monks to cross those borders, they also did not allow villagers to graze on the plateau,” Campbell said. “That is what threw these villages into poverty. They became poorer and poorer and poorer.”

After completing the Kailash kora, Campbell traveled to the villages she would spend the next five years of her life helping.

“The areas I’m working in are extraordinarily remote n a five-day walk from the nearest city with a government office and market where they can buy things,” she said.

“In these villages, there are no stores, there are no roads n no ways to get motorized vehicles in,” she said.

But the biggest challenge facing the area, she said, was the lack of education.

While isolation may seem like the best way to preserve an ancient culture, interaction with the outside world is at the core of Tibetan culture, she said.

“Tibetans have historically, for thousands of years, been traders and merchants,” she said. “They live in their villages during the summer time. Then, in the winter, the men and able-bodied women migrate into other areas to work,” she said.

By the end of 2005, Campbell had founded the Antahkarana Society International. Antahkarana is a Buddhist term for “a realization that all life is interconnected and there arises a new and expanded sense of social responsibility,” according to the group’s Web site.

At first, Antahkarana relied on schools already set up in Kathmandu to educate the Tibetans. The group raised enough money to put 18 kids up in dormitories in the Nepali capital. The aim of their studies, first and foremost, was to learn Nepali so they could represent themselves before the government and English to do better in the world of business.

“Our goal is to send people back to the villages as doctors, nurses, business people,” she said.

But an episode in 2006 showed that the demand for education was far greater than what Antahkarana was providing. Rumor had it in rural Nepal that Campbell was coming back to recruit more kids for Kathmandu. When she didn’t show, several children took matters into their own hand and snuck into Kathmandu via India to report for class.

“That’s when we started to grow,” she said.

Now, the group still houses people receiving advanced educations in Kathmandu, but has opened three schools in the villages to give more rudimentary education to even more kids. More than 90 kids are enrolled in those classes.

Antahkarana claims to be the only group focused on helping the Tibetans of Nepal. That’s important, Campbell says, because of the struggles Tibetans are facing in China.

“A culture can’t survive without education, and so our primary focus is getting schools into these villages that have not had schools for two generations,” she said.

“Very recently, the Dali Lama conceded that Tibetan culture in China, in the autonomous region, is beyond the hope of saving,” she said. “Therefore we must work to preserve and advance Tibetan culture in the Himalayan region.”

Bozeman Chronicle

Tougher visa screening for Nepalis going to study in Oz

Indian as well as Nepali students aspiring to study in Australia will be subjected to tougher visa screening.

The move comes in the wake of the Australian government tightening the screws on both fraudulent educational institutions and on students who misrepresent their financial capacity to study Down Under.

"The message is clear. Genuine international students remain welcome in Australia, but we will not tolerate fraud in the student visa programme," Australia's minister for immigration and citizenship, Chris Evans, has announced.

Besides the student visa cases from India, those from Brazil, Mauritius, Nepal, Pakistan and Zimbabwe will also come under scrutiny. Student visas from Sri Lanka and Vietnam are already under watch.

Australian immigration authorities have said they will try to rule out fraud by upgrading the interview programme, and removing or restricting eVisa access for some agents suspected of engaging in fraud or inactivity.

"These measures are consistent with those used by other countries that receive large numbers of student visa applications, such as the US," Senator Evans said.

Australia refused almost 28,000 student visas last year, an increase of 68 per cent over the number in 2007-08.

Australia is trying hard to restore the credibility of its A$ 15.5-billion (Rs 62,000 crore) overseas education sector, which has been hit by the adverse coverage of racist attacks on Indian students as well as stories of seedy agents and teaching shops that dupe students.

On his recent visit to Australia, foreign minister S.M. Krishna had spoken out against the "dubious" educational institutions in Australia and had called for new regulations to cover private colleges.

On Wednesday, Australia's deputy prime minister and minister for education Julia Gillard - who is due to travel to India soon - warned education providers that they risk being shut down if they don't comply with rules relating to international students.

Gillard has tabled an amendment to the Education Services for Overseas Students Act 2000 in Parliament.

If passed, all the educational institutions that are now on the Commonwealth Register of Institutions and Courses for Overseas Students will be required to re-register under the new and tougher criteria by December 31, 2010.

A rapid review of 17 out of 250 private education providers accepting international students is now underway in Victoria - which has a bulk of Australia's 97,000 Indian students.

"We recognise that some providers are not delivering the quality of education we would like them to deliver. We have identified them on a set of risk criteria," Victoria's skills and workforce participation minister Jacinta Allan said.

Allan emphasised that if found wanting, the registration of the education providers may be cancelled - but not at the cost of the students.

Nepal Assures Commitment to Peace Process

The Nepalese prime minister, who is visiting India, says his country is committed to pushing ahead with a peace process at home. The Nepalese leader also pitched for more Indian investment in the landlocked, Himalayan nation as both countries discussed a new trade pact.

Nepalese Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal told top Indian officials his government will meet a deadline for May, next year, to draft a new constitution for the country.

Mr. Nepal's visit to India is his first overseas trip since the country was plunged into political instability following the resignation of his predecessor, Maoist leader Pushpa Kamal Dahal, three months ago. His resignation has triggered fears that Nepal's peace process may be disrupted by the Maoists.

But the Nepalese leader is optimistic that the country is on track to return to peace and stability. He is urging Indian businessmen to step up investments in the country in areas such as infrastructure, energy, education and health.

He reassured investors who have been wary of strikes and disruptions faced by businesses in the past, that his government is committed to improving security so that it can attract greater investment from India.

"India has been our major development, trade, investment and economic partner. Our share of exports and imports is very high with India," said Mr. Nepal. "A substantially high portion of foreign investment in Nepal comes from India."

India accounts for nearly half of all foreign investment in Nepal, and bilateral trade has jumped ten fold, in the past decade, to $2 billion, this year.

During Mr. Nepal's visit, India has announced new investment in three rail and road projects, which will improve links between the two countries.

India, which worried about growing Chinese influence in Nepal while the Maoists were in power, has assured the Nepalese leader of New Delhi's development support.

Indian Foreign Minister S.M. Krishna says India will expand economic cooperation with Nepal.

"I reiterated India's desire that Nepal has a special relationship with India and we would like to broaden that relationship and we would like to bring economic content to the relationship," he said.

However, both countries have been unable to finalize a new trade pact, apparently because of Indian objections to allowing third countries to import products to India via Nepal. Discussions will continue.

The Nepalese leader will wrap up his five-day visit to India, Saturday.

India to give Nepal Rs.20 bn for infrastructure projects

India has pledged assistance of Rs.20 billion to Nepal for infrastructure projects, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee told visiting Nepali Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal.

The Nepali prime minister arrived Monday on a five-day visit to India - his first to the country since assuming office three months ago. He met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Tuesday and held detailed discussions with him.

Thursday morning, Finance Minister Mukherjee called on Nepal at his suite in Delhi's Oberoi Hotel.

According to officials, Mukherjee told him that a package of Rs.20 billion worth of financial assistance will be announced to mark the Nepali premier's visit.

This assistance will basically be a new fund allocation for existing rail and road projects which were stalled. This will also cover beefing up of border infrastructure, including constructing integrated border check-posts.

Commerce and Industry Minister Anand Sharma met his Nepalese counterpart Rajendra Mahato here Wednesday to take forward the proposed Treaty of Trade and Agreement of Cooperation.

Nepal also made a strong pitch for a revised trade treaty and stressed that attracting Indian investment in key areas like roads, infrastructure, energy, education and health topped priority of his government.

'We are promoting an investment-friendly environment and a liberal trade policy,' Nepal told Indian business leaders at a function Tuesday.

India is a major investor in Nepal, with over 400 projects and accounting for about 44 percent of Nepal's foreign investment.

Bilateral trade has jumped from $209.5 million in 1995-96 to over $2 billion this year.

India attempts to match Chinese influence in Nepal

NEW DELHI: In a bid to support Nepal’s beleaguered peace process and check China’s growing influence, India has decided to pump in crores of rupees into the neighbouring nation’s infrastructure.

On the day Nepal’s Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal started his five-day visit to India, the government at a high-level meeting took a decision to fund three large infrastructure projects, which will increase border connectivity and increase trade between the two countries.

The government quickly pushed through funding for the projects, which include the Integrated Customs Posts project and road and rail projects, to show that India is serious in its efforts to help Nepal through the transitional period.

With the development mantra in mind, the government, which is keen to upgrade the border infrastructure,will put in around Rs 200 crore to set up the first two state-of-the-art integrated customs point along the border at Raxaul-Birganj and Jogbani-Biratnagar.

The decision to set up Integrated Check Posts along the border was taken some time back but will now see actual implementation on the ground. The idea is to set up the ICPs so that trade between the two countries becomes smoother, cutting down on current procedural delays at the border. After the first two sites are set up, the two countries will then look at setting up ICPs at Sunauli-Bhairahawa and Nepalgunj-Nepalgunj points.

Apart from the customs project, the government has also taken the plunge to fund the first phase of the Terai road project at a cost of around Rs 700 crore and set up two rail links worth Rs 700 crore. The Terai road project looks at upgrading around 1,500 km of roads in the Terai region with the first phase covering 657 km of road. Additionally India will also fund a Nepal Police Academy worth Rs 300 crore in what is a capacity building exercise.

These infrastructure projects have been at the conceptual stage for the last couple of years but have not gotten off the ground for one reason or another. By funding road and rail projects worth crores, India hopes to start a new era of cooperation and send a strong message of support to Nepal and its government, which has been struggling to push forward the peace process in the face of Maoist opposition.

Sources pointed out that India’s interest lies only in a stable Nepal. On Wednesday, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh held talks with Mr Nepal and discussed the entire gamut of bilateral ties from economic cooperation to the status of the peace process.

India’s current push for Nepal’s infrastructure also comes in the backdrop of China’s continuing efforts in Nepal. China is currently helping Nepal build a cross border road linking Nepal to the Tibetan Autonomous Area to improve trade and tourism.

China is also a major donor and has put in vast amounts of money into Nepal in various sectors including hydropower, health and even information technology.

The Economic Times

New UN study examines hunger severity within Nepal

Hunger rates are most severe in the western regions of Nepal, which already ranks near the bottom of the global hunger index, according to a new report by the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), which is examining food insecurity levels within the South Asian nation.

According to the global hunger index (GHI) developed by the non-governmental organization (NGO) known as the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), Nepal ties with Laos for 57th out of 88 countries, with a score of 20.6. Countries with levels under five, such as those in Western Europe, are considered to have low levels of hunger and are not included in the rankings.

The new WFP study found that levels were close to or topped 30 in the Far- and Mid-Western Hill and Mountain regions of Nepal, “pointing to an extremely alarming situation.”

In particular, the score of 40.17 for the Mid-Western Mountain area is only slightly better than the 42.7 level for the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), which has the worst GHI in the world.

Most of the country's 15 sub-regions fall within the alarming category, and none are categorized as either moderate or low-hunger. “This underscores the seriousness of the food security situation in Nepal,” WFP said.

The assessment pointed to undernourishment, high percentages of underweight children, poverty, economic activity, agricultural productivity and access to health services driving hunger scores down.

While boosting economic growth is urgently needed, that alone is not enough, WFP warned.

“There is an urgent need to invest solidly in direct nutrition interventions to address the huge issue of child malnutrition,” the agency stressed. “This includes investing in the health sector, increasing nutritional awareness, improving behavioural practices such as hand washing, breast feeding and water treatment, and providing access to proper sanitation facilities to rural populations.”

Ineffective govt stifles Nepal growth - UN report

KATHMANDU (Reuters) - Three years after it emerged from a decade-long civil war, Nepal is hamstrung by ineffective government and frustrated former combatants and needs lasting peace to develop, a United Nations report said.

The mountainous nation emerged in 2006 from a decade-long Maoist insurgency that resulted in the deaths of more than 13,000 people, displaced thousands, ravaged infrastructure and slowed development in sectors such as health and education.

The Nepal Human Development Report 2009 said the underlying causes of conflict -- such as poverty and discrimination on the basis of caste and ethnicity -- remained unresolved.

"Ineffective government, internally displaced people and frustrated combatants are some of the outcomes of conflict and these have yet to be tackled," the UN said in a statement.

"Deepening democracy and strengthening the rule of law are critical in order to give peace a chance of success," it said.

Nepal's peace process has been stalled since May when the Maoists walked out of the government over their plans to fire the country's army chief and disagreements about the future of more than 19,000 Maoist fighters housed in U.N. monitored camps.

A specially elected assembly is now preparing Nepal's first constitution after the abolition of the monarchy, part of a peace deal that proposes to restructure the state and include marginalised and underprivileged groups in the government.

When it comes to the Human Development Index, Nepal ranks lowest in south Asia with a value of 0.534 on a scale of 1, placing the Himalayan nation 142 out of 176 countries.

Life expectancy in Nepal is 63 years, while the literacy rate is 52 percent. Life expectancy for the dalits, or those at the bottom of the Hindu caste system, and other disadvantaged groups like ethnic minorities, Muslims and women was much lower.

"The message in this report is that the 'absence of war' will alone neither assure a lasting peace nor deliver prosperity," said Robert Piper, UN resident representative in Nepal.

Over 350 species found in Himalayas in past decade

KATMANDU, Nepal — The world's smallest deer, a flying frog and catfish that stick to rocks — as well as more than 350 other species — have been discovered over the past decade in the Himalayas, making it one of the world's most biologically rich regions, an environmental group said Monday.

But researchers warn that the effects of climate change, as well as development, threaten the diverse habitat that supports these species.

"This enormous cultural and biological diversity underscores the fragile nature of an environment which risks being lost forever unless the impacts of climate change are reversed," said Tariq Aziz, the leader of the World Wildlife Fund's Living Himalayas Initiative, a regional conservation program that covers India, Nepal and Bhutan.

The WWF is calling for the countries to develop a conservation plan for the region and for governments to give local communities more authority to manage the forests, grasslands and wetlands.

The group found that almost three-quarters of the discoveries between 1998 and 2008 were plants, including 21 new orchid species. Most of the discoveries have already been reported in peer-reviewed, scientific journals.

Among the most exciting was the miniature muntjac, the world's smallest deer species. Scientists at first believed the animal found in northern Myanmar was a juvenile of another species, but DNA tests confirmed it was distinct.

Scientists also found Rhacophorus suffry, a bright green frog in northeast India that uses its long, webbed feet to glide in the air. They also discovered two chocolate-brown catfish from Nepal that have evolved unique adhesive undersides to stick to rocks in fast-moving streams.

"It is astonishing to observe that a large number of new species of flora and fauna are discovered even today in the Himalayas," Nepal's forest and soil conservation minister, Deepak Bohara, said at the release of the report in Katmandu.

Further study of the eastern Himalayas would find far more new species, said Bittu Sahgal, editor of Sanctuary Asia, a wildlife and environment magazine published in India.

"There will be close to 3,000-5,000 species that will be discovered if a systematic study is done over the next five years," he said.

Still, observers say there no reason to believe that the area is immune to the effects of climate change and development.

"While climate change has its impact, which is common to all other such hotspots, human-induced projects such as construction of 100-plus dams in such a fragile and relatively small area is going to worsen the situation further," said Anwarudin Choudhury of The Rhino Foundation in India.

Millions in Nepal face food shortages: UN

KATHMANDU — Millions more people in Nepal are suffering severe food shortages after a "sharp and sustained decline in food security" in recent years, the United Nations warned Friday.

The UN's World Food Programme (WFP) said 3.4 million Nepalese people had become "highly to severely food insecure" due to sharp food price rises and the 2008-09 winter drought, the worst in 40 years.

"In recent years, Nepal has experienced a sharp and sustained decline in food security," the WFP said in a report released here Friday.

"Compared to neighbouring countries and indeed countries around the world, Nepal's food security situation has suffered considerably over the past three years."

Nepalese people are becoming more vulnerable to hunger every year as food production fails to keep pace with a growing population, the report said.

It said the global economic crisis had exacerbated the food shortages caused by 10 years of civil conflict and ongoing political instability.

Nepal last year held its first elections since the end of the civil war in 2006, but the Maoist-led administration lasted just eight months and the coalition government that replaced it is widely viewed as weak.

"Even prior to the recent deterioration in food security, the rate of malnutrition was alarming," said the WFP.

"The rate of chronic malnourishment in children under five is estimated at 48 percent, with an average rate of 60 percent in mountain areas.

"This is the worst level of malnourishment in Asia, and is comparable to the worst countries in Sub-Saharan Africa... Yet Nepal is not internationally associated with harrowing images of hunger."

While food insecurity was once limited to certain parts of the country, the majority of families in Nepal are now being forced to take "desperate measures" to sustain themselves, it said.

Many households have been forced to sell land and reduce portions or cutting the number of meals they ate daily.

Nepal Maoists issue new warning

By Joanna Jolly
BBC News, Kathmandu

The Maoist party in Nepal has issued a deadline of Thursday for the government to resolve a crisis that led to its resignation from power this year.

It says that if the government does not meet its demands, it will start a series of nationwide protests.

The Maoists say that they are not satisfied with the way the government has handled the situation.

Maoist PM Prachanda resigned in May after his decision to sack the army chief was overruled by the president.

The Maoists have described Dr Ram Baran Yadav's move as unconstitutional - and have demanded that the issue be debated in parliament.

'A dictator'

"The president acted above the law," Maoist committee member Dev Gurung said.

"He is trying to become a dictator, which is not what we want."

But the coalition government that took over from the Maoists says that the matter has already been discussed thoroughly by all of Nepal's political parties.

"All the other parties in Nepal have collectively taken the decision that the presidential action was correct and in keeping with civilian supremacy," said Ram Sharan Mahat of the Nepali Congress party, which is part of the new coalition government.

"As far as we're concerned, the issue has already been resolved."

If the Maoists' demand for further debate is not met, they have threatened to begin a series of parliamentary and civil protests, including mobilising supporters onto the streets.

Many Nepalis see this threat as a bid for power by the Maoists, who won Nepal's first democratic election last year.

"The real issue is not the sacking of the army chief. The real issue is that the new government has come in and it's expanding its networks and it's using state resources to build credibility among the population," says Aditya Adhikari, opinion editor of daily newspaper The Kathmandu Post.

"The Maoists are worried that they are going to be marginalised from the political picture and they're going to lose the gains that they've made over the past couple of years."

Other commentators believe the Maoists' action could threaten Nepal's ongoing peace process, which ended 10 years of civil war between the Maoists and the state.

As the deadline approaches, neither the Maoists nor the government say they are prepared to compromise.

If an agreement is not reached, the Maoists say they will begin their campaign of disruption on Friday.