Himalayan-Arctic Exchange Phase II: A Workshop to Transfer Methods of Community-Based Monitoring from Nunavut to Nepal

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This award will support, in February 2012, a methods and technology workshop in the Tsum Valley of Nepal, a region only recently opened to foreign visitors. The workshop will bring climate scientists, Arctic peoples, Inuit of Clyde River Canada, together with high altitude peoples, Nepali of Tsum Valley Nepal, to compare methods and technologies that are being utilized to record the effects of climate change in their respective regions. This workshop builds on a previous Small Grant for Exploratory Research that sought to compare indigenous people's in high latitudes, Alaska, and high altitudes, Nepal, experiences of climate change through their traditional knowledge systems. Both regions have indigenous populations whose cultures, social organization, and economies are intimately tied to the landscape. By exploring the possibility of being able to compare these two seemingly very different regions, culturally and environmentally, the research team was able to identify some of the pan-global effects of climate change among indigenous peoples. The goal of the workshop is to share community-based research and monitoring approaches used in Arctic indigenous communities to determine their suitability for use by rural Nepalis. WWF-Nepal and Dr. Rinjan Shrestha are actively working there to establish sound environmental management practices to govern trekking and to mitigate impacts of glacial retreat and other aspects of climate change. Two scientists and three Arctic indigenous persons with experience in community-based approaches will travel with Rinjan by helicopter from Kathmandu to the Tsum Valley and spend a week there meeting with local residents and demonstrating and discussing methods and associated equipment. The research team will explore the ways in which this approach can be used in rural Nepal (e.g., battery charging, data downloading, etc.), and the parameters that local residents and scientists such as Rinjan see as the priorities for monitoring. The Arctic indigenous participants will be able to discuss practical aspects of the use of the units in the field, and can help Tsum Valley residents identify and overcome significant obstacles to their use in the area. Following the Tsum Valley workshop, we will meet with Rinjan's colleagues in Kathmandu to discuss the potential for other applications of the Igliniit system, as well as other potential collaborations between Nepal and the Arctic.