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Biodiversity and Climatic Change

Karsten Dahl

The richness
Nepal is one of the richest countries in the world when it comes to biodiversity. Biodiversity is a measure for the number of different species within the ecosystem and include all sorts of living organisms.

Nepal has shown an admirably strong commitment to protecting the richness of life by establishing several national parks, conservation areas and wildlife and hunting reserves. Species are protected in more than 17 % of the total area of the country thereby restricting utilisation of such land for agricultural or other purposes. Due to the ever-increasing population this could appear as a luxury when considering the heavy demand for land for agriculture, need of forest products etc. The abundance of species in Nepal is amazing. More than 8.5 % of the world's species of birds are found in Nepal, which covers only 0.03% of the planet's landmass. More than 4 % of the global mammal species are found in Nepal of which the tiger and rhino are the most prominent and efforts are being made to save these endangered species.

Out of the total flowering plant species existing in the world, more than 2% is found in Nepal. 

This wealth of life diversity is a product of the extremely diverse terrain of the country, which ranges from Sargarmatha, the world's highest peak, down to the plain lowland of Terai. There is also a high range of climatic variations expanding from very hot subtropical to alpine and artic climate. On top of that numerous valleys in the country have allowed humans for generations to cultivate varieties of food crops. A total of 200 species of vegetables are found in Nepal. Fifty species with more than 200 varieties have been domesticated for commercial use. Regarding rice, more than 680 accessions have been identified.

The threat
Despite its richness the biodiversity is actually in danger due to global warming caused by the emission of green house gases, like CO2, see box.

Global warming induces the following scenarios (IPCC) in Asia:

High confidence

• Extreme events have increased, including floods, droughts, forest fires and tropical cyclones.

• Sea-level rise and increase in the intensity of tropical cyclones would displace tens of millions of people in low-lying coastal areas, increased intensity of rainfall would increase flood risks.

• Sea-level rise would put ecological security at risk, including mangroves and coral reefs.

Medium confidence:

• Decrease in agricultural productivity and aquaculture due to thermal and water stress, sea-level rise, floods and droughts, and tropical cyclones would diminish food security in many countries of arid, tropical and temperate in Asia. In Northern Asia agriculture would expand and increase in productivity.

• Runoff and water availability may decrease in arid and semi-arid Asia but increase in northern Asia

• Human health would be threatened by possible increased exposure to vector-borne diseases and heat stress in parts of Asia

• Climatic change would increase energy demand (cooling), decrease tourism attraction, and influence transportation in some regions

• Climatic change exacerbate threats to biodiversity due to land-use and land-cover change and population pressure in Asia

The impact of global warming in Nepal is very uncertain. Climatic monitoring of temperature and precipitation has only occurred in the last 3 or 4 decades. The general trend is temperature increment more in the hilly and mountain areas than minor in the Terai (source: Dr. Arun B Shrestha).However, I believe the following consequences are fairly possible:

• Most likely a continued decline in the coverage of the Himalayan glaciers will be observed, reducing the possibility for hydropower in the dry season and inducing the need for construction of storage facilities for water.
  l Increased frequency of glacial lake outbursts, especially from ice-core moraine dammed lakes.

• The intensity and variability of the monsoon will probably increase, causing higher rates of erosion in the hilly area resulting in more abundant flooding in the Terai due to high load of sediments in the rivers. As the farmers of Nepal are highly dependent on the stability of the monsoon, they will encounter difficulties in food production threatening food security. 

• The scares winter rain will mostly decrease further (approx. 80 % of the precipitation in Nepal is derived from the monsoon) making farming difficult.

• Winter temperature will be higher, inducing ecological stress on e.g. wheat farming in Terai. 

• Due to the enormously topographical relief and therefore climatic diversity in Nepal, a fast increment of the annual temperature will causes a serious pressure on the ecological diversity and stability.

Tales from the history

Evidence from last glaciations (100.000 to10.000 years ago) where big ice sheets covered Northern Europe, Asia and America about the impact of changing temperature (cooling and warming) has mainly been derived from these areas. Through the period of glaciations, the extinctions of large mammals, like wool rhino, sable cat, mammoth, other enormous types of deer, wolves etc. were caused by the ecological stress and the emergence of Homo Sapiens (“the knowledgeable human”, having great adaptability to the new warmer conditions when the ice finally started to melt) but even through this event, temperature only raised 1-2 °C/100 year and from something very cold to temperature climate, so we actually do not know, what will happen in the present century. The knowledge of heat stress on ecological systems is rather limited. 

In Nepal, the situation is also complicated by the mountainous terrain (step gradient of climatic variation), as plants and animals adapted to specific climatic conditions have to migrate to cooler areas. This is fairly easy if you have legs, but what about your food? Can it escape the heat? The fundaments of the ecosystems, plants migration speed is much slower and they even have to climb up-hill. A 5 °C rise in the global mean temperature, within the next 100 years will demand ecosystem to migrated with a speed of 10 m up-hill every year to keep in touch with the rising temperature (by assuming the temperature fall 1 °C every 200 m). And it is not possible to make tunnels as we do to allow reptile and frogs to pass down under the highways in Denmark.

The extinction of species is a loss forever. So to sustain the global biodiversity it is obvious that we have to limit the consumption of fossil fuels.

MS-Nepal has taken the stick

And here, MS-Nepal has shown the commitment by setting a target to reduce CO2 emission in 2004 by 25% compared to 1999. In Nepal, it is obvious that the adaptive capacity to climatic change of human systems is low and the vulnerability is high as more than 80% are subsistence farmers. So the people that MS wants to assist in improving their livelihood, our target group will be suffering mostly from global warming, but that is another story to tell.

MS-Nepal Environmental Policy Paper

Three objectives are stated in the policy paper. 
1. Strengthening of the natural resource base
2. Reduce MS-Nepal’s pollution
3. Dismantling of the global disorder.

The corner stone regarding pollution in the Environmental Policy Paper is the report made by the IPCC in 1995. A recent up date of the report was published in January 2001 and can be found at http://www.ipcc.ch/pub/spm22-01.pdf. The report confirms that the impact in global warming from combustion of fossil fuels is even more serious than we previously knew.

Picture of truck. CO2 is not the only pollutants from exhaustion.
Picture of tiger. In Nepal the number has increased from 250 to more than 300 in the last 6 years (Dept. of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation).

Picture of plants. Our knowledge about possible benefit from plants and the internal role of species within the ecosystem is rather limited. Extinction is a loess forever. 

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