Waiting For Management

Ek Raj Sigdel

Ghodaghodi Lake is situated in Kailali of Far Western Nepal and listed in Ramsar Site in 2003. The wetland provides refuge to globally significant biodiversity resources including tiger, wild elephants and red-crowned roofed turtle. Adjoining forests and the wetland jointly act as a wildlife corridor between the low land Terai and the Churia. The lake has also great religious and legendary values. There is a shrine to the Ghodaghodi deity where indigenous Tharu celebrate a traditional festival (Agan Panchami) by worshiping and offering animals during the month of December. Likewise, there are several legends related to the origin of the Ghodaghodi Lake. Some 1500 households around the lake depend on the wetland ecosystem for supporting their subsistence needs. As the Lake provides benefits to the various stakeholders that ranges from national to international level, early intervention for conserving the wetland is necessary.

If the Lake is managed scientifically, it helps in conserving the globally significant biodiversity resources on the one hand and on the other contributes to diversifying livelihood opportunities of wetland dependent local communities, ultimately supporting regional and national economy of the country. As the Lake has superlative natural, historical, and cultural values, it creates an opportunity for promoting eco-tourism. Ecotourism development leads to address the issues of sustainable biodiversity conservation and livelihood improvement of local communities. Similarly, there are various ethno-medicinal plants, which also contribute to local income and employment opportunities.

Various local community based organizations have already been formed and functionalized to work for the betterment of the Lake and the adjoining communities. As the Lake has been managed by local communities and their organizations, there is a possibility of speedy handing over of the management responsibilities to them.

The area can be developed as a demonstration research centre for limnological studies. In addition, wetland policy has already been formulated, which emphasizes on the wise use of wetland resources with active participation of local communities in its conservation endeavors.
The globally significant biodiversity resources of the wetland have been facing tremendous anthropogenic pressure for few years. The number of golden monitor lizard, giant hornbill, otter and flying perch are gradually diminishing from the Lake. The survival of these animals were threatened mainly by loss of their habitats and poaching. The quality of the lake is gradually degrading due to eutrophication, siltation and invasive plant species. The size of the Lake has gradually shrunk. The main source of water is being diverted towards agricultural land for irrigation purpose.

Uncontrolled fire, deforestation in catchments areas, illegal logging, over grazing and flow of chemicals fertilizers through agricultural run off have posed threats to the wetland biodiversity resources. Unmanaged fishing and agricultural encroachment around the lake are other anthropogenic factors for threatening the very existence of biodiversity resources. Likewise, unplanned settlement and ever increasing number of temples around the lake resulted in the loss of aesthetic beauty of the Lake.

While looking into the root cause of the anthropogenic factors, it was found that most of the poor, women, Dalit and indigenous communities have to rely on the Lake to fulfill their subsistence need like firewood, timber, fish, and medicinal plants. Similarly, the loss of biodiversity was the result of inadequate management capacity of the exiting local community based organizations. Over and above, there is no single authorized government institution to impose effective law enforcement. The ownership of the land has yet to be defined explicitly. Likewise, there is a weak coordination amongst stakeholders.

To address the issue of livelihood and scientific management of the wetland resources, two pronged strategies, i.e. increasing productivity of the existing wetland resources and sidetracking pressure of the local communities towards other alternative income and employment generation activities have to be adopted. The productivity can be enhanced by integrating scientific and indigenous knowledge where as the pressure of the local communities can be diverted by offering them with diverse livelihood opportunities. In this regard, the past efforts made by various organizations including WWF, UNDP, IUCN and Ghodaghodi Conservation Forum towards managing the wetland should be reviewed critically and based on the lessons learned, a participatory integrated wetland management plan following a zoning approach should be prepared. The plan should include watershed management scheme, water quality monitoring plan, forest and non timber forest product management plan among others.
Likewise, to minimize anthropogenic pressure, it is essential to diversify natural recourse based livelihood opportunities focusing pro-poor, pro-women, pro-dalit, and pro-indigenous communities. Involvement of local people in Eco-tourism and non timber forest product management could be a viable strategy to address the issues of biodiversity and livelihood of local communities.

The management capacities of the local stakeholders also need to be strengthened. The local communities should be mobilized in such a way that they would always be in a fore front for minimizing fire, controlling illegal logging, discouraging haphazard temple construction and minimizing agricultural encroachment, among others. As per the demand, a policy should be formulated so that the potential community forests around the Lake could be gradually handed over to the respective forest user groups. The demand of all the sections of the society including poor, women, dalit, and indigenous people should be integrated in the entire project management cycle by involving them from planning to benefit sharing stages.

With this backdrop, recently, the government of Nepal in partnership with GEF, IUCN, and UNDP has launched a five-year wetland conservation project in Ghodaghodi Lake for biodiversity conservation and livelihood improvement. To attract heart and mind of the local communities, the project should follow a participatory approach while planning, monitoring and implementation of field activities. Utmost efforts should be put in mobilizing local resources - human, natural, financial, and social - and promotion of indigenous knowledge base management. To maintain a close coordination amongst the wider stakeholders District Forest Coordination Committee, which is already functional in Kailali could be an important forum to share the learning. In addition, transparency through access to and sharing of information is the key ingredient of good governance, which needs to be adopted.

In a nutshell, to upkeep the higher conservation value of the Ghodaghodi Lake, an early intervention was felt necessary. In this regard, a new project has been launched. To achieve the desired goal of the project, it is necessary to solicit community participation in entire project cycle and handover the management responsibilities to the local communities from the very beginning of the project implementation stages.