The document discusses the advantages and challenges of using a river basin approach for climate change adaptation. Some key advantages include maintaining ecosystem services, enabling upstream-downstream cooperation, and facilitating integrated human and ecosystem adaptation planning. Challenges include misalignments between river basins and political boundaries, and the need for long-term funding and flexible approaches given climate uncertainties. The document also provides an example vulnerability assessment conducted in Nepal's Gandaki river basin using the "Flowing Forward" methodology.

1. The Value of a River Basin
Approach to
Climate Adaptation
Judy Oglethorpe, Sunil Regmi, Ryan Bartlett,
Bhawani S. Dongol, Eric Wikramanayake and
Sarah Freeman
13 January 2015
Hariyo Ban Program, Nepal

2. • Discuss advantages doing climate adaptation using a river
basin approach
• Outline the challenges of river basin approach
• Drawing on vulnerability assessment of the Gandaki basin in
Nepal as an example, using ‘Flowing Forward’ methodology

3. The Gandaki River Basin in Nepal, showing major
rivers and bio-geographical zones

4. Flowing Forward methodology
• Designed for large drivers of change at the landscape scale in a
data-poor environment
• Assesses vulnerability of landscape features using background
information, peer-reviewed and gray climate science literature, a
participatory stakeholder assessment workshop, and scenario
planning for an uncertain future
• Enhanced by information from local level vulnerability assessments
and adaptation planning in selected parts of the basin
Resilience
(sensi vity)
Exposure
(Impact Severity)
Vulnerability
Social Adap ve
Capacity
Adapta on
Planning
Iden fy Analysis
Units
FF workshop framework

5. Nepal’s Imja Glacier, 1956
Nepal’s Imja Glacier, 2006
Climatechange impacts
5

6. Often exacerbated by non-climate stresses

7. Focus Area Highest Vulnerability Systems and Species Region
Forests Subtropical Broadleaf Siwalik/Churia Range
Semi-desert Coniferous Trans-Himalayan Region
Freshwater Spring Sources Siwalik/Churia Range
Floodplains Basin-wide
Species Migratory Birds Basin-wide
Gharial Siwalik/Churia Range
Agriculture Pakho (rain-fed agriculture) Mid-hills
Tar (irrigated agriculture) Mid-hills/Siwalik
Rivers Seti Basin-wide
Rapti Basin-wide
Infrastructure Rural Settlements Basin-wide
Local Roads Basin-wide
Most vulnerable ecological and man-made
systems in the Gandaki river basin

8. Focus Area Proposed Interventions
Forests
Promote alternative energy to reduce fuel wood demand
Promote “climate-smart” community based forest management, especially fire
control and afforestation in denuded areas
Freshwater Enhanced monitoring for freshwater systems, especially on glacial extent and
snow line, and snow-water equivalent in higher altitudes; water quality lower
down
Sub-catchments Install early warning systems in floodplain communities that regularly experience
flooding, alongside climate change sensitization and disaster preparedness
programs
Species Identify and conserve important winter/nesting areas for altitudinal migrant birds,
based on projected habitat changes
Work with upstream watershed communities to reduce fertilizer and pesticide
use and promote soil management to reduce runoff and siltation.
Agriculture Increase funding for agriculture extension services, including on climate-smart
farming techniques and overall climate change awareness
Improve access to seasonal climate information for farmers, including suggested
planting dates and weather forecasts
Infrastructure Mandate climate vulnerability assessments for all proposed large infrastructure
developments; undertake environmental flows analysis
Eliminate unplanned road construction through incentives for “green road”
construction that have proper drainage and gradation.
Major proposed adaptation interventions in Gandaki basin

9. Advantages of taking a holistic
river basin approach
Maintaining ecosystem services for people and
nature
• Ecosystem services can play important roles to buffer climate
effects, for example:
• Forests can reduce the risk of local flash floods and landslides
in the face of more intense localized rainfall and help to
maintain dry season water supplies as monsoon patterns
become increasingly unpredictable.
• Functioning floodplains can absorb floodwater and reduce the
risk of floods downstream, while also providing critical
nutrients for flood dependent vegetation and agriculture

10. Reducing flood risk with bio-engineering

11. Enabling upstream-downstream cooperation
• Often need to tackle upstream
issues, e.g. deforestation
• upstream stakeholders may risk
maladaptation if they do not
consider downstream
consequences
• In Gandaki basin, Hariyo Ban
Program is facilitating dialogue
between upstream and downstream
communities

12. Maintaining connectivity and enabling species
shifts in river basins
• Altitudinal gradients in river basins can provide corridors for
freshwater and terrestrial species to shift upstream/uphill
• Special management for areas that are natural climate refugia can
help conserve species that may disappear from surrounding areas.

13. Using river basin as a planning unit for
infrastructure development
• Infrastructure development occurring on a large scale in
Nepal, especially roads, hydropower, irrigation
• Environmental standards not always adequate or enforced,
and information not easily available
• Environmental issues likely to be exacerbated by climate
change
• Design needs to take climate change into account, including
more intense storms, changing precipitation patterns, rising
temperatures, increased erosion risk

14. • Multiple dams on same stem of the river
need to coordinate
• Recognition that dams can exacerbate
climate hazards compared to free-flowing
rivers (e.g. Palmer et al (2008); recent
Indian Supreme Court ruling)
• Hariyo Ban planning environmental flows
study for Gandaki basin with scenario
planning for dams and climate change

15. • River basin approach can enable more strategic road
development
Reduces adverse impacts of roads on other infrastructure
development

16. Handling climate uncertainties and risks
• River basin approach gives more flexibility
• Enables scenario planning, and phased development in light
of uncertainty about climate change

17. Facilitating integration of human and
ecosystem adaptation in river basins
• Most activities occur within the boundaries of
the basin – enables ecological, economic and
social analysis and decision-making
• Enables multi-disciplinary approaches and
collaboration (horizontal integration)
• Enables working at different scales (vertical
integration – bottom-up and top-down)
• Facilitates working in short and longer term
• Helps most vulnerable people

18. Challenges
• River basin boundaries often do not coincide with
administrative and political boundaries
• Institutions are better aligned for community
adaptation than ecosystem adaptation
• New, accountable institutions may be needed at river
basin level
• Policy environment may need strengthening/
harmonizing
• Conflict resolution and trade-offs are necessary
• It takes time! Long-term investments are needed for
the process; and flexibility of donor funding
• Ecosystem changes tend to take longer than
community changes to appear
• Need to be flexible in the face of increasing climate
uncertainty, be innovative, monitor, learn and adapt.

19. We would like to thank all those who have worked on the Hariyo Ban
Program and contributed to the results presented here. We are grateful to the
Government of Nepal and its line agencies for continued support and guidance.
Hariyo Ban Program is made possible by the generous support of the American
people through the United States Agency for International Development
(USAID). The contents of this presentation are the responsibility of World
Wildlife Fund, Inc., and do not necessarily reflect the views of USAID or the
United States Government.
Hariyo Ban Program
http://www.wwfnepal.org/hariyobanprogram/