Perspective shared at the Panel "Lessons from Environmental Peacebuilding for Humanitarians" at the Environmental Emergencies Forum, June 1-3 in Oslo, Norway.

Land and environmental peace building: Reflections from Nepal

Bishnu Raj Upreti, PhD Nepal Centre for Contemporary Research (NCCR)

Kathmandu, Nepal E-mail: bupreti@nccr.wlink.com.np

10/4/2015

Nepal in the Asian Map

1. Situating the context 1. Nepal: agrarian structure and subsistence

economy

2. 1996 armed insurrection by the Maoist

3. End of Monarchy and domination of communist ideology and structures

4. Prone to disasters: foods, avalanche and April-May 2015 Earthquake

2. Land: structural cause of conflict

1. Highly skewed land ownership, social structure and land-based power relation

2. Land used for political benefits (land for tillers and landless) and frustration

3. Extremely poor land governance (corruption, manipulations, etc)

4. Land in 40 point demands of Maoist before insurgency

5. Land 75 point programme of war time parallel government of Maoist

6. Land capture and redistribution in war time

CPA

Guiding framework for

land based agrarian

transformation and

environmental peace building

3. Land : means for environmental peace building

1. Land in the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) and Interim Constitution 1. CPA included the provisions for addressing land based

discrimination. Same provisions in the Interim Constitution, e.g., Article 3.7 “To adopt a policy to introduce a scientific land reform programme by ending feudal land ownership”.

2. 33.i to adopt a policy of ensuring socio-economic security and provide land to the economically backward classes, including the landless, bonded labourers [kamaiyas], tillers [haliyas], farm labours and shepherds [haruwa charuwa],

3. High Level Land Reform Commission

3. Land : means for environmental peace building-2

A. Land in the new National Land Policy and Agricultural Dev. Strategy (ADS)

B. Adaptation in the regulations: 35 % waiver in registration fee and joint land ownership (addressing inequality)

Main concern-translation into practice

Land is said to be one of the causes of the high damage from the earthquake

•Death: 8580 •Wounded: 19042 (Source: Nepal Police, 31 May 2015)

4. Earthquake disaster and implications to environmental peace building

• Immediate negative effects to environmental peace building (source of tension: building collapsed due to weak texture of land, damage of natural resources and infrastructures, more stress to NR, etc)

• National unity among the people (divided society uniting) • Long term positive implications : moving from conflict to

cooperation among the political forces and society (national unity government in discussion, community collaboration in the ethnically divided communities)

• NPC: Post-earthquake reconstruction and rehabilitation plan with high priority to environmental issues

• New environmentally friendly settlement land-use policy and plan

5. Lessons • Conflict sensitive planning of NRM • Utilization of local resources for early recovery and

communal harmony (land and peace + community resilience)

• Awareness on environmental peace building at policy

and decision making levels

• Effects of disasters is as well as armed conflict are far more to poor, and vulnerable section of society and therefore need to relate them in conceptual, policy and operational levels

6. Conclusion • Land ownership was one of the major power sources of

and determinants of the social relations. • Consequently land became one of the main sources of the

Maoist insurgency and social tension • Land became broad-base socio-economic reform agenda

in the CPA and IC and therefore contributed to environmental peace building

• Disasters like the recent earthquake in Nepal bring both challenges and opportunities to promote environmental peace building.

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Thank you for your kind attention