A socionature approach to adaptation - Climate Change Adaptation and Development: Transforming Paradigms and Practices - page 225

missed. Even after the elections in November 2013, there is an increasing sense
that national leaders are more concerned with capturing power and resources
than accountability to their electorate. Most significantly for environmental
governance, contestations over ethnicity and community are central to on-
going political instability. A large number of ethnic movements have emerged,
demanding a bigger stake in the state. Similar to historical trends, these groups
splinter as new identities and demands are made (Thapa 2004), reflecting a key
driver of Nepalese politics, aphno maanche ('your own people'). Aphno maanche
is a patronage system with long historical roots. People seek to have 'their own
people' in positions of power, as it is through such personal connections that
people gain access to resources (Dahal 2008). I elaborate further on this below
in relation to the NAPA and LAPA, but here it is important to recognize how
the vast majority of Nepalese interpret political representation literally. Groups
seek to have their names written into the Constitution and their aphno maanche
in key positions of power.
Nepal's environmental instability is seen as one of several underlying causes
of conflict and vulnerability - and, as I show here, these causes intersect.
Temperatures in the Himalayas are projected to rise much higher than the global
average (IPCC 2007), triggering significant glacial melting and changes in the
monsoon pattern, threatening agriculture and water resources throughout South
Asia and China/Tibet (Regmi 2009). In fact, predictions of climate catastrophe
harken back to the 'crisis on a Himalayan scale'. This 'Theory of Himalayan
Degradation' (Ives and Messerli 1989) led to major donor investments in the
natural resource and forestry sectors, resulting in the implementation of several
conservation areas and bilateral community forestry programmes. Programmes
to address climate change are thus part of a long line of interventions designed
to 'rescue' the Himalayas and the wider region from impending environmental
doom. Such antecedents are highly relevant not only because climate-focused
development efforts are incorporated into on-going work in the natural resource
sector, but also because these earlier programmes have shaped how people
receive new ones.
Probing programmes from this angle draws into question the framing of
adaptation within Nepal's NAPA and particularly the more detailed LAPA
training manuals (ADB 2012; GON/MoE 2011b). Adaptation responses are
assumed to derive from environmental change. Using a generic definition of
climate sensitivity, the District Level training manual states: ' Socio-economic
impacts (for the bigger part) follow biophysical impacts and affect socio-economic
development, e.g. reduced access to ser-vices [sic] due to damaged infrastructure
or losses in tourism due to shoreline erosion' (Nepal is landlocked and thus has
no shoreline) (ADB 2012, p. 50, italics in original). Further,
The LAPA vulnerability assessment explicitly recognizes the role of
resources and services in building adaptive capacity. This approach combines
a top-down assessment that helps identify the status and quality of services