A socionature approach to adaptation - Climate Change Adaptation and Development: Transforming Paradigms and Practices - page 228

such relationships are mapped out on the ground, if adaptation programmes are
to be adequately responsive to fragile political contexts.
I am therefore troubled that Nepal's NAPA document reflects the current
dynamics around intersectionality and political representation ( aphno maanche )
in only two contexts. First, in keeping with the history of Nepal's development
priorities, a female consultant produced a 'gender analysis', outlined in Annex
5 of the document. Gender is only mentioned twice in the entire document
outside the annex, despite being listed as a 'cross cutting theme'. The annex
mentions several 'extra' risks to women, including sexual violence and increased
workloads caused by diminishing water supplies and productive resources.
How gender relations of power are contested and (re)produced within resource
governance is not captured by such an analysis. Ironically, the politics behind the
document reflects this point. A key informant told me that neither the gender
consultant nor top-level women within the relevant ministries were asked to
comment on the final document - an omission which serves to reinforce the
marginalized position of women within Nepal's national bureaucracy. The
LAPA Strategy summary document does not mention gender at all and has
remarkably few references to 'marginalized groups', even though the LAPA was
developed through an explicitly bottom-up process.
Cultural politics is also evident in the extensive consultation done for the
NAPA, including 'youth, foresters, indigenous communities and disaster
risk reduction networks' (GON/MoE 2010, p 16). This may seem a rather
unexpected set of interest groups, but it reflects current political factions mixed
with a techno-bureaucratic bias in resource governance (Nightingale and Ojha
2013). The document also promotes multi-level networks of resource users,
'good governance' and institution building across environmental sectors. A
defining feature of 'good governance' in Nepal is careful record-keeping and
the presence of women and ethnic minorities on management committees and
in leadership roles. Consistent with this logic, the LAPA emphasizes bottom-up
consultation in terms of vulnerability and capacities, conjoined with top-down
mechanisms of response and resources.
Despite the implicit emphasis on social inclusion, there is no sense of how the
different layers of the bureaucracy and civil society will interact. The entire LAPA
process begins at the district level and identifies vulnerable village development
committees (municipalities) and wards within them. However, district
boundaries will change radically in the near future as the currently undefined
federal structure unfolds. Such issues are deeply embedded within contestations
over intersectional inequalities. Cultural identity struggles feature in virtually
every sphere of governance, with the goals seeming to be political recognition
and access to livelihood benefits through political patronage. Such contestations
have profound consequences for adaptation and democracy building. Control
over territory and exclusive rights to representation (e.g. consultation for the
NAPA) underpin many of their demands. And, since contentious politics are