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not acknowledged within the policy documents, we may question how these
plans will manage to cope with this volatile context.
The problematic nature of these static policy documents is recognized
within Nepal by a small group of professionals. As one Nepalese intellectual
reflected on his experience within the LAPA writing team, 'the document does
not open up space for revision and negotiation'. He said the team was able to
'epistemologically recognize vulnerability as contextual and shifting', but that
when vulnerability maps were produced, only he and another colleague were
able to 'recognize that the maps are not absolute, but need to be designed to
be dynamic' (my paraphrase). This lack of official recognition of vulnerability
as dynamic is exacerbated by the mechanisms through which adaptation
programmes are implemented by the state. As another Nepalese development
professional remarked, '[for state bureaucrats] policy is not policy documents,
it is letters from their immediate boss, [and those letters] must come with a
budget code'.
The silence around the political transition was not limited to the actual written
document. Several people who had participated in NAPA meetings indicated
that politically sensitive issues were deliberately avoided. One explained that
different political positions - such as favouring one form of resource governance
over another - are closely identified with political parties in Nepal today, and
many professionals were unwilling to reveal their political alliances in such a
public context. Another indicated that when politically charged issues emerged,
the facilitators and chair reminded the group that their job was to produce a
technical strategy document, not to address politics.
My analysis, however, suggests that if attention to gender and intersectional
social differences that underpin vulnerability and resource distribution practices
were placed in the centre of adaptation concerns, questions of politics, power
and the
means
through which social and political reproduction occurs would
need become the 'priority areas'. Techno-engineering approaches, while useful
in constructing infrastructure and ensuring technology transfer, also provide
more opportunity for inequitable distribution of and control over resources.
The groups seen to be the most worthy of 'consultation' are able to assert
their 'rights' and 'knowledge' over that of others - in the Nepal case, this has
generally meant high-caste Hindu males. Priority areas focused on biophysical
resources (forests, biodiversity, energy, water) mask how those sectors are
the product of specific social struggles. The quality, quantity and location of
biophysical resources are inherently produced out of socionatural processes that
shape which resources are considered vital, as well as the best mechanisms for
and the actors assumed to have the right knowledge and skills to manage them.
It is these processes that shape adaptation needs and adaptive capacity.
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