We have lost a great friend. RIP Mr. Surbir Sthapit

It is with huge sadness that we report the loss of our dear friend and colleague Mr. Surbir Sthapit, Executive Director and founding member of HICODEF, who died yesterday (October 20th, 2020) from COVID-19, aged just 53.

Surbir Sthapit in his office during our last monitoring visit, Oct. 2019.

He is survived by his wife and two sons. Our thoughts are with them, Surbir’s wider family, his friends, and everyone at HICODEF.

HICODEF has been one of The Glacier Trust’s longest standing NGO partners in Nepal and Surbir has been the driving force behind the innovative and highly effective projects we have worked on together for nearly a decade.

We are devastated to have lost Surbir from the TGT family. He has changed attitudes, lives and life chances of so many people, enabling them to adapt to the impacts of climate change, recover from earthquakes and to develop the prosperity and health of their land, villages and communities. He was a true changemaker.

We will remember him fondly and with the deepest feelings of love and respect.

We will miss you Surbir ji.

Excitement for Bisne Rana

This case study was sent to us as an appendix to HICODEF’s first annual report on the Layer Farming for Adaptation project. We have done some light editing to the text, but have not do a full re-write as the meaning comes across perfectly. The full annual report can be downloaded from our reports page.

Bishne Rana, 46, is a resident farmer of Ripaha village. He lives there with six family members. He migrated to gulf country for labour and returned two years ago. After returning home he re-continued his traditional farming occupation. He cultivated maize, millet, rice and vegetables. By this farming practice he and his family only coped with difficulty; year round food security was a problem.

The Layer Farming for Adaptation project gave him the chance to become a founder member of the farmer's group the project established in Ripaha. Furthermore, he got the opportunity to get involved in framers group training and received onsite technical support from our project staff. After being trained he started farming vegetables like chili, long beans and tomato.

Having seen his efforts and commitment, the project supported him with a polytunnel and a 1,000 litre irrigation tank. After that he started tomato farming in the tunnel. In the lockdown period and since, he has grown 400kg of tomato.

Unfortunately, due to lockdown he could not get a high price for his tomato crop. However, he did manage to sell it at Rs 20/kg* and earned more than 8,000 rupees from. Likewise, he sold 100kg long beans at Rs 80/kg and earned a further 8,000 rupees.

In the last month or so, he has started to grow valuable chillies named Akbare on one ropani of land, which is now ready to sell. These chillies can be sold for Rs 200/kg in the local market, possibly more.

Bisne Rana is very excited by his success so far, he told us: "I will expand my vegetable farming in more than 5 Ropani and will take more than 1 lakh (100,000 rupees) every year." Now he has also started coffee plantation on his land too; he will be supported in growing and commercialising organic coffee using the layer farming method.

*Tomatoes can normally fetch up to Rs 40/kg in local markets (around 25p)

To find out more about our Layer Farming for Adaptation work, please visit our projects pages. This project is 100% funded by TGT’s individual supporters, please make a donation to help us to expand and continue this work.

Vegetable price hikes emphasise importance of our work

Nepal is currently in the midst of multiple overlapping crises and challenges. The exceptionally heavy monsoon rains have taken a terrible toll, 101 people have died and a further 53 are missing. Coronavirus cases continue to emerge, 18,374 positive cases have now been recorded, with a total of 44 deaths. Lockdown restrictions are easing slowly, but the economic fallout promises to be severe. An emerging, fourth, challenge is developing in the south of the country on the Terai, but it is one that The Glacier Trust is playing a role in easing.

Keshab Rai, Deusa AFRC’s manager distributes fruit trees to farmers in Solukhumbu, July 2020

Terai or Tarai roughly translates as “the low-lying land, plain” it is not the landscape one typically thinks of when one thinks of Nepal. It is, however, one of Nepal’s most important regions. The Terai is almost pan flat and extends west to east right across Nepal between the Indian border and the first foothills of the Himalayas. It is Nepal’s bread basket, we know it well from our visits to Kawasoti, where our NGO partner HICODEF are headquartered.

Floods and non-stop rain are having a ravaging effect on Nepal’s agriculture, particularly on the Terai. The same rains and floods are also effecting India, where the crops Nepal usually imports are now in very short supply. The effect of all this is steep price rise for basic vegetables, as The Kathmandu Post reports:

According to traders, vegetable prices have swelled by 25-110 percent. The wholesale price of tomato, potato, onion, cabbage local, cauliflower local, eggplant, cowpea long, French bean long and hybrid, soybean green, pointed gourd local, snake gourd, smooth gourd, sponge gourd and okra has soared by up to 105 percent over the week.

Nepal, of course is already trying to cope with the economic fallout of the Coronavirus lockdown, the last thing people need is a hike in the price of basic food. However, some families and districts will cope better than others with this situation.

Food security at a national, local and household level is key. This is why training in growing a diversity of organic crops is at the heart of both our climate change adaptation and COVID-19 response programmes. Through our partnerships with EcoHimal Nepal and HICODEF, we are enabling families to grow a wider and wider range of climate resilient crops.

This means they have access to the food they need to feed their families a healthy balanced diet, but it also means they can sell surplus at local markets. This helps to keep the prices down for those who would otherwise be forced to raid already stretched savings to buy over-priced fruits, vegetables and other staples (that is if they can get their hands on them at all)

In Solukhumbu, the Deusa Agro Forestry Resource Centre (AFRC) is a hub for training farmers in how to grow new crops in kitchen gardens. The AFRC also grows and distributes the seedlings to farmers need to grow their own. TGT has played an important role in making this happen, all thanks to donations from our supporters.

It was incredibly encouraging to receive photos and news from Deusa this month. Staff there have been distributing seedlings to farmers from the upper slopes of Deusa; farmers we’d not previously reached. The photo’s featured here were sent to us from staff at Deusa AFRC, they show farmers collecting their seedlings, it is a beautiful and hopeful sight; this is what enabling adaptation and resilience is all about.

Ending indoor air pollution - Stoves arrive in Sankhuwashabha

Last November we ran a Crowdfunder to help end indoor air pollution for 131 families in two villages (Chepuwa and Rukumu) in Sankhuwashabha, north east Nepal. Last week an incredible convoy of tractors delivered them across the treacherous last few miles of their journey from Kathmandu.

At a time when so many of us in the Western world are dependent on the service provided by delivery van drivers, it is quite something to see how challenging the same job is in Nepal. This video shows how on steep and slippery - cliff edge - dirt tracks it took two tractors to haul a trailer full of smoke free stoves through this particularly uneven section:

Special permit allowed delivery to go ahead

Nepal is still in lockdown, but NGOs are allowed to request special permits to make vital journey’s. Our brilliant partners, EcoHimal Nepal did just that to make sure these stoves could be delivered before the Monsoon rains arrived and made these tracks impassible.

Unloading

When the tractors finally arrived, everyone helped with the unloading effort:

Arrival ceremony

With the stoves finally all unloaded and lined up, the formal ceremony to mark this historic moment officially began:

Once installed, indoor air pollution will be a thing of the past here. Health will improve, deforestation will end and young women will be freed up to study and run small business.

Taking stoves home

With the formal ceremony over, families carried their stoves and chimneys back to their homes:

Installation

Several households set about installing their stoves as soon as they arrived. They put into use the training they’ve had on safe installation. Every household will be supported and supervised by EcoHimal’s project officer whose job it now is to ensure the stoves are safe to use.

Next steps

This project doesn’t end here, EcoHimal are committed to working with both villages to ensure they and their environment get the maximum benefit from their new stoves. There will be training’s on how to use all of the stoves functions, training on how to minimise the amount of wood fuel needed and workshops on how to ensure biodiversity recovers as demand for wood drops.

How you can help

The Glacier Trust is a small UK charity that enables climate change adaptation in Nepal. You can support our work by making a monthly donation of £10. It is now easier than ever to set this up via our new Donation portal.

Bitter gourd smoothies from Mandan Deupur

Last year we received a grant from Marr Munning Trust to work with EcoHimal Nepal to establish Mandan Deupur Agro Forestry Resource Centre (MD AFRC). It is modelled on the successes we have achieved at Deusa AFRC which has recently been extended.

The Coronavirus pandemic has led to a lockdown right across Nepal, but staff at MD ADFC have been able to continue to develop the plant nurseries and produce some fantastic crops. Where possible and safe, they have also been training local farmers - the need to adapt to climate and ecological breakdown has not gone away.

EcoHimal HQ have sent us some photo’s from a recent field visit. The first one shows a small training session for farmers inside one of the Polytunnels at MD AFRC:

Narayan Dhakhal, Exec Director of EcoHimal Nepal talks to farmers at MD AFRC, June 2020

Vegetables, fruits, nuts and pulses all seem to be doing very well at MD AFRC which is great news. As lockdown restrictions ease, local farmers will be able to visit more often for training and to purchase seedlings that they can plant. They will use them to develop or start their own kitchen gardens. Some will start small scale commercial farming.

Bitter gourd

One of the crops being grown and demonstrated at MD AFRC is Bitter Gourd. As the name suggests it is quite bitter to the taste; definitely a vegetable that needs the power of a spicy curry. However, it has several health benefits so it is certainly worth giving it a go.

As well as training farmers in how to grow and look after climate change resilient crops, EcoHimal also train farmers in how to market their crop to improve incomes.

Bitter gourd at Mandan Deupur AFRC, Nepal, June 2020

A third and newer level of support EcoHimal are offering is advice and practical support on the crucial dimension of adding value to the crop. This is crucial to economic development as we explored in our Coffee. Climate. Community. film. If more of the value from the sale of coffee can stay in Nepal (e.g. through roasting in country rather than exporting coffee in green bean form), more money stays in the Nepalese economy, helping it to flourish.

The same principle can apply to fruit and vegetable crops at the level of the local economy around Mandan Deupur. Can value be added to Bitter gourd by farmers or small businesses?

Through their Facebook page (which a lot of farmers involved in EcoHimal’s projects follow), EcoHimal can show how crops like Bitter gourd can be turned into a marketable product - in this instance a delicious smoothie!

Biointensive tree-planting

We have received some brilliant photo’s from the EcoHimal Nepal team up in Deusa, Solukhumbu. They show how farmers are being trained to plant fruit trees using the ‘biointensive’ method.

This approach is labour intensive, it involves digging a one metre deep and wide hole, which often means digging out large stones and the collection of various forms of wet and dry vegetation as well as ash.

Once the hole is dug, it is carefully filled back in. The original soil is layered with the vegetation, with planters making sure the top soil goes back at the top!

Tree planting is an important part of the Agroforestry approach to climate change adaptation that is being adopted in rural mountain villages that our projects support. Farmers are trained in how to plant trees, how to nurture them through their early growth and how to look after them when they are fully mature. All this is done following strict principles of organic farming; making the adaptation mindful of its knock-on effects.

In Deusa, EcoHimal Nepal and the Agro Forestry Resource Centre are promoting a diverse range of trees and species. The resulting ‘agro-biodiversity’ is crucial to the climate resilience of each farm as a whole.

The support and training that enables climate change adaptation in Nepal doesn’t end with the fruiting of trees. EcoHimal also support farmers to get their crops to market through the establishment of cooperatives and routes to market.

To learn more about the biointensive method, watch this YouTube video of an EcoHimal training session in Mandan Deupur, Kavre - be warned though it is an unedited video of people filling in a hole - but there is a specific technique to this!

UPDATE: Soap and Hope in Solukhumbu

Through our #SOAPANDHOPE campaign, The Glacier Trust raised over £4,000 to support the efforts of our partner NGOs in Nepal to combat the threat of the Coronavirus pandemic. We topped this up with £2,000 from our reserves. In line with our principle of trusting and being led by our partners, we did not dictate how this money was to be spent. This series of photos was sent to us by EcoHimal Nepal.

The Coronanvirus pandemic and the nationwide lockdown that has resulted has had multiple impacts across Nepal. One of the biggest is the immediate end it has put to many people’s ability to earn money and buy food. In several locations, this is exacerbated by food supply chains becoming disrupted as imports from neighbouring India and China are either cut off by border restrictions, or seriously curtailed.

The priority for Mapya Dhuadkoshi in Solukhumbu therefore has been the supply and delivery of food staples. EcoHimal Nepal worked closely with local government to help supply this food, TGT has helped purchase and transport it to remote villages. These photos show rice arriving arriving in Mapya in mid May:

EcoHimal Nepal with support from The Glacier Trust and others has been enabling climate change adaptation in Solukhumbu for over ten years as part of an overall development effort. That work is now centred on Deusa Agro Forestry Resources Centre, but reaches out across the hills to neighbouring muncipalities, including Mapya Dhudakoshi.

UPDATE: Soap and hope in Kawasoti

Yesterday we received a series of photos from our NGO partner, HICODEF in Kawasoti, Nawalparasi, south central Nepal.

HICODEF has a scholarship programme for young people. They are all from very poor homes in and near Kawasoti, a town on the Terai plain. HICODEF invited the young women on the scholarship programme to their offices to collect materials. 19 households have been supported.

These materials were part funded by our SOAP AND HOPE Crowdfunder. Thank you for your support.