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Nepal is among the countries most vulnerable to climate change and its effects, including severe water-induced disasters and extreme hydro-meteorological events such as drought, storms, floods and inundation, landslides, debris flows, soil erosion, and avalanches.

The energy-related Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions accounting for two-thirds of global greenhouse gas emissions are primarily responsible for climate change. For a reasonable likelihood of staying below 1.5 °C of global warming, net anthropogenic GHG emissions should decline by around 45 percent by 2030, from 2010 levels, reaching net-zero by around 2050. As a result, many governments are proposing GHG reduction and/or net-zero emission policies.

At present more than Rs 200 billion a year is used to import fossil fuels in Nepal, which is around 10 percent of our GDP. The demand for fossil fuel here is expected to rise six times in 2050 compared to 2010. While the rest of the world is gearing up to cut dependency on fossil fuels, such exponential growth in demand for petroleum products in Nepal is alarming. The rapid increase in the loss of Nepal Oil Corporation due to the high demand for subsidized imported fuels is a serious threat to the national economy. It is high time for strategic decisions and impactful action to help Nepal transition to carbon neutrality and energy independence.

Hydropower development has been a national priority, with more than 20,000 MW of projects under different stages of development. The forecast domestic demand for electricity for the next few years is much lower than its production. The peak demand for electricity for 2021 was already lower than installed capacity. By the end of 2028, Nepal could have an excess of 3500 MW of installed hydropower projects, whose production might go to waste if proper energy management and policies are not soon defined.

Export of excess hydroelectricity through a cross-border grid connecting South Asian countries is being discussed. But geopolitical complexities and high energy prices in Nepal may limit this possibility. Increasing domestic consumption of electricity by such a large amount in a short period seems impractical too. There is thus a need for a consolidated approach to replace the surging demand for fossil fuels with the surplus supply of electricity.

Also read: Nepal’s Tarai plains have a Chinese dream

Hydrogen is one of the globally emerging carriers of renewable electricity, contributing to a low carbon economy. Hydrogen is extracted from water using an electro-chemical machine called an electrolyzer. The hydrogen gas produced from renewable energy sources is green hydrogen. At present, the average cost of green hydrogen on the international market is $3-5 a kg, and the target is to bring it below $1 a kg by the end of this decade. Groundbreaking research and innovation and policy-based interventions to promote renewables as the primary supply of energy is pushing green hydrogen to overtake fossil fuel both technically and economically.

Hydrogen alone could be responsible for 22 percent of global energy demand by 2050, from less than 0.1 percent at present. Oil-producing counties in the Gulf have already started investing in mega-scale green hydrogen production from solar panels installed in deserts. Oman is preparing a 30GW green hydrogen production facility, ahead of UAE with 25GW. Saudi Arabia is about to complete a 4GW production facility in its zero-carbon Neom City. India has announced its “National Hydrogen Mission for Energy Independence by 2047” by pumping $1.35 trillion on hydrogen infrastructure.  Australia, Canada, China, and the US are also announcing their mega-scale projects. Strategic investments at present will lead to a higher share of the global market in green hydrogen in the future.

Green hydrogen can be produced with daily and seasonal variations in electricity demand and supply. This can be effective in maintaining the quality and reliability of the national grid, increasing productivity for end-users. For the run-off-river projects, green hydrogen can act as a virtual reservoir in wet seasons. In Nepal, the projected surplus electricity energy ranges from a minimum of 2,102 GWh for 2022 to 16,820 GWh for 2028. When this surplus energy is used to produce hydrogen, annual production will vary between a minimum of 8,410 tons with 20 percent surplus energy utilization in 2022, to a maximum of 336,384 tons with 100 percent utilization in 2028.

Hydrogen produced in 2028 can replace approximately 1.2 million kL of gasoline fuels from the transport and industrial sectors in Nepal. About 80,000 tons of green hydrogen can meet the current national demand of 800,000 tons of urea fertilizer a year. Use of green hydrogen as a clean heat in household and industrial applications can reduce dependency on solid fuels, coal, LPG, and furnace oils by large amounts. There are possibilities for existing and future process-based industries like mining and steel, vegetable ghee, and chemical industries to create demand for green hydrogen locally and promote sustainable low-carbon industrial development.

Also read: Opinion | Time to tweak our electoral system

There is a need for a consolidated program initiated and owned by the government to establish and incubate a green hydrogen economy for Nepal, and to prepare the business sector to take over commercial applications in a competitive manner in local, regional, and international markets.

It is high time for energy transition in Nepal with proper use of its immense hydropower and abundant solar energy sources to strategically replace fossil fuels in both commercial and residential sectors. Green hydrogen can play a vital role as an energy carrier and could be one of the promising links in energy transition for Nepal. This will have a significant impact on the energy mix of the country and energy export alternatives. The transition process demands strong political and social commitments, high-level knowledge transfers from university to the industry and business sector, and willingness from the commercial and business sectors to diversify their income with green hydrogen.

Kathmandu University (KU) has recently established the Green Hydrogen Lab with a vision “Nepalese industries specialized to produce, store, transport, and use green hydrogen energy at a commercial level”. KU has been conducting research to adapt global technological advancements in the context of Nepal and lobbying the government, private and other stakeholders for policy-based intervention of green hydrogen.

Recently, the Ministry of Energy has formed a coordination committee under the secretariat of the Water and Energy Commission to study the role of green hydrogen for balancing demand and supply of hydropower. The study report is expected to recommend a policy-level decision to open the door for incubating businesses based on green hydrogen technology for the public and private sectors.

The author is Team Leader, Green Hydrogen Lab and Assistant Professor, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Kathmandu University

For the longest time in my life, I thought people who talked about feelings were ‘sentimental’ folks. Perhaps that is why I didn’t care to check-in with my own feelings. The closest I came to answering the question ‘How are you feeling?’ would be three words used as a standard reply in three distinct situations: ‘Babbal’ (when things were to my liking), ‘Khattam’ (when things weren’t to my liking), and ‘Sabai thikai cha’ (when I wasn’t in the mood to reflect).

Just like the younger version of me, I have come across many who find it hard to answer that question with any insight. From my own experience, I can tell you why it is a problem. Lack of self-awareness can cause pain for ourselves and others. Previously, whenever I used to feel disappointed (I didn’t know how to label it ‘disappointment’ at the time), I used to react in a way that was perceived as anger by the other person. The other person’s standard response would be to say ‘Narisau na’ or ‘Khali risau cha’.

This response, of course, wasn’t attuned to my emotional experience. I was feeling disappointed and this person asked me not to get angry. This would then lead me to feel frustrated, as I wasn’t understood. As you can imagine, this cycle wasn’t helpful at all—filled as it was with miscommunication and misunderstanding. What was the root cause of it? Well, I hadn’t learnt to reflect on my feelings. As for the other person, they didn’t guess any other feelings in me other than anger.

Emotional literacy—the ability to identify, understand and express emotions positively—is one of the foundational skills of Emotional Intelligence. Unless we know how we are feeling, we aren’t in a position to understand what our needs are (emotions are data that signal whether our needs are met or unmet) and make this information understandable to others. What then happens is largely based on assumptions about others and ourselves, leading to misunderstanding, miscommunication and conflict.

Also read: ‘Being emotional’ vs ‘discussing emotions’

Although I wasn’t very emotionally literate back then, I have realized that the skills of emotional literacy can be learnt. Instead of categorizing our emotional states as ‘good’ or ‘bad’, what might happen if individuals learnt to tune in to feelings, gave those names and then leaned toward those emotions to help them in their goals? A good place to start is to identify basic emotions in oneself.

There are eight basic emotions based on Robert Plutchik’s Wheel of Emotions: anger (Ris), Anticipation (Apekchya), Disgust (Ghrina), Fear (Dar), Joy (Ananda), Surprise (Acchamma), Sadness (Dukha) and Trust (Biswas). What’s helpful to unlearn is the notion that these emotions are either ‘good’ or ‘bad’. The problem with labeling emotions as bad is that we will then push away feelings like anger and sadness without trying to learn from them. Emotional literacy is about acknowledging, identifying, labeling and understanding our emotional states so that we can make better decisions. This understanding can also be extended to developing empathy. Being able to see emotions as simply data about human needs, values and expectations can help us be more open to the emotional experiences of others.

Rather than getting stuck with judging emotional experiences as ‘good’ or ‘bad’, we could all become more self-aware and empathetic if we learnt to recognize and understand these emotions. It begins with acknowledging we all experience different pleasant and unpleasant feelings. Each day, take a moment to reflect on your day by identifying the above-mentioned eight basic emotions.

All these feelings are valuable as they help direct our attention to what’s important to us. Using the same framework, you can guess and ask others about their emotional states. Instead of assuming if someone is angry, you might want to check in with them and see if they are indeed angry or perhaps slightly disgusted or just fearful or even sad. A healthy relationship is one in which individuals are granted permission to feel a broad range of pleasant and unpleasant feelings—not just the ones deemed ‘good’. 

The author is co-founder of My Emotions Matter, an education initiative that helps individuals and teams learn the mindset and skills of Emotional Intelligence. Learn more at myemotionsmatter.com

Time has come to reform the existing electoral system that encourages rampant political corruption and use of money and muscle in election campaigns.

The current electoral system promotes contractors and moneyed men, whose undue influence in politics harm devoted and honest political workers with limited money and few political connections. Those in the latter group seldom get party tickets. That is why there is an urgent need to enact vital changes in the electoral system in order to revitalize democratic institutions and revive people’s faith in democracy. 

Now, the federal House of Representatives has 275 members. Under the mixed electoral system currently in practice, 165 members are elected under the First-Past-the-Post (FPTP) system, and the remaining 111 under the Proportional Representation (PR) system. Government formation is comparably easier under the FPTP system where candidates with the most votes are elected even without a majority. More seats are won with fewer votes.

Actually, many votes are not represented and go to waste. For example, in the 1991 election, the Nepali Congress secured 110 seats (53.66 percent) in the 205-member House of Representatives with only 36.74 percent votes, leaving 63.36 percent voters without any say in the country’s governance.

In a least developed country like Nepal where many voters are illiterate and poor, they are easily lured and intimidated by candidates. Likewise, caste, clan, ethnicity, and creed play important roles in winning elections. Money and muscle decide electoral outcomes. By the end of the 18th century, globally, the FPTP system started getting replaced by Proportional Representation (PR) system, and the trend continues.

Also read: Nepal’s remittance trap

Nepal, for its part, adopted the FPTP system in the 1959 parliamentary election, and continued with it in 1991, 1994, and 1999 elections. It only switched to a mixed electoral system in the 2008 Constituent Assembly elections. The new constitution followed suit, allocating different proportions of seats under FPTP and PR segments.

Nepal’s choice of a mixed system confirms that its leaders realize the demerits of the FPTP system. Most prominently, in a participatory democracy, election is all about representations, and so the PR system was incorporated, as greater representation under PR is a more ethical choice.

In the PR system, it is the party that gets the votes. It is a less expensive system with candidates not personally involved in the electoral process. Their credibility and integrity are not at stake. Candidates need not spend unlimited money because their election is not guaranteed.

The PR system has not been allowed to function properly in Nepal. Political parties hardly choose candidates fairly. Senior political leaders nominate their kith and kin under this category. Honest political workers are pushed to the margins.  

Money also plays a role in securing party nominations: Ironically, the ‘closed PR’ priority list can be tweaked to suit the leaders.

Also read: Nepal’s Tarai plains have a Chinese dream

Representatives elected under the PR system are looked down upon as they do not represent specific geographic areas and are, it is argued, not even people’s representatives. In the PR system, the link between elected legislators and their constituents is weak. Plus, the link between voters and their representatives is also tenuous.

A new hybrid system integrating the merits of the two systems while minimizing their demerits is warranted for countries like Nepal. In this system, proportionality under the PR system will decide the number of seats the parties get as per their national vote-share.

However, every candidate will be connected to a constituency in the PR list, where, to be elected, he/she will have to receive the most votes as per the FPTP system. The preference of candidates in the PR list will not guarantee his/her victory unless they secure most votes. This provides a better link between the legislators and the constituents. But getting most votes also does not guarantee election unless the candidate falls under the PR quota.

Significantly, under FPTP, candidates with the most votes will not be elected, as the seats available to parties are limited under the PR scheme. All parties will have seats in proportion to the national votes, their numbers to be determined as per the natural threshold. To have meaningful representation, different segments of the society like women, Dalit, Janajati will be prioritized.

In the integrated system, getting the most votes in a constituency will not guarantee victory, as the seats to be secured by the parties are limited in proportion to the votes received nationally under the PR scheme. If victory is not guaranteed, no one will spend big or think of using muscle-power.

The uncertainty of winning will not only deter candidates from spending unlimited money but also reduce political corruption. Moreover, with money no longer a concern, there will be more qualified candidates in the field. This will ultimately increase people’s faith in democracy.

Mishra is a former election commissioner

An informal talk program on Sino-Nepal relations held at a hotel in Itahari, a business hub of eastern Nepal, in mid-November 2021 stirred every invitee’s memories of China.

“When we were kids, we used to have Chinese-operated tippers. We used to find their working style praiseworthy and we were positive about the project they were involved in,” recalls Dhrubaraj Acharya, a local teacher.

Jiwan Parajuli, a tourism entrepreneur, vividly remembers how, over ten years ago, Chinese people came and stayed in the city to sell their calculators, necklaces and other commercial products.

Parajuli, who runs Hotel Tourist Inn, has equipped his hotel with Chinese furniture, culinary items and decorative stuff. Despite the Indian border being just a few kilometers away, he bought all the necessary items from China considering their high quality and reasonable cost.

According to journalist Amar Khadka, who is also a FNJ central member, there used to be a meat production and processing center owned by a private Chinese firm in southern Sunsari, one of 14 districts in Province no. 1.

Bookworms from Itahari and neighboring Dharan and Biratnagar cities enjoyed golden days when books of Chinese communist revolution and Chinese culture had easy reach.

In the program focusing on China without any representatives from China, participants recalled being fans of Chinese radio programs in the eastern Tarai belt. At that time lots of intellectuals loved to write letters to the Chinese radio that was broadcasting in Nepali, and they in turn received lovely gifts from Beijing.

Those beautiful things that made a deep impression on their minds, however, are now no more.

Chinese businessmen, government officers and language teachers, they had all long since disappeared, to seemingly never return.

Also read: The way ahead for BRI in Nepal

In contrast with the expanding Chinese community in Kathmandu Valley, locals living in non-tourist destinations in the 22 districts of the Tarai plains rarely see a Chinese, and the Covid-19 pandemic has made things worse.

In a series of interviews with Chinese from all walks of life who are living and working in Nepal, a rather gloomy picture of China’s influence in the Tarai emerges. From eastern Jhapa to far-western Dhangadi, only a handful projects, businesses and factories are operated by the northerners.

Wu Xiaoda, a veteran investor from China’s Sichuan province, started his Nepali business in 2007. The next year, he visited Biratnagar, the capital city of Province 1, where he never met a compatriot until 2010. The pleasant surprise of running up against some Chinese there haunts him till now.

“Tarai plains are a real foreign land for me,” says the old campaigner who invests in Birgunj, Nepalganj, Janakpur, Biratnagar, all of them major cities in the southern belt.

“Most local people resemble Indians. Most importantly, there are no Chinese food that can tickle your taste buds, no Chinese people with whom you can play mahjong. It’s not like in Kathmandu,” he says.

At the same time, people also complain that China is indifferent to this low-elevation area of Nepal.

In another talk program on a similar topic held in Kathmandu recently, representatives from southern plains summarized main causes of the misfortunes of  Madhesi ethnic group—cruel exploitation by India, unbearable discrimination of the central government and incomprehensible ignorance from China.

According to the 2011 national census, 50.26 percent of Nepal’s population lives in Tarai-Madhes, but the Madhesi ethnic group in this region comprises only 19.3 percent of the total population.

Nowadays, many NGOs and INGOs are active here, most of them close to India or the West. Padam Adhikari, social worker and a civil society member from Itahari, says Chinese passiveness is partly to blame.

Says Binod Pokharel—a permanent resident of Itahari, the largest city in Sunsari district—who returned from South Korea to start a share-trading business, “China is our idol, we love China, but China should love us back in the same way.”

The long and narrow plains have been seeing greater enthusiasm for China and Chinese goods.

Himal Dahal, a renowned journalist from the same city, shares that in most households in Tarai region there are products made in China, be it kitchen appliances, clothes or other daily essentials. Particularly, the electrical appliances imported from China are most popular.

China did try to love the Tarai more. In 2009, Chinese ambassador Qiu Guohong and Nepali Minister for Culture Dr. Minendra Rijal had jointly inaugurated a Chinese language project with fanfare at the Janata Secondary School of Itahari. 

After two weeks, however, Liu Hangsang, the Chinese man assigned to the project who could speak fluent Nepali, left the school all of sudden, without telling anyone. Looking back, 54-year-old Lokendra Kafle, who worked in the same school and witnessed the event, feels sorry for the unhappy ending.

“Not a single class could be run there,” Kafle says. “I guess there was some indirect pressure.”

This former member of Chinese Listeners Club started building contacts with China as early as 1995 and was even invited to visit China in 2006.

Chinese traditional medicines and treatments so piqued his interest that he even tried to get his daughter interested in studying so as to export them to Europe, Australia and America. But he was compelled to send his daughter to Kathmandu to study Chinese language.

“There is no working atmosphere for Chinese projects in the Tarai,” the public figure sighs.

This writer asked Chinese investor Wu about the reluctance of his colleagues to do business in Tarai plains.

“To take root in this region close to India is a challenge. I have to fight a lot each time I want to open a factory in these plains,” says this 43-year-old man rather helplessly.

On the other hand, almost everyone from Tarai plains taking part in the discussion of Sino-Nepal ties expressed both full support for China’s expedition to their districts and high expectation of an upturn in Chinese visibility.

They had a long wish list for China, with concrete suggestions too. 

Krishna Niraula, a businessperson from Sunsari district, urges the two governments to open Chentang-Kimathanka point at the earliest, arguing that it is the key for the prosperity of eastern Nepal.

His remarks find an echo in Ganesh Khatri, a local political leader who hopes China would be flexible about border-crossing movement between Province 1 and Tibet, to the benefit of both the sides.

During Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao’s visit to Kathmandu in January 2012, China and Nepal had signed an agreement to update six existing trading points in China-Nepal border areas, including Chentang-Kimathanka.

On behalf of farmers of Sunsari district, Bhairab Prashad Sapkota, a retired teacher, says farmers want to run animal husbandry business with Chinese breeds, do agriculture with Chinese seeds, use furniture items made by Chinese factories and learn other skills from China.

As the head of Jagaran Public Library, Sapkota is ready to provide his popular library for a China study corner, to be later upgraded into a multi-purpose library where Chinese educational materials and books can be kept for the public to enhance people-to-people relations. 

Suresh Karki, an active youth leader, is charmed by China’s green development and desires the highest prosperity of Nepal driven by Chinese technology. “I want to focus on green. We need green schools, green hospitals, green conference halls with Chinese assistance and investment.” 

“I like Chinese engineering,” says Ganesh Mandal, a Madhesi civil society activist. He suggests China provides two or three youths and girls from each ward in the 22 Tarai districts technical training scholarship. As a reward, these engineers will bring back to Nepal Chinese technology, language and culture. 

Sunil Bhusal, provincial head of the Swiss Chamber of Commerce, advises China to learn from Europeans who are carrying out various projects and activities in the eastern region. According to him, the Swiss government has already invested Rs 1 billion there in skill development and tourism. 

“India might be angry with your increasing presence in the Tarai, but Indians often go to Mustang and other districts bordering China’s Tibet,” reminds the Nepali businessman who runs Premier Group of Companies. 

The author is former chief of Xinhua News Agency Kathmandu Bureau