Your search within this document for 'Nepal' resulted in 13 matching pages.
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“...HIMALAYA, the Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies Volume 37 | Number 2 Article 6 December 2017 Calculating Risk, Denying Uncertainty: Seismicity and Hydropower Development in Nepal Christopher Butler University of California - Santa Cruz, cjbutler(3)ucsc.edu Matthaus Rest University of Munich, m.rest(3)lmu.de Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/himalaya Recommended Citation Butler, Christopher and Rest, Matthaus (2017) "Calculating Risk, Denying Uncertainty: Seismicity and Hydropower Development in Nepal," HIMALAYA, the Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies: Vol. 37 : No. 2, Article 6. Available at: http://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/himalaya/vol37/iss2/6 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. Macalester College This Research Article is brought to you for free and open access by the DigitalCommons(2)Macalester College at DigitalCommons(2)Macalester College. It has been accepted...”
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“...Calculating Risk, Denying Uncertainty: Seismicity and Hydropower Development in Nepal Acknowledgements The authors thank Sienna Craig, Mark Turin, and two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments on this article. Research was supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation, the Humer Foundation for Academic Talent and the European Research Council-funded project "Remoteness and Connectivity: Highland Asia in the World.’ This research article is available in HIMALAYA, the Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies: http:/ / digitalcommons.macalester.edu/himalaya/vol37/iss2/6...”
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“...finance, which are highly contingent upon Nepal presenting itself as a 'safe' zone for investment. Our study focuses on the elites of Nepal's hydro community: the developers, investors, water experts, and government officials who occupy the 'upstream' positions at which scientific knowledge is produced and adjudicated. On one hand, the denial or omission of earthquake potential that we witnessed seems to identify the ineluctable challenges that Nepal faces in attempting to integrate its economy into global markets; on the other hand, it indicates the desire of the private sector to reap profits from hydropower in spite of obvious geophysical dangers. These dangers, we argue, are a bankable risk for these elites. However, for the people directly affected by new hydropower infrastructures, these are risks and uncertainties threatening already vulnerable livelihoods. Keywords: seismicity, hydropower, infrastructure, uncertainty, financialization of risk, Nepal. HIMALAYA Volume37,Number2 15...”
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“...Introduction The Nepal April 2015 earthquake devastated infrastructure in the middle third of the country. It rendered many roads, paths, bridges, and hillsides structurally unsafe for use or habitation. Several hydropower plants were also knocked off-line—a staggering blow for a country already contend- ing with year-round load shedding, and needing reliable energy to fuel its reconstruction efforts. Given the country’s deep-seated aspirations for hydro- power as a future pathway to development (Butler 2016; Lord 2014; Rest 2012), analyses of the damage to existing plants and those under construction quickly emerged. The Nepal Electricity Authority reported that 150MW (megawatts) of electricity generation had been lost in the earthquake from a national portfolio of just 774MW (Pangeni 2015), and that this loss represented an ‘acutely small level of...capacity in a nation of 28 million people’ (Schneider 2015). Furthermore, several projects in devel- opment were set back months and years...”
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“...the major new foreign-funded projects in Nepal, one of us asked about the danger of a dam failure caused by an earthquake. He replied: “This is a silly question. All the components will be defined on the basis of earthquake risks.” That was that. And yet, as quickly as a developer dismissed questions about seismic risk, they would also vouch for the unpre- dictability of rivers. One respondent admitted that he was concerned with the number of dams proposed for construction in the case of seismic activity: “I’ve spent 35 years on these rivers... You always have that risk... they are unpredictable.” A second developer told us, “The Himalayas are young mountains and still have a lot of motion in their formation.” But when asked if he thought Nepal should curb its aspirations for hydro development, he dismissed the notion because time was of the essence: “If we don’t build hydropower now, India will build its own and no longer need electricity from [Nepal].” So, how do we explain this disjuncture...”
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“...since the 8.0 magnitude Nepal-Bihar earthquake in 1934 that killed an estimated 11,000 people. And the general seismicity of Nepal is also a largely accepted truth, supported by the country’s various policies, plans, and programs dedicated to disaster pre- paredness and risk reduction. These include the Natural Calamity Relief Act of 1982, the Nepal Risk Reduction Consortium formed in 2009, and the Kathmandu Valley Earthquake Risk Management Project. That the April 25 earthquake occurred on a Saturday likely saved thousands of lives because school was not in session and that morning many Nepali were outdoors enjoying the spring weather. That the diminished loss of life was owed to any sort of preparation on the part of the Nepali government and its many multinational supporters was generally discounted (Sharma 2015; Useem, Kunreuther & Michel-Kerjan 2015). Considering the current state of hydropower generation in Nepal, it might be surprising to learn that in Nepal electricity production...”
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“...dealing with risk, but extreme uncertainty about the future of their lives, homes, and livelihoods—far beyond their access to electricity. Whereas professionals use models to project the structural integrity of dams and potential earnings from electricity sales, the people living in close proximity to hydropower projects have no way to calculate and manage the ‘risks’ that these interventions will mean on the ground. Socially Organized Denial The slow government response to the 2015 earthquake in Nepal threatens to exacerbate social inequality, alter com- munity structures, and generate new patterns of economic and social conflict. How is it that this major catastrophic event has failed to cause a strong response from the hydro- power industry? What can explain the disjuncture between lived experience and public concern? What can we say about the prevailing opinions about seismicity that existed prior to the 2015 earthquake and continue to neutralize or muffle a stronger outcry for stricter...”
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“...processes bound by perception, many forms of denial are produced (and contested). Culturally prescribed norms about how to think (or not think) about things reflect a particularly insidious form of social control. If socially organized denial is shaped in response to social circumstance, Nepali hydropower’s version of denial would be defined by the country’s long-standing and frustrating attempts at development. Numerous scholars have documented the deeply engrained nature of develop- ment in Nepal (cf. Pigg 1993; Shrestha 1997), wherein being developed (‘bikasi’ in Nepali) or not developed (‘abikasit’ in Nepali) prevails as a fundamental distinction between urban and rural populations, and between those who are ‘modern’ and those who are not. This frustration is further compounded by an unstable and unproductive govern- ment which has, as of this writing, re-formed 26 times since the democratic revolution in 1990, each new itera- tion bringing in a new roster of ministers and visions to...”
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“...to inspect the legitimating principles guiding hydropower construction in Nepal. As the 2015 earthquake reminds us, it appears the ‘techniques of calcu- lability...have far exceeded the organizations and tools for its management, hence opening a new distance between expert and popular understandings of risk (Appadurai 2011: 528). The ethos of hydropower professionals working in Nepal, those who play and shape the game, perpetuates a process that is ‘simultaneously discursive, technical, institutional, and ideological’ (ibid: 526), by which they attempt to push uncertainty out of the picture, albeit not entirely successfully. Appearances and Spectacular Accumulation Socially organized denial has a specific context and tem- porality in which it emerges to influence public thinking about earthquakes, hydropower, and risk. But there is more going on here than simple denial. At this particular historical moment, as Nepal searches for development and electricity, it is not enough that the hydro...”
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“...through calculation. But the seismic risk to a potential hydropower site simply cannot be calculated. What we are actually talking about, then, is uncertainty. As Appadurai (2011: 524) reminds us, “uncertainty remains outside of all financial devices and models.” The denial of uncertainty serves an important purpose in maintaining the promise of Nepal as a future ‘hydro- power nation’ (Lord 2014). As with many other financial devices, it helps to obscure the fact that those who make a living with the financialization of risk are seldom those who have to live with the uncertainties produced by its ramifications. In the case of hydropower development in Nepal, the affected communities have always already been among the most vulnerable: predominantly peasants who subsistence-farm in geologically highly unstable moun- tains. Many of these families are indigenous, and already contend with institutionalized forms of discrimination that inhibit their ability to provide for themselves. 22 HIMALAYA Fall2017...”
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“...Nepalese hydropower frontier remains to be seen. In line with Boholm’s proposition, we are convinced that we will need more anthropological research to address this question. Christopher Butler (PhD, sociology, University of California, Santa Cruz, 2016) is an independent scholar living in Kathmandu, Nepal. Matthaus Rest (PhD, ethnology, University of Zurich, 2014) is an anthropologist. After visiting positions at the University of Oxford, the Nepa School of Social Sciences and Humanities in Kathmandu and UCLA, he currently splits his time between the University of Munich and his family's farm in rural Austria. He is writing a book on the suspension of the Arun-3dam in North Eastern Nepal. Apart from unbuilt infrastructures, he likes to think about the future of global milk production and the Krampus. The authors thank Sienna Craig, Mark Turin, and two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments on this article. Research was supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation, the Humer...”
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“...Spirits and the Shaking Earth. GlacierHub, October 20. (accessed on July 9, 2017). Gramsci, Antonio. 1971. Selections from the Prison Notebooks. New York: International Publishers. Gyawali, Dipak, ed. 2003. Rivers, Technology and Society: Learning the Lessons of Water Management in Nepal. Kathmandu: Himal Books. ICIMOD. 2011. Glacial Lakes and Glacial Lake Outburst Floods in Nepal. Kathmandu: International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development. IPPAN. 2015. Earthquake Affected Operations Projects. Kathmandu: Independent Power Producers Association of Nepal. Khattri, KN. 1987. Great Earthquakes, Seismicity Gaps and Potential for Earthquake Disaster Along the Himalaya Plate Boundary. Tectonophysics 138 (1): 79-92. Kumar Nath, Sankar. 2004. Seismic Hazard Mapping and Microzonation in the Sikkim Himalaya through GIS Integration of Site Effects and Strong Ground Motion Attributes. Natural Hazards 31 (2): 319-342...”
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“...Around the Nepalese Arun-3 Hydropower Project. Contemporary South Asia 20 (1): 105-117. Sangraula, Bikash. 2017. How Nepal Got the Electricity Flowing. Christian Science Monitor January 16. Nepal-got-the-electricity-flowing> (accessed April on 29, 2017). Schneider, Keith. 2015. Nepal Earthquake Damages at Least 14 Hydropower Dams. Circle of Blue, May 5. nepal-earthquake- damages-at-least-14-hydropower-dams> (accessed April on 29, 2017). USGS. 2016. USGS FAQs. United States Geological Service, November 16. (accessed on April 29, 2017). Sharma, Dinesh C. 2015. Nepal Earthquake Exposes Gaps in Disaster Preparedness. The Lancet 385 (9980): 1819-1820. Shrestha, Bigyan. 2015. Upper Tamakoshi Damage Manageable. New Spotlight Nepal, September 11. (accessed on April...”