THE GLOBAL AND THE LOCAL

Diagram sourced from this website at ResearchGate: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/a-Schematic-of-a-traditional-water-supply-dhunge-dhara-or-hiti-in-the-Kathmandu-Valley_fig1_277652904 Full article: Traditional Knowledge of Rainwater Harvesting Compared to Five Modern Case Studies ~~~ My article "Drought and Flood" was published in the Annapurna Express on July 27, 2019. Read it below. ~~~ South Asia goes through periodic droughts and floods in the same year. Why hasn’t it occurred to us that this is a paradox? How can a continent reeling from water shortage suddenly be inundated with an overabundance of rain, which leads to annual floods? Often, this phenomena is happening in contiguous areas only a few kilometers apart. I was consulting for the World Bank between 2008-2010, and I remember the then director of World Bank in Nepal, Susan Goldmark, saying that South Asia would never get out of this drought and flood cycle till it managed its monsoon—st...

Annapurna Express, July 12, 2019 June 11 th is the date for the arrival of the monsoon in Nepal. This year, there was no sign of rain on the 11 th . The days ticked by as we looked at the skies, increasingly anxious about the oppressive feeling in the air. A cyclone predicted to hit the coast of Gujarat moved away to the ocean, and was blamed for sucking rain away from the mainland. Noone—meteorologists, climate change specialists, Indian scientific community, NASA-- seemed to know why the monsoon was delayed. As the drought worsened, maps started to appear on Twitter, showing how far the monsoon should have moved across the subcontinent by late June. Most Indian states which should have received rain had seen weak rainfall or none at all. The briefest shower I have ever seen in Kathmandu washed away the dust on the leaves of my curry tree plant on June 17th. The rain lasted five minutes. On Asar 15 th , we saw photographs of people planting rice in what looked like well-irrig...