Browsing by Subject "Nepal"
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Item Animating Children’s Views: An Innovative Methodology for Quantitative Research(2021-02) Levison, DeborahUNCRC Article 12 (Convention on the Rights of the Child) states that children's views and perspectives should be listened to, especially when it comes to policy decisions that affect them. In theory, this is great—but it's hardly the norm, particularly in the Global South. Professor Deborah Levison and her research assistant, PhD student Anna Bolgrien, sought to develop a way to survey children in the Global South about difficulties and challenges they may be facing in everyday life, which had to be done without putting children at risk of being overheard and punished by their family members or communities. The result: Animating Children's Views, an open-source, human rights–based interview methodology using simple cartoon vignettes featuring different scenarios (e.g., peer pressure, child labor, street harassment) and a scale of emoji faces ranging from happy to sad. After collaborating with an artist and an animator to create the vignettes, Levison and Bolgrien worked with teams of local collaborators in Nepal and Tanzania to gather quantitative data, with plans to expand the project to Brazil. They hope that other organizations will adopt the Animating Children's Views methodology and use its online library of images and animations to help influence policy changes on a global scale. "The point is that whatever kids have to say, we should be listening to it more," Levison says.Item CFANS Semester Study Abroad in Nepal(University of Minnesota Tourism Center, 2014) Brouellette, Lisa; Flynn, Mike; Folsom, Paul; Hill, Alicia; Nichols, Leiloni; Seaman, Kristin; Shine, LoganItem Climate Change Adaptation policies in Himalayan Region of Nepal. Comparative analysis of INDCs between Nepal, India, and Peru(2017) Gurung, Tashi, WongdiThe Himalayas are also known as the third pole as they comprise the third largest amount of snow on the earth after the Arctic and Antarctica. They are also known as The Water Towers of Asia. With global climate change, the temperatures on the Tibetan Plateau in the Himalayas are rising substantially compared to other regions. The Himalayan people are far from being the top contributors to this climate change, yet they suffer its hardest consequences. Studies show that communities struggle to adapt to the changing environment because of limited information, poor or no access to services, lack of infrastructure, lack of capacity on the part of the central government, an unfavorable geographical location, lack of external support etc. Hence, rural mountain communities in developing nations such as Mustang in Nepal have very low adaptive capacity. In addition to the many existing problems like poverty, the changing climate has exacerbated the numerous difficulties of day-to-day life of people in the mountains. This is just as much an environmental problem as it is a policy and social justice problem. Mustang, a mountainous district in northern Nepal, is not immune to the impact of climate change. This paper focuses on how different adaptation policies and strategies can help the Himalayan region of Nepal adapt better to the constantly changing environment and assuage the impacts exacerbated by climate change. The challenges in Nepal are not unique: other mountainous regions in developing countries have begun to develop strategies to adapt to a changing climate. India and Peru provide two useful comparative cases. Recommendations and reforms for Nepal are discussed after comparative analysis of INDCs (Intended Nationally Determined Contributions) prepared by Peru and India.Item The double life of development: peasants, agrarian livelihoods, and the prehistory of Nepal's Maoist revolution(2012-10) Paudel, DineshThis dissertation explores the relationship between the long history of development and peasant rebellions in Nepal by drawing on ethnographic inquiries of a pre-history of Nepal's Maoist revolution of the 1990s. Specifically, it interrogates the transformations generated by the Rapti Integrated Development Project in peasants' moral economy, ecological processes, appropriation of the commons and peasants' consciousness, and their role in creating the conditions of possibility for the emergence of the Maoist revolution. Various developmental schemes successfully enrolled rural villages into development projects, ostensibly to contain an upsurge in rebellious sentiments. Ironically, these same subjects of development later became the backbone of the Maoist rebellion and were instrumental in spreading the armed revolt against the state throughout Nepal. The Rapti region was hailed as a model of success for agrarian development in one era and the locus of the peasant-led Maoist revolution in another. The main question asked in this research was why the Maoist revolution emerged from Rapti area of Nepal despite the long history of development in the region. My main argument in this dissertation is that development involves simultaneous processes of enrollment and othering of subaltern subjects, which I call development's "double life". This is central to how we understand the relationship between development and rebellion in the global South. Developmental conditions are reproduced through hegemonic ideas and practices, and it normalizes certain kinds of knowledge and subject positions, aside from producing economic domination, vulnerability and scarcity. At the same time, development carries the potential to incite political awareness among marginalized groups that can result in a willingness to rebel at the individual level and to engage in collective defiance or revolt. Conceptual and empirical contradictions inherent to development generate such possibilities in particular times and spaces. In peasant society, the enrollment and othering of subaltern subjects are manifested in everyday livelihood practices, in historically evolved metabolic interactions with nature, and in the transformation of individual and collective subjectivities and consciousness. This dissertation demonstrates that the organic intellectuals can articulate these processes of enrollment and othering, reproduced in development, to generate a new commonsense, instigating rebellious consciousness and transformative possibilities.Item Frontline youth work with street children and youth in Nepal: edge work, boundary work, hard work(2012-12) Rana, SheetalFrontline youth workers are critical to an effective community and organizational response to street children and youth, one of the most marginalized and disadvantaged groups in Nepal and globally. As employees of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), these workers engage street young people in both street- and center-based settings to offer services aimed at increasing their "wellbeing and healthy development." This dissertation explored, examined, and analyzed how NGOs (and by extension their international funders), workers, and young people understood and influenced this frontline youth work practice in Kathmandu, Nepal. The study used a mixed-method qualitative research. Data were collected from 24 frontline youth workers, eight management level staff, and 23 street youth. Workers viewed street young people as both victims and deviants, who were partly responsible for their own victimization and future life-outcomes. A primary approach used to help young people "fix" their problems and themselves as "problems" was "socialization." In practice, this was a form of social control. As young people transitioned from a street outreach program to a drop-in center and then to a transition home, there was an increase in the workers' control of these young people's activities, choices, and even voices. Child rights and their participation were emphasized in theory, while in practice participation was workers' manipulation and tokenism rather than youth-driven and youth/adult equity (Hart, 1992). These NGOs were the only agencies that offered services to street young people. They worked with little support from government and in an environment of public distrust and financial uncertainty. A powerful influence to their work was their international donor agencies that, as part of their funding to NGOs, guided and shaped the street level understanding and practice of frontline youth work. At another level, NGOs influenced this work by teaching workers their roles and work and by requiring them to show outputs. At the individual level, unethical practices of some workers further alienated young people from mainstream society and damaged their own and their agencies' reputation. Overall, workers and their agencies were doing good work, particularly in the context of many obstacles. However, no discernable effort was being made to confront the larger, complex, social institutional sources of what is the "street children" social problem. No one - neither government, nor NGOs and international organizations - had named fully or even begun to take this on. Frontline youth work was not a solution to the "street children problem." It was a small band-aid on a larger, deeper cut.Item Nepal - Sustainable horticulture crop production(2010-11-28) Schwarz, LauraItem Success to abundant water supply in Kathmandu Valley(2013-08) Manandhar, IndiraDespite being renowned as one of the richest countries in water resources with the snowcaps of the Himalayas, Nepal has not been able to utilize its tremendous water resources. Agriculture, which is the major occupation of Nepalese people, has a water requirement that is very high throughout the entire year. Besides the need of fresh drinking water for human consumption, the importance of surface water sources is also high because of the country's dependency on hydropower electricity. Today, Kathmandu, the capital city, is already facing an overwhelming tragedy of clean potable water scarcity with only a few hours of water supply per week and blackout of more than 12 hours per day. Besides lack of quantity, quality issues are also contributing to the water crisis. Rapid population growth and direct waste disposal into the rivers within the city are the major two reasons for the depletion of both surface and ground water quality and quantity as well. Cultural and political interventions further exacerbate the issue. Various government and non-government organizations both national as well as international, are attempting to fulfill the water demand for all of the water users in the valley. However, the progress towards both quality and quantity has been slow due to lack of appropriate technology, bureaucratic entanglements and lack of finance. Not to be forgotten are the huge roles of corruption at the various levels of bureaucracy and more than a decade long political unrest. The case in Kathmandu Valley is not so unique water crisis compared to other parts of the world. Nepal water problems are not caused by lack of the resources but for other reasons unrelated to its abundant water resources such as distribution, management and lack of infrastructures etc. In this context, this paper intends to explore the major problems and the hurdles in supply of safe and sufficient drinking water, to study and analyze the ongoing efforts to resolve the problems and to recommend the most culturally appropriate, adaptable and cost effective principles and strategies to create sustainable water management system in the Valley. The study will include surveys to determine the public perception of the water crisis, conduct interviews of water officials in the rural and urban areas of Kathmandu Valley and given an analysis of recent reports and studies from previous experts, quantification of local water availability for sustainable management and future supply. This research will reveal some of the hidden issues behind the water crisis and direct to appropriate and cost effective solutions for developing countries like Nepal. The water budget calculation will disclose the availability of local sustainable water and provides the measures and necessity to maintain the balance in hydrological cycle which helps to assure water availability in future for the abundant water supply in Kathmandu Valley. I believe that abundant supply of safe drinking water is possible from the existing water resources if it can be used with a sustainably managed system. I hope to illuminate and clarify the issues surrounding the water crisis and make recommendations to help people move towards a more sustainable supply of potable water.