Nepal’s mountainous eco-system is vulnerable even to small scale of changes in the environment. The evidences available between 1975-2006 shows that Nepal’s temperature increased by 1.8 degree centigrade and the average temperature rise was 0.06 degree centigrade per year. Nepal has a constant fear of catastrophic glacier outburst and flood. All these environmental pains indicate the higher possibility of a sizeable negative impact of climate change on agriculture.
In the poor countries, environmental degradation is more pervasive because of rapid deforestation, watershed degradation, loss of biological diversity, fuel wood and water shortages, water contamination, soil erosion and land degradation. The strategy of environmental management should therefore, be to minimize the adverse impacts on people’s livelihood. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) considers the challenge of agriculture is to ensure people´s rights to food security, at the same time the challenge is also retaining the natural resources productive for future generation.
The major task today is to devise the technology that will save the environment without sacrificing growth. This is a difficult task because of the high rate of growth of population and declining land and water resources. In the last 20 years, the vehicles running on Kathmandu’s roads have increased by 14 percent. The open space has also decreased from 63 percent to 41 percent. The area of urbanization has increased by 450 times. This particular situation requires a shift to sustainable development, which may ensure that present and future generations have equal access to the total capital of natural and human resources.
The degrading environment is slowing the growth in world food output. There is a less arable land available for conservation of agriculture. There is a declining trend in the productivity of agricultural inputs but the rural farmers have a compulsion to increase productivity from existing cropland. Technology, if understood as an application of knowledge for practical purposes, can be made viable to protect our planet by creating a centre of economic activity around technologies and products that benefit the environment.
The need for investigating the contributions from agro-ecology is seriously realized in recent years. Agro-ecology is an approach to farming that promotes sustained yields through the use of ecologically sound farm management practices because it relies on low levels of inputs, indigenous knowledge and appropriate technologies to achieve sustainable agricultural production. Out of the 3,000 million hectares of the world´s land surface, only 1,500 is currently used for cultivation. The reason for underutilization is largely because of inadequate water supply, poor drainage conditions, steepness of slopes etc. This requires the need for considerable environmental protection investments and urgency of the execution of proper land management principles.
Since today´s complexities in environmental deterioration is beyond science and economics alone, the remedial measures available through the existing scientific and economic instruments may be a difficult task. Empirical studies have recommended the need for the application of new innovative model to supplant the traditional decision-making methods. This new model is termed Collaborative Environmental Planning (CEP), which is increasingly being used to solve resource issues and problems.
In the last 20 years, the vehicles running on Kathmandu’s roads have increased by 14 percent. The open space has also decreased from 63 percent to 41 percent. The area of urbanization has increased by 450 times. This particular situation requires a shift to sustainable development, which may ensure that present and future generations have equal access to the total capital of natural and human resources.
There is a direct link between the way world produces energy and damage caused by pollution. The task, therefore, is to assess and utilize various sources of energy that occur naturally in the environment. In some countries government purchasing is encouraged for the products whose contents and methods of production have the smallest possible impact on the environment. While constructing the structure, energy, water, and materials are used so efficiently it not only supports the longer lifetime of the structure alone, but also the health and productivity of occupants.
It is believed that the impact of such structure on the local and global environment is minimal. At present, this may look like a distant dream in Nepal’s case, but urban planning guidelines can of course be designed to complement our future development strategies.
Asia Pacific region have been experiencing massive transformation in the structure of their rural economies. Since last two decades, China’s environmental management has yielded success in sustaining high rate of rural transformation and speedy alleviation of rural poverty. The technology that supported yield-increasing per hectare and labor-releasing for the employment in non-farm activities, helped increase farmers livelihood since the rise in rural demand for non-agricultural goods and timely and easy labor availability was the key factor for the considerable growth of the rural non-farm sector. This situation contributes to the growth of rural income by raising the capacity of the farmer to invest.
As reliable data on emerging technologies for sustainability assessment are still inadequate, efforts should be made to review existing technologies and regulatory measures in selected countries to find out their strength and weaknesses with an aim to pursue, add value and strengthen the green technology initiative. The advances in solar, wind, bio-fuels and energy efficiency design has speeded up the development of technology-driven energy and cost efficiency mechanism to justify economic growth.
The wastewater and sewage disposal has been major threat to human health. The liquid waste discharged by domestic residences, commercial properties, industry or agriculture generates potential contaminants and concentrations that to some extent is minimized or recycled in the developed world. It necessitates the adoption of available and affordable technology for renewable energy including sunlight, wind, rain, and geothermal heat, which are naturally replenished.
There is a link between poverty reduction and growth in productivity. The productivity can be increased if local knowledge is combined with the improvement in technology to meeting particular conditions. The irrigation of deserts is proved to be economically feasible and desirable to upgrade low productivity marginal lands into higher productivity land through the improvement and development in technology. As yield increase has been an important source of growth, FAO estimates over next couple of decades, about 80 percent of the production expansion will be linked with yield increases and about 20 percent with agricultural land expansion. This reiterates the importance of balancing between the technology and sustainable development. This can also be considered while designing Nepal’s land reform programs based on distributive justice, which is largely the distribution of available land.
The skyrocketing costs of energy and agricultural inputs have reduced profitability, which has severely damaged the environment. The price of oil (Crude Oil Brent) in the international market went up by 42.7 percent to USD 101.60 per barrel in mid-February 2011 from USD 71.22 per barrel in mid-February 2010. This necessitates the proper assessment of the appropriateness of agro-technologies especially the development of biotechnology for maintaining sustainable agriculture. In this sense, the consideration of green technology application is worth considering which aims at linking agriculture with the environment-friendly technology, by contributing to both poverty reduction and sustainable agriculture development.
bishwambher@yahoo.com
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