Consultation Meetings and Field Survey in West Rapti River Basin in Banke, Nepal

Senior Researcher Osti Rabindra of ICHARM was on a mission to the West Rapti River basin in Nepal from 7 to 16 April.

During this mission, he first attended a consultation workshop on 10 April at Nepalgunj in Banke. The workshop was organized by ICHARM in collaboration with Nepal Development Research Institute (NDRI) to disseminate the findings of the first-phase study and to collect information on the needs of local stakeholders for the next phase study. In his presentation, Osti outlined the research findings from the first phase study and briefed a road map for future research, on which he had a serious discussion with workshop participants. Participants were local people, line managers, rescue operators, and I/NGO representatives,

A field investigation was conducted on 11-12 April. The investigation team comprised of researchers from ICHARM and NDRI and visited three different study clusters, namely Fattepur, Gangapur and Mathehiya Villages in the lower West Rapti River basin in Banke. The purpose of this investigation was to validate the model results as well as to identify the causes and effects of river shifting as well as flood disasters in those areas.

Based on the feed back from the local-level consultation meeting and field observation, a steering committee meeting was held in Kathmandu on 15 April to update the research findings to the steering committee, which was formed during the initial stage of the first phase study. This national-level meeting was also to update the current situation of the West Rapti River basin to committee members eventually to draw the national interest in the basin’s problems and their possible solutions through national efforts. Steering committee members, who are representatives from key governmental and non-governmental agencies, attended the meeting and gave several comments and suggestions, while discussing issues presented by ICHARM and NDRI. A revised form of the research proposal for the next phase study is now under development.