̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Nepal

Not a drop to drink

sc604 — Mon, 19 Oct 2015 13:00:21 +0000

Nainital is picture perfect: lying in a lush green valley in India’s ‘Lake District’, the town sits on a crescent-shaped lake, surrounded by the snow-capped peaks of the Himalayas. Its picturesque location makes it a hugely popular destination for domestic and foreign visitors: each year, Nainital’s population increases fivefold due to the influx of tourists, placing huge strains on the town’s resources, including the water supply.

It’s not just tourists that are contributing to the strain, however. For years, Nainital has been plagued by illegal construction, which has been affecting its ability to supply water. ̽��ֱ��main lake in Nainital is connected to a smaller lake via an underground channel, and together they supply most of the town’s water. ̽��ֱ��smaller lake remains dry for just over half the year, but when it fills again during the monsoon, it becomes an important reserve reservoir for the main lake.

But despite a ruling from the Indian government banning development in the dry lake bed and the surrounding area, illegal construction has been relentless, to the point where the smaller lake can no longer store enough water to supply the main lake, and water levels in Nainital are under severe pressure.

“Not being able to supply water is a major liability for any government or local authority,” says Dr Bhaskar Vira of Cambridge’s Department of Geography. “What we’ve been doing is looking at the underpinning science, seeing what the political and social issues might be, and then working with the relevant people who can intervene and make a difference.”

Vira is leading a major research project that is examining the ways in which small towns in hill and mountain regions of South Asia depend on springs, streams and rivers for their supply of water. Vira and his colleagues from the Southasia Institute of Advanced Studies in Nepal and the Centre for Ecology Development and Research (CEDAR) in India are looking at six towns – four in India (including Nainital) and two in Nepal – to understand how they are coping with the ever-increasing demand for water. ̽��ֱ��project is part of the Ecosystem Services for Poverty Alleviation programme, which is funded by the Natural Environment Research Council, the Economic and Social Research Council and the UK’s Department for International Development.

India is a wet country, but almost all of the rain falls in about two and a half months during the annual monsoon. ̽��ֱ��problem in India is how to safely store and transport water so that it’s available 12 months a year, and distributed evenly throughout the country.

Small towns – those with populations below 100,000 – in the hill regions of India and Nepal have grown rapidly, with very little planning for infrastructure needs, more generally, and water supply, in particular. Across the region, almost half of the urban population in the Indian states of Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand, and in the hill regions of Nepal, live in small towns.

“Many of these towns are looking at what you’d call nature-based solutions – they don’t have the budget to pump water in from 200 miles away,” says Vira, who is working with Dr Eszter Kovacs on the project. “So they’re much more dependent on the water that’s available in their immediate vicinity, and they’re looking at ways they can harness the resources they do have.”

One of the approaches that the researchers are taking is to identify and protect what they call ‘critical water zones’ – places where the springs that ultimately supply many of these towns are recharged. For example, one of the towns (Rajgarh, in Himachal Pradesh) which the researchers are studying has its water source in the Churdhar Wildlife Sanctuary, which not only protects the wildlife, but also protects the water supply, as the trees absorb the water so it doesn’t run off. ̽��ֱ��ultimate benefit is a dual one, since the landscape is protected, but so is the water supply for the town.

“Water is a precious resource, and it’s very rare to find a water source in India that has no other existing users,” says Vira. “So there are always going to be trade-offs; there are always going to be winners and losers when it comes to water in India.” In Rajgarh, water that is being piped from 14 km away to the town is bypassing villages along the way, raising concerns about the water needs of the surrounding rural communities.

In Mussoorie, another popular Uttarakhand tourist town, the team is looking at the dhobi (washing) community, which for about 100 years has washed all of the laundry generated by the local hotels, schools and passing tourists by hand in the local stream. Today, the work of the dhobi is supplemented by washing machines and driers, but much of the washing is still done in the stream, and many people still rely on it for their livelihoods.

About 15 years ago, town authorities needed to increase their water capacity and approached the dhobi community to ‘share’ their water with the town, through the laying of new pipes and construction of a pumping station. Unsurprisingly, they were resistant to the idea. “Eventually, a compromise was reached so that some of the water was left behind for the dhobi to continue washing, but is it working? Was it a fair trade-off, for the town or the dhobi? These are the kinds of issues we’re looking at,” says Vira, who is Director of the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge Conservation Research Institute.

Back in Nainital, the researchers supported local activists who brought a case to the Uttarakhand high court to remove the illegal buildings. ̽��ֱ��Cambridge–CEDAR team also convened expert geologists and hydrologists who made recommendations about how the lake’s water-storing capacity could be restored, which in turn supported the legal case.

“Additionally, through our awareness campaign, we were able to galvanise the local population so they could see the risk that this illegal construction is posing to the community,” says Dr Vishal Singh from CEDAR, one of Vira’s collaborators, who recently spent two months in Cambridge on a Commonwealth Professional Fellowship. “This lake is so important for the region’s sustainability and, for years, construction was allowed to continue despite the fact that it was illegal.”

In mid-July, the high court ordered the formation of two committees: one to mark and demolish the illegal constructions, and another to determine which officials were liable for allowing the construction to happen in the first place.

Singh, who grew up in Nainital, says he’d like to see the dry lake bed returned to what it was when he was a child. “It should be cleaned up and preserved so children can play there in the dry season,” he says. “This lake is so important to Nainital’s identity – let’s preserve it.”

Inset image: Nainital, northern India, faces an ever-increasing demand for water (Ross Huggett).

A major research collaboration is looking at how small towns in the hills of India and Nepal are coping with increasing demand for water: who wins and who loses when resources get scarce?

There are always going to be winners and losers when it comes to water in India

Bhaskar Vira

Carsten Tolkmit

Lonely tap

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̽��ֱ��1,000-year-old manuscript and the stories it tells

amb206 — Sat, 09 May 2015 08:00:00 +0000

One thousand years ago, a scribe called Sujātabhadra put his name to a manuscript known as the Perfection of Wisdom in Eight-Thousand Stanzas (Skt. Aṣṭasahāsrikā Prajñāparamitā). Sujātabhadra was a skilled craftsman working in or around Kathmandu – a city that has been one of the hubs of the Buddhist world from around 500 CE right up until the present day.

̽��ֱ��Perfection of Wisdom in Eight-Thousand Stanzas is written in Sanskrit, one the of the world’s most ancient languages, using both sides of 222 oblong sheets made from palm leaf (the first missing sheet has been replaced with a paper sheet). Each leaf is punctured by a pair of neat holes, a reminder that the palm leaf pages were originally bound together with cords passing through these holes. ̽��ֱ��entire palm leaf manuscript is held between richly ornate wooden covers.

Today the fabulous manuscript that would have taken Sujātabhadra and fellow craftsman many months — perhaps even a year — to complete is held by the Manuscripts Room at Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library. Over the past 140 years, it has been studied by some of the foremost specialists of the medieval Buddhist world.

A digitisation project has now made the manuscript accessible online to scholars worldwide and has revealed fresh evidence about the origins of some of the earliest Buddhist texts.

̽��ֱ��presence of the Perfection of Wisdom, safe in the temperature-controlled environment of one of the world’s greatest libraries, many thousands of miles from its birthplace, is especially poignant at a time when the people of Nepal are struggling to survive in the aftermath of a devastating earthquake.

Buddhist texts are more than scriptures: they are sacred objects in themselves. Many manuscripts were used as protective amulets and installed in shrines and altars in the home of Buddhist followers. Examples include numerous manuscripts of the Five Protections (Skt. Pañcarakṣā), a corpus of scriptures that includes spells, enumerations of benefits and ritual instructions for use, particularly sacred in Nepal.

Manuscripts produced in Nepal, Tibet and Central Asia during the period from the 5^th until the 19^th century are evidence of the thriving ‘cult of the book’ that was the subject of a recent exhibition at Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.

̽��ֱ��Perfection of Wisdom is also an important historical document that provides valuable information about the dynastic history of medieval Nepal. Its textual content and illustrations, and the skills and materials that went into its production, reveal the ways in which Nepal was one of the most important hubs within a Buddhist world that spanned from Sri Lanka to China.

̽��ֱ��text is lavishly illustrated by a total of 85 miniature paintings: each one is an exquisite representation of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas (beings who resolve to achieve Buddhahood in order to help other sentient beings) – including the historical Buddha Śākyamuni and Maitreya, the Buddha of the Future. ̽��ֱ��figures represented in the miniatures include also the embodied Perfection of Wisdom goddess (Prajñāparamitā) herself on the Vulture Peak Mountain near Rājagṛha, the capital of the ancient kingdom of Māgadha, in today’s Bihar state.

̽��ֱ��settings in which these deities are depicted are drawn in meticulous detail. ̽��ֱ��Bodhisattva Lokanātha, surrounded by White and Green Tārās, is shown in front of the Svayambhu stupa in Kathmandu – a shrine sacred for Nepalese and Tibetan Buddhists, damaged in the recent earthquake. ̽��ֱ��places depicted in the miniatures represent a kind of map of Buddhist lands and sacred sites, from Sri Lanka to Indonesia and from South India to China.

̽��ֱ��Perfection of Wisdom is one of the world’s oldest illuminated Buddhist manuscripts and the second oldest illuminated manuscript in Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library. Its survival – and its passage through time and space – is little short of miraculous.

Without the efforts of a certain Karunavajra, quite probably a Buddhist lay believer, it would have been destroyed in 1138 — in that period the governors challenged the king in a struggle for power over the Kathmandu Valley.

“We know that Karunavajra saved the manuscript because he added a note in verse form,” said Dr Camillo Formigatti of the Sanskrit Manuscripts Project. “He states that he rescued the ‘Perfection of Wisdom, incomparable Mother of the Omniscient’ from falling into the hands of unbelievers who were most probably people of Brahmanical affiliation.”

Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library acquired the manuscript in 1876. It was purchased for the Library by Dr Daniel Wright, a civil servant working for the British government in Kathmandu.

“From the second half of the 19^th century, western institutions were hugely interested in the orient - and museums and libraries were busy building collections of everything eastern,” said Dr Hildegard Diemberger of the Mongolia and Inner Asia Studies Unit. “Colonial administrators were almost literally given ‘shopping lists’ of manuscripts to acquire in the course of their travels.”

Scholars are able to pinpoint with remarkable precision the date that Sujātabhadra recorded his name as scribe in the ‘colophon’ (details about the publication of a book).

“Using tables that convert the dates used by Nepalese scribes into the calendar we use today, we can see that Sujātabhadra added his name and the place where he completed the manuscript on 31 March, 1015. ̽��ֱ��study of mathematics, astrology and astronomy were central aspects of ancient and medieval South Asian culture, and time reckoning was very accurate — both the lunar and the solar calendar were employed,” said Formigatti.

A thousand years on from its production, the manuscript is still yielding secrets. In the course of digitising the manuscript in 2014, Formigatti identified 12 of the final verses to be the only surviving witness of the Sanskrit original of the Ripening of the Victory Banner (Skt. Vajradhvajapariṇāmanā), a short hymn hitherto considered to have survived only in its Tibetan translation. ̽��ֱ��popularity of this hymn is borne out by the fact that the Tibetan version of the text is also found in manuscript fragments found in Dunhuang, a city-state along the Silk Route in China.

̽��ֱ��production of this precious manuscript is evidence not only of the thriving communication channels that existed across the 11^th century Buddhist world but also of a well-established network of trade routes. ̽��ֱ��leaves used to make the writing surface came from palm trees. Palms do not flourish in the dry climate of Nepal: it’s thought that palm leaves would have come from North East India.

“ ̽��ֱ�� ̽��ֱ�� Library’s manuscript of Perfection of Wisdom shows us that ten centuries ago Nepal, which westerners often perceive as ‘remote’ and ‘isolated’, had flourishing connections stretching many thousands of miles,” said Formigatti.

“When Sujātabhadra picked up his reed pen and put his name to the manuscript, he was part of a rich network of scholarship, culture, belief and trade. Buddhist manuscripts and texts travelled huge distances. From the fertile plains of Northern India, they crossed the Himalayan range through Nepal and Tibet, reaching the barren landscapes of Central Asia and the city-states along the Silk Route in China, finally arriving in Japan.

“ ̽��ֱ��Perfection of Wisdom is perhaps the most representative textual witness of the Buddhist cult of the book, and this manuscript written, decorated and worshipped in 11^th century Nepal, is one of the finest specimens of Buddhist book culture still extant.”

Inset image top – Folio 123 verso, a representation of a famous caitya (Buddhist reliquary), called Sri Kanaka-caitya, in the city of Peshawar in today's Pakistan. Credit: Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.

Inset image bottom – Folio 14 recto, a representation of the Bodhisattva Lokanātha in front of Svayambhunath in Kathmandu. Credit: Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.

One of the greatest treasures of Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library is a Buddhist manuscript that was produced in Kathmandu exactly 1,000 years ago. ̽��ֱ��exquisitely-illustrated Perfection of Wisdom is still revealing fresh secrets.

When Sujātabhadra picked up his reed pen and put his name to the manuscript, he was part of a rich network of scholarship, culture, belief and trade

Camillo Formigatti

Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library

Folio 13 verso, a representation of the goddess Prajñāpāramitā

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Tibetan scholar’s first hand account of the earthquake in Nepal

pbh25 — Fri, 01 May 2015 15:59:29 +0000

When the first earthquake struck Kathmandu close to midday on April 25 Dr Lobsang Yongdan was in a small hotel getting ready to head out into the city and find some food.

A scholar working on Tibetan historical texts Yongdan had been in Tibet visiting relatives following the successful completion of his PhD in the Department of Social Anthropology.

Following his visit to relatives Yongdan had then travelled from Lhasa to Nepal’s capital by road on his way back to the UK because he wanted to see the Nepalese countryside up close and knew Kathmandu was a good place to buy classical texts and dictionaries.

Sitting in the safety of the Mongolian and Inner Asian Studies Unit’s (MIASU) Mond Building in Cambridge just a few days after leaving the capital he says: “ ̽��ֱ��Nepalese will need our help. I saw villages on hillsides during my 24 hour car journey to Kathmandu. I do not know what condition they are in now. ̽��ֱ��villages are remote and in the mountains so I can imagine the landslides affecting whole villages and wiping out the roads.”

Yongdan's scholarship reflects the strong links between the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, Nepal and Tibet. They encompass many disciplines including archaeology, biological and social anthropology (for example the Digital Himalaya project and the work of the MIASU). ̽��ֱ�� students have also volunteered as English language teachers in rural Nepal through charities. Some of those students have undertaken their own fundraising following the disaster.

Arriving in Kathmandu Yongdan had bought a Tibetan-English dictionary and a few classical texts and was ready to “do the tourist thing”, taking in some of the city’s famous sites such as the Boudhanath, a place of great significance to Buddhists and a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Such sites reflect the connections between Nepal and Tibet, says Yongdan: “ ̽��ֱ��links between Nepal and Tibet are strong. Many craftsman who helped build the Tibetan temples and monasteries came from Nepal.”

But as he prepared to take in the sights the earthquake struck.

“When the earthquake came I was lucky as I was on the ground floor of my hotel so it was easy to run outside. But there were many large flower pots on the balconies of the surrounding building which were all falling down. I was very lucky not to be hit as these pots were falling from the fifth and sixth floors. A large one just missed me by a few centimetres,” says Yongdan.

By this time many other guests were flooding from the building into the courtyard. “Many were crying. There was shock and a lot of distress. ̽��ֱ��first earthquake was over in just one minute I think – but there were many aftershocks.”

It is those aftershocks which took a huge psychological toll, says Yongdan, adding: “Everyone reacted very strongly to the aftershocks. ̽��ֱ��first, big quake, was all about fast reactions, but the later shocks created much more fear and anxiety. Even a heavy footfall, or airplane flying overhead, would cause feelings of panic. I was there for just two days; those still out there, feeling aftershocks over a longer period, will have suffered much more and the trauma could be very great.”

Yongdan remained in the courtyard for some time, eyeing the cracks in the building warily, conscious that they had no food or water. Knowing he was due to fly from the capital that very day Yongdan risked entering the hotel to retrieve his wallet and passport. Eventually he was able to walk into the city and buy some water and a biscuit. It was then he got his first glimpse of the powerful and tragic effects of the earthquake. “There was a wall, about 10 feet high, which traders used to do their business from. It had collapsed and it was here I saw the first people who had died.”

Back at the hotel Yongdan and his group moved to an open field nearby and spent a fearful night as the aftershocks continued.

“During the night we had two big aftershocks at about 4am and 6am, I think. We could not sleep as all night we could see the buildings shaking. Sometimes the shocks came like a wave, sometimes quickly like a train going along the tracks.”

Yongdan realised that food and water would be a huge problem and that should take his flight, if possible. ̽��ֱ��next day Yongdan, accompanied by an US woman in her 60s, went looking for a car to take them to the airport. “It would be a long way to walk. People were in the centre of the road, staying away from the buildings, finding a car seemed impossible. To our surprise we eventually saw one single taxi driving around. He charged us fifteen times the normal price but we got to the airport,” says Yongdan.

On the way to the airport the full extent of the devastation hit Yongdan. Buildings had collapsed or were heavily damaged. “When we got to the airport there was a truck which was delivering water to people who had gathered in a nearby field - but there were thousands of people in the field and a long queue.”

“ ̽��ֱ��airport was crowded and everything was being done manually. Only those who had tickets were being allowed to fly at this stage. People were shouting. We stood in line for three hours waiting to hear if we would fly out or not. Once through we were in an open field and I felt much safer. We waited almost five hours and saw the Indian Air Force flying in with supplies.”

It was only when Yongdan was in the air that he relaxed enough to sense how lucky he was – and only once in Abu Dhabi that he felt anything close to the full impact. “I suddenly realised what I had been through and that I had nearly died. I called my family. I have never heard my father cry before but both of them were very emotional.”

It was at Abu Dhabi that the news of his having reached safety finally reached colleagues in Cambridge.

Dr Hildegard Diemberger, Director of MIASU, says: “I was hugely relieved when I was woken up at 1am by a text message from New York telling me they had heard Yongdan was safe. When he arrived at Pembroke his luggage had been left somewhere between Kathmandu and Abu Dhabi and he just had the clothes he was standing in.”

Safe in Cambridge, staying in a student room at Pembroke College, Yongdan says his thoughts are with those left behind. “I had to leave,” he says, “I thought whether I could help there and then but without knowing much about the place and the people I would have been another burden. I thought that mobilising competent international help would have been more useful and I hope we can help get the Nepalese and the Tibetans affected by the earthquake food, water and whatever they need as soon as possible. We keep hearing heart-breaking messages of people, including young children, now exposed to rain, lacking water, food and trying to cope with loss and fear”

̽��ֱ��problem will not just be food and water, says Diemberger: “Sewage will now be an issue as will disease. ̽��ֱ��way some buildings are constructed means the earthquake has had a devastating effect.”

Once the initial battle for survival is over and food and water supplies have been secured other priorities will surface.

“We must look to the international relief effort first and then in the long term we can look to charities and action to support communities and help rebuild and ensure the rich heritage of Nepal is protected. But first they will have to get through the monsoon season. It will be a difficult process. Once the reconstruction process is underway there will be an enormous amount to do. Many of the sites affected are UNESCO World Heritage Sites so the hope is they will not be rebuilt too quickly and destroy what little is left. I am also thinking about the multitude of temples and monasteries scattered across the region. They house precious ancient manuscripts and prints, which are likely to have become exposed to the rain and are at risk of being lost forever” says Diemberger.

Much will need to be done to rebuild Nepal and the focus now must be the international aid effort. To donate go to: www.dec.org.uk/appeals/nepal-earthquake-appeal.

I hope we can help get the Nepalese and the Tibetans... food, water and whatever they need as soon as possible.

Dr Lobsang Yongdan

More information:

For more information on the Nepal relief effort and how to offer support go to: www.dec.org.uk/appeals/nepal-earthquake-appeal.
Yongdan is a scholar who straddles the ancient and modern worlds. Initially educated in the Buddhist monastery of Kumbum (Qinghai Province, PRC), he possesses a rare talent for languages being fluent in Classical Tibetan, the Tibetan dialect of Amdo, Chinese and English. His PhD at Cambridge was on a remarkable Tibetan text, the Dzam gling rgyas bshad (DGRB), which translates as ̽��ֱ��Detailed Description of the World. He is currently working on an AHRC project hosted at MIASU to create a database of the earliest printed texts in Tibetan culture and the biographies of the Tibetan masters involved in the production of woodblock prints since the 12th century.

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

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Perspectives on the Nepal earthquake

jeh98 — Tue, 28 Apr 2015 14:50:40 +0000

As many agencies are now reporting, the death toll associated with the 7.9 magnitude earthquake that hit Nepal on Saturday is likely to rise considerably over the coming days and weeks. On Tuesday it stands at over 4,000 but the Nepalese Prime Minister, Sushil Koirala, announced that it might reach 10,000. ̽��ֱ��UN declared that 8 million people have been affected, with 1.4 million people urgently needing aid.

̽��ֱ��full scale of the damage will become clear as contact is made with remote settlements away from the capital, which are now largely cut off from communication and supply. In Kathmandu and other urban centres, the greatest cause of injury and death was collapsing buildings.

But in more isolated, mountainous regions, further problems arose from the shaking ground triggering a range of natural hazards. One such region is the Langtang Valley, 60km north of Kathmandu, where we have been doing research for the last two years.

A recent analysis shows the entire valley would have been particularly susceptible to landslides following the earthquake due to its proximity to the epicentre and the topography of the mountain slopes there.

We are exceptionally fortunate not to have been in the area when the earthquake struck. We were in Kathmandu for an International Glaciology Society Symposium in early March.

One of us (Ian Willis) stayed on to do glaciological fieldwork with two other scientists from Cambridge (Dr Hamish Pritchard and PhD student Mike McCarthy) towards the top of the Langtang Valley, returning very recently.

In fact Hamish Pritchard is still in Kathmandu, safe and now helping the UN effort.

̽��ֱ��other of us (Evan Miles) was due to fly to Nepal on Sunday and walk to the head of the Langtang Valley this week, but of course his trip was cancelled.

For the past two years, we have been working there with science colleagues from Switzerland, Netherlands and Nepal and aided by a professional Nepali team of guides, porters and cooks.

̽��ֱ��overall aim of the research project has been to better understand the climate of the region, and to investigate how the changing climate is affecting the glaciers and the discharge of water in the streams.

This is of huge societal importance, as the people of the valley rely on ground and stream water for their livelihoods – drinking, washing and irrigating crops.

In addition, a small hydro-electric plant was due to be built later this year at the uppermost village in the valley, Kyanjin Gompa, but this will presumably now be put on hold.

Our specific work focuses on improving knowledge about the glaciers of the region. And it is while undertaking our research that we have come to appreciate many of the natural hazards that occur in the area.

Many of the glaciers in Nepal and elsewhere across High Mountain Asia are covered by debris, which may inhibit the rate of ice melting underneath.

̽��ֱ��debris gets onto the glaciers through rockfalls, debris avalanches and mudflows. These are continuous processes, but would have been orders of magnitude more severe during the recent earthquake than anything we ever saw.

Many of the glaciers across the Himalaya and surrounding mountains are nourished by snow avalanches.

Again, these occur regularly (we have both been caught in snow avalanches sweeping down the glacier we work on) but the energy they contain is typically dissipated by the time they reach the valley bottoms.

As the recent footage from the Everest region shows, however, snow avalanches can be particularly large and devastating when triggered by an earthquake.

Video of a snow avalanche that swept down the Lirung Glacier on 20th March 2015. This one was harmless by the time it reached the village of Kyanjin Gompa. Bigger snow avalanches triggered by the earthquake would have been much more destructive. Video by Ian Willis.

Finally, many glaciers in the region are associated with lakes – these form on the glacier surface where they are dammed by ice, or in front of the glacier where they are blocked by moraines (large ridges of sediment ‘bulldozed’ by a formerly more extensive glacier).

̽��ֱ��rapid draining of such lakes provides another hazard, causing floods or mudflows to downstream regions. Again, the flooding and mudflows associated with lake dams rupturing is likely to have had a significant impact during the recent earthquake.

Our field research is on hold at present while we wait to hear the fate of the people of the Langtang Valley and other remote regions of Nepal. But initial reports from Langtang sound very bleak. Eye witness accounts state “From where we were, there was nothing you could see. All the villages were gone,” and “the whole valley has been destroyed”.

Helicopter-based photographs seem to confirm that Langtang village has been wiped out by a large landslide. We are busy scouring satellite data to identify zones of the worst impact, but Nepal has been shrouded in heavy clouds and rain since the earthquake inhibiting our efforts.

We are holding our breath awaiting a clear picture of Langtang Valley. We are hoping for the best but fearing the worst for the Nepali families that reside there.

DEC Nepal Earthquake Appeal

Inset images:

Looking downvalley to Langtang village in May 2014. Reports suggest that this entire village has been buried by a debris avalanche during the earthquake. Credit: Ian Willis.

Preliminary landslide susceptibility map created by Dr Tom Robinson ( ̽��ֱ�� of Canterbury). Susceptibility ranges from 0 to 1 with higher numbers indicating a greater chance of landslides occurring. Earthquake epicentre shown with a star. Langtang Valley is circled.

Evan Miles on the extremely debris-covered Lirung Glacier in 2014. Credit: Eduardo Soteras.

Lake on the surface of Lirung Glacier. ̽��ֱ��rapid drainage of such lakes may cause flooding downstream and may have contributed to devastating mudflows during the earthquake. Credit: Evan Miles.

Ian Willis with the owners of the Shangri-La Guest House, Langtang. L-R: Saylie, Tsering Dolma Lama, Karma, Ian, Nima, Samden Dindu. Photo taken May 2014. This family and many others are in our thoughts.

As the death toll continues to rise in Nepal, Senior Lecturer Dr Ian Willis, and PhD student Evan Miles, from the Scott Polar Research Institute contemplate the fate of people in a remote part of the country, where they have been doing research for the past two years.

We are holding our breath awaiting a clear picture of Langtang Valley. We are hoping for the best but fearing the worst for the Nepali families that reside there.

Ian Willis

Evan Miles. Homepage banner image credit: Bhuwan Maharjan

Lake on the surface of Lirung Glacier. ̽��ֱ��rapid drainage of such lakes may cause flooding downstream and may have contributed to devastating mudflows during the earthquake.

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Nepal shows its vulnerability after devastating earthquake

cjb250 — Mon, 27 Apr 2015 09:58:25 +0000

For some time scientists have realised that the Kathmandu valley is one of the most dangerous places in the world, in terms of earthquake risk. And now a combination of high seismic activity at the front of the Tibetan plateau, poor building standards, and haphazard urbanisation have come together with fatal consequences.

̽��ֱ��magnitude 7.9 earthquake that hit Nepal hit just before noon, local time, on Saturday around 48 miles north west of Kathmandu. ̽��ֱ��Indian tectonic plate is driving beneath the Eurasian plate at an average rate of 45mm per year along a front that defines the edge of the Tibetan plateau. This force created the Himalayas, and Nepal lies slap bang along that front. ̽��ֱ��quake was shallow, estimated at 12km depth, and devastating as the Indian crust thrust beneath Tibet one more time.

Shake map released by the US Geological Survey. USGS

Historic buildings in the centre of Kathmandu have been reduced to rubble. Brick masonry dwellings have collapsed under clouds of dust. Weakened buildings will now be vulnerable to aftershocks, which continue to rattle Nepal through the day. Multiple aftershocks above magnitude 4 hit in the six hours following the earthquake.

̽��ֱ��search for survivors has only just begun. Narendra Shrestha/EPA

Away from the populated Kathmandu valley, in the heights of the Himalaya, climbers on Everest tweeted reports of damage to base camp, and fatal avalanches on the flanks of the mountain. ̽��ֱ��steep valleys and precipitous dwellings of the more populated areas are vulnerable to landslides. Now is the time for us all to consider how we can help those most in need, in practical ways.

Although one cannot predict the day or the hour, the scenario that we see on our TV screens had been thought through many times already, with one particularly prescient article written almost two years ago to the day. ̽��ֱ��likely impacts of the quake can be readily estimated, and in any case will soon be reported directly from the surroundings.

̽��ֱ��number of deaths reported is only, tragically, going to increase, with the US Geological Survey putting estimates of fatalities in the range of thousands to tens of thousands.

̽��ֱ��Dharahara, also called Bhimsen Tower, was destroyed in the quake. Narendra Shrestha/EPA

Just one week ago my geophysicist colleagues returned to the UK from a meeting in Kathmandu, Nepal, as part of the Earthquakes Without Frontiers research project. ̽��ֱ��focus was earthquake risk reduction and hazard awareness in Nepal. ̽��ֱ��risks have been recognised for some time, but I don’t suppose any of the participants expected their work to be thrown into the spotlight so soon.

Professor James Jackson, of Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� and one of the leaders of the Earthquakes Without Frontiers project, talked with me on his return from Kathmandu last weekend. He described tall, thin houses, with extra stories built up on top, explaining how they arise from the Nepalese tradition of sharing inherited property between siblings, with houses split vertically between them.

̽��ֱ��only way to build is upwards. In a seismic area, it’s a recipe for disaster, and one can’t help but wonder what this phenomenon has wrought on families in Kathmandu.

This article was originally published on ̽��ֱ��Conversation. Read the original article.

Following the devastating earthquake that struck Nepal this weekend, Simon Redfern, Professor in Earth Sciences at ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, explains in ̽��ֱ��Conversation how a combination of factors has come together with fatal consequences.

Now is the time for us all to consider how we can help those most in need, in practical ways

Simon Redfern

Krish Dulal

Nepal Earthquake 2015 aftermath

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

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Safe water solutions

lw355 — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 15:38:27 +0000

Almost 900 million people worldwide lack access to safe water; polluted lakes and waterways diminish livelihoods and health; and 2.6 billion people (almost half the population of the developing world) lack access to adequate sanitation¹ .

In Cambridge, research groups from several disciplines are working in regions worldwide where dirty, polluted and inadequate supplies of water make drinking, cooking and cleaning an everyday challenge for the communities who live there. We take a look here at some of their solutions.

Water cleaning with mussel power

Zoologist Dr David Aldridge is a keen advocate for the amazing abilities of mussels to clean up water. His work in China is using these remarkable organisms as cheap and sustainable water filters to improve water quality and, as a result, it is hoped that a local industry will develop to farm them.

China’s Lake Dianchi was once a rich haven of aquatic species but increasing levels of pollution from a cocktail of fertilizer run-off, sewage and the effluent from factories has caused a huge deterioration in water quality. ̽��ֱ��water is undrinkable and a hazard to those using it for washing, and the native aquatic wildlife has all but died off. Where once underwater visibility was over 10 metres, on a good day it’s now a mere 30 cm.

Using a set-up that could be replicated in many of the world’s polluted freshwaters, Dr Aldridge from Cambridge’s Department of Zoology and colleagues at the Chinese Academy of Sciences have deployed specially bred giant mussels – once native to the lake – in experimental enclosures along the lakeside.

̽��ֱ��mussels filter 50 litres of water a day, removing algae and suspended particles. ‘In just a few months,’ he explains, ‘not only did the water become clearer but native plants suddenly began to emerge from seeds buried for decades on the lake bed. These, in turn, provide habitat for insects, and then fish, and the system stabilises back to clearer water.’

One challenge has been the tendency of people living locally to eat the mussels. ̽��ֱ��team’s solution has been to turn to pearl farming to encourage the community to sustain the mussels in the lake. Chopsticks are used to insert a tiny bead of shell into the mussel, around which a pearl is formed. Recognising the potential impact of this idea on bolstering local industries, the World Bank awarded Dr Aldridge a Development Market Place Award to continue the work.

Dr Aldridge is also developing a means by which local authorities and managers of waterways can check the health of freshwater in their region, reducing the need for difficult and costly chemical testing. ‘We’re using the biology of the lake as an indicator of water quality. ̽��ֱ��number and type of organisms, or biotic index, provides a useful indication of the state of the water they live in. ̽��ֱ��guide book we are creating will enable users armed with only a hand net to monitor the condition of water in their province.’

Healthy water for households

Many people who lack access to safe water live in regions where conventional methods for supplying drinking water through water pipes are simply not possible or cost-effective. For these people, the alternative is to use household water treatment and safe storage systems (HWTS) based on chlorination, solar disinfection, ceramic filters or biosand filters.

As part of Dr Douglas Crawford-Brown’s wide research interests in water policy, he has been examining the effectiveness of reducing microbes in drinking water using low-cost HWTS in the developing world. As Executive Director of the Cambridge Centre for Climate Change Mitigation Research, in the Department of Land Economy, his research interests have an environmental perspective: ‘ ̽��ֱ��problem of ensuring safe water provision in the face of environmental change is a global one. But for developing countries, where large investments in infrastructure are not possible, it’s a massive concern.’

His work has been in collaboration with colleagues Dr Mark Sobsey and Dr Linda Venzcel at the ̽��ֱ�� of North Carolina, from which he moved two years ago, and Dr Christine Stauber at Georgia State ̽��ֱ��. Dr Crawford-Brown’s role in the long-term project has been to model the predicted human health impacts so that they can be compared against field epidemiological data in the Dominican Republic, Ghana, Honduras and Cambodia.

‘Our results show clearly that there is significant reduction in microbes, but also a residual concentration that can be quite difficult to remove,’ he explains. ‘In one project funded by the International Rotarians, we found that a simple sand filtration HWTS in the Dominican Republic halved the incidence of diarrhoeal disease, a major cause of death among infants in poor communities worldwide.’

Given that affordability of water systems is a critical regulatory issue, his research has also looked more widely at health–health trade-offs. ‘Trade-offs occur when the costs of water treatment in poor communities cause them to re-allocate limited finances, often away from buying medicine, unless public programmes are brought in to provide healthcare. Our goal is to provide policy makers with the evidence on which to base decisions on risk and in allocating budgets.’

Improving outcomes

Having worked for several years in rural Nepal trying to implement the use of water filtration units, Tommy Ngai from the Department of Engineering knows only too well that, despite their benefits, the adoption and continued use of HWTS is not always straightforward.

For the past four years he has been investigating how to scale up the dissemination of HWTS. Working with Dr Dick Fenner in the Centre for Sustainable Development in the Department of Engineering, his research has taken him to Nepal, southern India and Ghana, where he has carried out extensive interviews with project management staff, community workers, government officials, shopkeepers and household end users.

‘It’s not uncommon for communities either to not take up HWTS or for the equipment to be found lying abandoned a year or so later,’ he explains. ‘There may be a lack of awareness among potential users, or the devices may be too expensive to operate and maintain, or the supply chain unavailable, or there may be technical difficulties and ineffective post-implementation support.’

Ngai’s research has, for the first time, captured the big picture of the many competing factors at play – from the technical and financial, to the social and institutional. ̽��ֱ��outcomes are three programme-specific computer simulation models linking over 300 different variables. ̽��ֱ��models can help implementing organisations to appreciate the complexity of project management, to understand the interactions and consequences of any policy strategy and, crucially, to make recommendations for increasing the success of an HWTS programme.

‘Literally thousands of scenarios can be simulated in the model, whereas in the real world you can only try one strategy at a time,’ he says. ‘Comprehensive analysis showed that no single strategy will always work in all situations, and that some measures that have long-term benefits may at first appear counter-intuitive.’

One of the models has also been designed as an easy-to-use simulation game that can be run on a PC, allowing agencies and government officials to explore the effects of different potential intervention strategies concerning programme expansion, promotion, training, pricing and capacity building, and to predict adoption and sustained use of HWTS.

In his next post, as Director of Research Learnings at the Centre for Affordable Water and Sanitation Technology in Canada (www.cawst.org/), Ngai will be using his research to help NGOs and government policy makers to understand quickly how best to encourage sustained adoption of HWTS in their region.

^{1 www.unep.org/pdf/SickWater_screen.pdf}

For more information about these projects, please contact Dr David Aldridge (da113@cam.ac.uk) at the Department of Zoology; Dr Douglas Crawford-Brown (djc77@cam.ac.uk) at the Department of Land Economy; Tommy Ngai (tommyngai@yahoo.ca) and Dr Dick Fenner (raf37@cam.ac.uk) at the Department of Engineering.

Research across the ̽��ֱ�� is helping to clean up water in regions around the world.

̽��ֱ��problem of ensuring safe water provision in the face of environmental change is a global one. But for developing countries, where large investments in infrastructure are not possible, it’s a massive concern.

Dr Douglas Crawford-Brown

Tommy Ngai

Water clarity improvement after filtration

Sanitation innovation

Ensuring access to safe water isn’t the only challenge; it’s also what you do with waste. An innovative study has come up with a prototype system that could improve sanitation in urban slums.

̽��ֱ��realities of high-density living in urban slums have made conventional approaches to improved sanitation practically impossible, with low-income families renting living space in tightly packed, unplanned settlements serviced by pit latrines.
Nate Sharpe’s research in the Centre for Sustainable Development has come up with a solution for emptying pit latrines in the slums of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, although his findings should be applicable to many other similar cities around the world. ‘Pit latrines are filling up faster than ever and people are often forced to rely on unhygienic emptying methods,’ he explains. ‘If smaller amounts of the sludge could be removed more often, it becomes easy to transport – even on the back of a bicycle.’

Sharpe has designed a prototype bicycle-powered vacuum pump/tank system and a business model for small businesses to run a latrine-emptying service at a low enough price that even the poorest might be able to afford to make their latrine usable again. ̽��ֱ��next stage is to test the device in Tanzania and to put the device into production.

His research was completed as part of an MPhil in Engineering for Sustainable Development with Dr Heather Cruickshank, and is just one of around 35 similar projects annually that are finding innovative engineering solutions to a host of sustainability problems. Many focus on developing countries where, as Sharpe has highlighted, sometimes the solution lies not in the development of new technology but in the creation of a new business angle that works in the local community.

For more information about these and other projects, please contact Dr Heather Cruickshank (hjc34 AT cam DOT ac DOT uk).

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