Updated 29 January 2010
Capacity Building and Higher Education programme:
Capacity Building and Funding Higher Education in Nepal are at the heart of The Glacier Trust’s work.
Most development work in the Himalayas and Nepal is carried out by Non Governmental Organisations (NGOs). But because Nepal’s climate is changing so rapidly, The Trust’s main concern is how to bring understanding of climate change to the centre of development programmes. How are these communities going to learn to adapt to their changing environment? For example, how will they learn to protect their forests or to cope with landslides, prolonged droughts and floods?
We strongly believe that the Nepalese are the best people to provide capacity building initiatives to deal with the multiple problems of climate change that are already afflicting them. However they cannot do this without better understanding of the problems. For this they need financial support for higher education programmes.
Getting postgraduates into the field to learn how to do primary research and to see the problems and difficulties of implementing projects is fundamental to The Trust’s capacity building objectives. It is the first stage in linking the environmental sciences to the community. With the Trust’s help, hands-on experience will enable these students to design and implement solutions in future, whether for governmental or non governmental organisations. In this way we hope to strengthen and to develop the means by which experience and skills can be translated and shared between communities. This community capacity building is of real lasting value.
Rather than provide direct capacity building grants, The Glacier Trust provides capacity building support in the form of fieldwork scholarships for at least two post graduate students in each of the projects that it funds. Financial support for higher education is needed because, while living in Nepal is relatively cheap, the costs of transport and subsistence away from home are far beyond the reach of many postgraduates.
The Trust has set up links both with Kathmandu and Tribhuvan Universities, in association with the NGOs with which it is working (For example Eco Himal and Practical Action). Students are proposed by their supervisors and ultimately selected by NGOs, where a common area of interest can be established. Neither The Glacier Trust nor the NGOs seek to determine the students’ course of study, but careful discussion and selection will ensure that both the NGO and student benefits from the research undertaken.
The Glacier Trust is also open to applications for fieldwork grants from Himalayan postgraduate students in connection with climate change related research projects where The Trust is not directly connected. Research will normally be associated with governmental or non governmental projects.
Is this all just a question of money? In the first instance the answer is “yes”. Finding the funds for this type of education is notoriously difficult, the reason being that donors do not see an immediate return. It takes a donor of vision and understanding to fund something that will contribute to preventing disaster a few years down the line. For, whatever you read about Glaciergate, please do not discount the fact that the climate in the high Himalayas has been warming at three times the rate at sea level. This is already having dramatic consequences which we are grappling with. But the future will be very bleak if we cannot build the capacity of Himalayan communities to cope.
But there is another answer to the question. By building links between UK Universities and Nepali Universities, The Glacier Trust is dramatically enhancing the value of the grants that we make. For example with the help of the GeoData Institute of Southampton University, we have set up a twinning programme between Southampton and Tribhuvan University, whereby PhD students from Southampton are assisting in curriculum development, teaching and working with Nepali postgraduates in the field. This twinning arrangement will cut both ways and greatly benefit the Southampton students’ depth of research. The Trust is now developing a similar scheme between Kathmandu University and the Glaciology Department at the University of Wales at Aberystwyth. Further programmes are under consideration.
By helping to fund selected students in this way you will be making an important contribution to survival of these exceptional Nepali mountain communities.
