This week we read with a sense of dread that 76,000 small fires are burning in the Amazon, and the government of Brazil is doing nothing. Twenty per cent of the Amazon is gone in the last ten years, and more will go if the Bolsonaro administration doesn’t do something. I never write about Brazil though I have visited there twice and I love the country. But I have spent a lot of time in Nepal, especially in the region known as “the Terai” — the flat hot humid plain on the border with India. And there, the government is in the process of committing an environmental travesty of it’s very own.
I am talking about the plan to build an airport in Nijgahd, Nepal. At the time this was proposed thirty years ago, it would have been the second international airport in the country, but since then two others ( in Pokhara and Bhairawaha) have been started and the one in Bhairawaha (also in Terai) is due to open next year.
The government of Nepal is at the point where they have requested proposals, and eight international companies have submitted bids for this three billion dollar project. The list includes groups from China and Quatar. The project will take ten years to complete, but in the meantime, billions of trees will need to be cut down and the clearcutting will be the first step lasting two years.
I don’t know if there is still time to stop this, but I am in hopes that the government will re-assess the thirty-year-old plans and do the right thing. There is a “timber mafia” in the forested region that wants to get going.
Here is a video that describes the project, from The Record Nepal:
And a longer article to describe the issues: www.recordnepal.com/…
We commonly hear three stories about Nijgadh’s future.
One tells of a glittering vision in the forest: the steady whoosh, whir and drone of airplanes, a shimmering runway, glass and steel buildings, thriving families, prosperous communities, a virtuous cycle of infrastructure, tourism, jobs, growth, tourism, jobs, infrastructure, growth. That is Nijgadh International.
In the second version, in the distance you would see scrappy, balding patches of jungle. You’d remember seeing a video once, of a primal forest that stretched on forever, its riot of moss emerald avocado jade olive malachite thrumming, chirping and clicking, a different world with more life than you could fathom. That, also, is Nijgadh.
A lesser-heard story is about how, as you drove out of that airport, something might catch your eye. Clumps of shanties, a makeshift village strung along the side of the pitted highway. Ragged signs printed on the deathless plastic sheeting ubiquitous in the country. “The airport took our homes.” “We want land.” Those are the twice-displaced residents of Tangia Basti. Also Nijgadh.
Now the area around Nijgadh does have small villages of locals living in it. So far, they co-exist with the forest to a large degree.
The forest is part of what used to be an unbroken belt of habitat stretching all the way through Nepal, into northeastern India, and from there to Burma (Myanmar) and Thailand). The government of Nepal did have the foresight decades ago to create National PArk in the Chitwan Region to the west of Nijgadh. There are three sub-populations of wild elephants in Nepal, and it is thought that if the group now in the Nijgahd area is deprived of habitat, it will be a critical loss to survival in the wild. The Njgadh project has been described as “catastrophic.”
Chitwan
Visualize the forest? Many of the videos of the forests of Terai, even the ones that target western tourists, are in Nepali, which is why you may never have heard of the Terai or Chitwan.
Here is a non-narrated guide to Chitwan that shows some of the activities there. I love the soundtrack, by the way:
I also think that the planet would be poorer if there were no wild elephants anywhere; and I don’t see the value in developing a plan for a three billion dollar airport that would be obsolete before it was even begun.
Sri Lanka is a bellwether
In the course of the debate, the opponents to the Nijgadh project have pointed to Mattala Rajapaksa International Airport in Sri Lanka. This other airport was originally proposed with similar hype, and a multi-billion dollar terminal sits as an empty monument not nearly as grand as the Taj Mahal. Nijgadh is destined to be a sinkhole for Nepali money and to rival the Sri Lanka project for the title of “The World’s Emptiest International Airport.“
The Terai will never be an international first-point-of-entry to Nepal for anybody. In summer it is too rainy; in winter the fog is worse than that of Kunming China.
The airports in Bhairawaha and Pokhara will already take the pressure off the one in Kathmandu; this one is folly and it is requires that a ninety mile superhighway be built as well, to encourage Kathmandu-bound tourists to choose this port of entry. I know the condition of roads in Nepal, and I think this is crazy.
There is a petition on Change.org
I am publicizing this in hopes of creating international pressure to re-consider the plan. I will continue to share info on this debacle.