TITLE:
Climate Change: Trends and People’s Perception in Nepal
AUTHORS:
Rohini P. Devkota
KEYWORDS:
Climate Change; Trends; People’s Perception
JOURNAL NAME:
Journal of Environmental Protection,
Vol.5 No.4,
March
18,
2014
ABSTRACT: In the context of climate change, the frequency and intensity of extreme
events such as floods and droughts will increase which could put tremendous
challenges in water resources management in the coming days. While scientific
knowledge on climate threats and changing climate patterns are essential, it is
also important to consider the impacts in relation to how the threats are
perceived and handled by local people. This paper intends to assess the trend
and people’s perception on temperature and precipitation. Three focus groups’
discussion and a total number of 240 households were interviewed during field
visit. The collected information was scaled from the least preferred-1 to the most
preferred-5 based on their preferences. The trend of mean of annual average,
maximum and minimum temperature indicates that the temperature has increased
significantly and precipitation intensity and magnitude are also in increasing
trend in the monsoon and postmonsoon seasons which may raise the extreme flood
events. These facts were verified with the people’s perception. This finding
could be useful for formulation of effective flood management policy and plan
in this river basin as well as very applicable for other similar areas.