Water Water Everywhere

Loadshedding is not a mystery to anyone living in the Kathmandu Valley.  It's a daily reality, even during monsoon when the rains come pouring down.  I have often wondered, with so many hydro-power projects established and in the works along the gravity-fueled rivers of the Himalaya, why does the Kathmandu populace suffer with 14 - 20 hours of power-outages per day in the dry winter/spring time?

Journalist Kunda Dixit sheds some light on this issue with these two articles in the Nepali times - White Gold  (2007) and No Light at the End of the Tunnel (2011).  Complications cited are lack of government, political instability, and poor implementation of energy development strategies.  Nepal is often compared to Bhutan who sells 80% of their generated hydroelectricity to India - many see Nepal's rivers as a gold mine when considered from this angle.  There seems to be a leak somewhere, however, as the fountains are hardly able to produce enough energy to support the existing consumption levels in the Kathmandu Valley alone.  The numbers do not seem to add up.

Another mystery linked to this issue is the interaction Nepal has had for years with foreign aid funding hydro-electric projects in the name of development.  Though now a few years old, this short paper by Kundan Pokharel Majagaiya sheds some light on Nepal's dependency but reticence to foreign aid.  

Just saw 'Avatar' Last night....

Media consumption is interesting to me... access to what and how, who benefits from hollywood's stable industry and how much, and what we humans are interested in in terms of entertainment (and the existential dilema of why we need to be entertained at all, of course)

Here's a statistics-rich Economist article about the release of the largest grossing film to date "New Moon" and the recent release of "Avatar."  Toward an understanding of human entertainment consumption patterns...

Chills... It gives me Chills

Elinor Ostrom

The first woman to win the Nobel Prize - CNN Article

Elinor Ostrom's research on how humans interact with ecosystems, unpacking the concept of the "commons," seems to prove that local communities managing resources from the inside seems to work more efficiently than when an outside authority tries to manage resources for the community. 

I can think of so many examples of the truth to this statement - anyone who is living, working, interacting, engaging with one's own community will not only have knowledge, but experience, of how things will work to serve one's own community.  Someone outside of that dynamic will NOT.  Thus, (logical conclusion) the people who are living, working, struggling, rejoicing, in that community are the most well-informed decisionmakers about that particular community. 

Particular relevance: Her work in western Nepal looking at conflict and resource management. 

Resources:
Governing the Commons (book)
Rules, Games, and common-pool resources (book)
Polycentric Games and Institutions: Chapter 16

There's much more, but I need some online research training.  (I just don't get these online databases, yet.  Back in my day.....        we went to the card catologue.  I don't feel that old :/)

The Story of Stuff

This video is one of the most important teaching tools I've found for taking a systems approach to talking about responsible consumption. Have a look.
"You cannot run a linear system on a finite planet indefinitely."

Also some good resources to put global consumption into perspective:

That book about comparing the world's stuff
Cradle to Cradle - William McDonough