Hydro-hegemony: Water Modernization in Nepal and Beyond

In this wide-ranging conversation on hydrology and climate change, Dr. Dipak Gyawali, former Minister of Water Resources for Nepal, offers a series of crucial insights into the often indifferent, selectively inadequate, and politically compromised responses to the climate crisis. Arguing for a more sophisticated, multipronged approach, Dr. Gyawali critiques dominant Western scientific paradigms for failing to recognize the climate crisis primarily as a crisis of water. He highlights how these frameworks not only marginalizewater-related concerns but also frequently dismiss indigenous hydrological knowledge systems as unscientific or primitive, thereby reinforcing global hierarchies of knowledge and power.

Urging communities and policymakers alike to rethink the prevailing narratives that frame climate change, Dr. Gyawalisituates his critique in the context of Nepal—a landlocked country with an estimated 6,000 rivers and the world’s second-largest reserve of fresh water. For Dr. Gyawali, Nepal serves as a powerful case study of how globalized,technocratic approaches often overlook the political and democratic dimensions of water governance. He argues that genuine sustainability cannot be achieved without broad-based equitability over governance. Drawing from his ownexperiences both as a field researcher and as a minister navigating the political complexities of water policy, he underscores how centralized, top-down management of water resources often exacerbates existing inequalitiesand undermines democratic decision-making processes. In this light, he calls for a radical rethinking of global “hydro-hegemony”—the political domination of water resources by powerful interests—and urges a shift toward more inclusive,community-driven models of hydrological governance. Dr. Gyawali challenges the international community to move beyond tokenistic gestures and to engagemeaningfully with the democratic potential embedded in local and indigenous approaches to water stewardship.