Climate Change and New Markets: Multi-Factorial Drivers of Recent Land-Use Change in The Semi-Arid Trans-Himalaya, Nepal

Wolfgang Jens-Henrik Meier (), Perdita Pohle and Jussi Grießinger
Additional contact information
Wolfgang Jens-Henrik Meier: Institute of Geography, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, 91058 Erlangen, Germany
Perdita Pohle: Institute of Geography, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, 91058 Erlangen, Germany
Jussi Grießinger: Institute of Geography, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, 91058 Erlangen, Germany

Land, 2022, vol. 11, issue 9, 1-26

Abstract: The Nepalese Mustang District is subject to profound environmental change. In recent decades, rising temperatures have been apparent, accompanied by increasing precipitation variability and a reduction in glacier extent. In a semi-arid climate, this reduces water availability and threatens irrigation-based subsidence agriculture. In addition, the region is experiencing rapid socio-economic change due to a new road connecting the former periphery to new markets downstream. This enables a higher market orientation for agricultural products and improved accessibility for tourists. In recent decades, these changes have triggered severe transformations in the local land-use systems and settlements, which are investigated in this study. Detailed on-site re-mappings of the settlements of Marpha and Kagbeni were performed based on historical maps from the early 1990s. Additionally, land-use patterns and functionality of buildings in the district capital of Jomsom and in the settlement Ranipauwa/Muktinath were mapped. For all settlements, a profound increase in cash crop (apple) cultivation can be observed since the 1990s. Recently, new cultivation practices such as intercropping have been extensively introduced as an adaptation strategy to climate extremes. Demand for different crops from the new markets downstream is causing a significant decline in local, well-established cultivation of traditional crops such as buckwheat. This corroborates with an increasing demand for freshwater for the enhanced vegetable cultivation used for inter-cropping. Simultaneously, the freshwater demands from the tourism sector are steadily increasing. In a region where water quality is deteriorating and springs are already drying up due to climate change, this will probably lead to further challenges regarding the allocation of water in the future.

Keywords: Nepal; Mustang District; irrigation-based land use; Trans-Himalaya; climate change (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q15 Q2 Q24 Q28 Q5 R14 R52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/11/9/1567/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2073-445X/11/9/1567/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jlands:v:11:y:2022:i:9:p:1567-:d:914794

Access Statistics for this article

Land is currently edited by Ms. Carol Ma

More articles in Land from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().