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ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Transboundary river governance and climate vulnerability:
Community perspectives in Nepal’s Koshi river basin
Kiran Maharjan
The University of Sydney, Camperdown,
Australia
Correspondence
Kiran Maharjan, The University of Sydney,
Camperdown, Australia.
Email: naturalkiran@gmail.com
Funding information
The University of Sydney
Abstract
Frequent floods in the Koshi River have left the Nepalese vulnerable to ero-
sion and recurring inundation—especially those living on the floodplains.
The situation is worsening because water flow in the river is highly uncer-
tain, affected by rainfall in the mountains and by climate change, and influ-
enced by the Koshi barrage, which is governed by the Koshi River
Agreement, a bilateral river agreement with India. This study addresses
how Koshi River governance contributes to the vulnerability of riverine com-
munities in Nepal by drawing upon ideas about vulnerability and vulnerabil-
ity mapping. A household survey and interviews were conducted in 2015 for
a comparative study of people living on two river islands located upstream
and downstream of the barrage. Findings remain relevant because of per-
sistent governance challenges and growing climate change effects, escalat-
ing islanders’vulnerability to recurrent floods. The islanders’vulnerability
was produced locally and also shaped by historical, social, economic, politi-
cal, geographical, and ecological processes occurring at multiple scales.
That insight highlights the need to study the broader political economy of
hazard production to understand vulnerability in the context of governance.
KEYWORDS
floods; Koshi River Agreement, Nepal; river governance; river islands; upstream/downstream
communities; vulnerability mapping
1|THE KOSHI RIVER BASIN AND ITS
VULNERABILITY TO FLOODS
In the monsoon of 2008, a breach of the eastern Koshi
River embankment in Nepal killed 55 people, including
some in temporary shelters (Ministry of Home Affairs
and Disaster Preparedness Network-Nepal [MoHA &
DPNet-Nepal], 2011). The breach affected 65,000
people and 700 hectares (ha) of fertile land (Kafle
et al., 2017) and created havoc downstream in Bihar,
India. The incident was one of the most devastating
natural calamities in Nepal between 2000 and 2010 in
terms of its intensity of damage to people and proper-
ties (Kafle et al., 2017). Nevertheless, floods have
continued threatening thousands of Nepalese riverine
people almost every year since 2008. In 2018 and
2019 alone, the national government recorded
183 deaths, the destruction of 14,710 houses, and
widespread effects on 16,196 families in 418 flood
incidences (Ministry of Home Affairs [MoHA], 2019). In
2021, 60 people died, 36 disappeared, and 13 were
injured because of floods (Nepal Disaster Risk Reduc-
tion Portal, 2021).
There are various reasons behind increasing vul-
nerability to flood hazards among people in the basin.
The first is uncontrollable expansion of settlements on
floodplains. Illegal occupation of floodplains in the
southern plains (the Tarai) started with malaria’s
Received: 18 August 2022 Revised: 6 February 2023 Accepted: 25 March 2023
DOI: 10.1111/1745-5871.12598
This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any
medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes.
© 2023 The Author. Geographical Research published by John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd on behalf of Institute of Australian Geographers.
512 Geographical Research. 2023;61:512–524.
wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/geor
eradication in the 1950s (Ghimire, 2017). Many poor
people from hills and mountains settled on floodplains
because of the availability of land, fertile soil, and high
crop productivity. The second factor is climate change
to which the Himalayan region
1
in which Nepal lies
is vulnerable because of increases in average
temperature (Pörtner et al., 2022). According to Nepal
(2016), the average temperature increased in the Koshi
river basin between 1960 and 2009 at a rate of
0.014C/year for the minimum temperature and
0.058C/year for the maximum temperature. Conse-
quently, the frequency and intensity of extreme weather
events are rising (Shrestha et al., 2017). Hikes in tem-
peratures will cause highly uncertain water flow (Kaini
et al., 2021), exacerbating people’s vulnerability on
floodplains. But vulnerability can also be attributed to
river governance. The river is currently administered by
a water-sharing agreement between Nepal and India,
the Koshi River Agreement (KRA), signed in 1954 and
revised in 1966, but which has not stopped thousands
of riverine people suffering from the effects of frequent
erosion, inundations, and sedimentation (Chen
et al., 2013).
There are some studies on climate vulnerability
from Nepal (see Giri et al., 2021; Mainali &
Pricope, 2019; Sapkota et al., 2016), but scant litera-
ture on the relationship between water governance and
climate vulnerability. Many explanations for people’s
vulnerability focus on proximate causes and ignore
underlying ones (Hinkel, 2011; Sapkota et al., 2016).
There is a body of literature on climate change impacts
and adaptation, including in Nepal. Nevertheless, few
studies have assessed vulnerability to climate change
considering broader socio-economic and political
aspects of vulnerability (Jackson, 2021; Sapkota
et al., 2016). On that basis, the aim of this article is to
understand how governance of the Koshi River contrib-
utes to vulnerability of communities along the river in
Nepal. The article also seeks to explain how Koshi
River governance contributes to those communities’
vulnerabilities to climate change impacts. The following
definition will be used:
Governance can be defined as the process
and arrangements by which decisions are
made and implemented …Governance
refers not to formal arrangements about
how decisions are supposed to be made,
but to what really happens. Power fits in
here, because power can be thought of as
the ability to make (or influence) decision-
making and the implementation or enforce-
ment of decisions. (Fisher, 2017, p. 134)
Based on Fisher’s definition, good governance is
viewed here as comprising processes and arrange-
ments by which decisions are made responsibly and
accountably by, in this case, the governments of Nepal
and India in Koshi River governance to reduce riverine
people’s vulnerability to floods and climate change.
The use of power in making and implementing deci-
sions related to Koshi River governance will also be
considered in assessing the quality of governance for
such ends.
A brief review of literature on climate vulnerability
and its assessment approaches is provided
first (Section 2). In Section 3, the Koshi river basin and
important environmental issues are introduced and
then the methods used to collect and analyse data are
explained. In Section 4, insights from findings are con-
sidered and those are followed by analysis of policy
responses on vulnerability (Section 5). The conclusion
(Section 6) provides new insights to the concept of vul-
nerability that should be of wide interest to geographers
and others.
2|VULNERABILITY AND
VULNERABILITY MAPPING
Vulnerability refers to susceptibility to harm experi-
enced by an individual, household, or community from
exposure to a hazard. According to the IPCC (2014,
p. 5), vulnerability is “the propensity or predisposition to
be adversely affected.”The concept of vulnerability
evolved from Sen’s(
1981) work on the entitlement
approach in the food security literature. Sen’s
argument, with reference to food entitlements, was that
poverty is not the sole determinant of people’s vulnera-
bility; rather, vulnerability is shaped by other factors that
render them poor, including trends in labour relations
and markets.
Since Sen’s work was published, scholarship on
vulnerability studies has grown in volume, and
vulnerability is not viewed as an intrinsic feature of indi-
viduals or communities but as a relational concept
(Gilson, 2014; Turner, 2016), or what Watts and
Key insights
In light of Nepal’s Koshi River’s frequent floods,
this article investigates how governance con-
tributes to the vulnerability of riverine communi-
ties in the basin. Drawing upon ideas about
vulnerability and vulnerability mapping, it was
found that communities’vulnerability was
shaped by local socio-economic practices and
by multi-scalar political economic processes
occurring at different times. Specifically, vulner-
ability is produced because of irresponsible and
unaccountable decision-making and lack of crit-
ical and coordinated governance roles.
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Bohle (1993, p. 46) have defined as a “multi-layered
and multi-dimensional social space which centres on
the determinate political, economic and institutional
capabilities of people in specific places at specific
times.”
This framing of vulnerability emphasises the
spatial–temporal-scalar interplay across social, eco-
nomic, and political processes. Blaikie et al. (1994),
Haynes et al. (2022), and Ribot (2011) have suggested
that social, economic, and political processes and their
complex interactions produce vulnerability. Ribot
(2014) has argued the need to study vulnerability’s his-
torical and spatial dimensions to understand its causes
and that resonates with my own agenda to revisit
empirical work generated in 2015. Jackson (2021) has
pointed to the insufficiency of causal research on histor-
ical and socio-ecological aspects of individual and
social narratives, perceptions, and agency related to
vulnerability. In climate vulnerability literature, the rela-
tionship between water governance and vulnerability is
lacking, and the historical socio-political aspects of vul-
nerability production and stories and sentiments people
and communities hold have been ignored in climate
vulnerability analysis.
There is a consensus that climate vulnerability
includes the characteristics of a system determined by
exposure,sensitivity, and adaptive capacity
(Adger, 2006; IPCC, 2007b). The IPCC report pub-
lished in 2022 (Pörtner et al., 2022, p. 43) defines cli-
mate vulnerability as “the propensity or predisposition
to be adversely affected and encompasses a variety of
concepts and elements, including sensitivity or suscep-
tibility to harm and lack of capacity to cope and adapt.”
Exposure has not been explicitly used in that definition
but denotes the necessary condition in which adverse
effects could occur (Pörtner et al., 2022). It refers to the
potential magnitude and frequency of floods brought
about by people’s or communities’geographical posi-
tions and infers that sensitivity is the degree to which
people or communities may be affected or harmed by
flood hazards (Adger, 2006; Fischer & Frazier, 2018;
IPCC, 2007a). The factors that mostly influence sensi-
tivity depend on ecological goods and services for eco-
nomic benefits and access to resources (Cutter
et al., 2009; Fischer & Frazier, 2018). Adaptive capacity
refers to individuals’or communities’abilities to adapt
to change, prevent or reduce potential damages, or
cope with the repercussions brought about by exposure
and sensitivity to flood hazards (Fischer &
Frazier, 2018; McCarthy et al., 2001). Access to
resources is an important factor influencing adaptive
capacity, among others such as social networks and
physical strength, which Elrick-Barr et al. (2022) and
Mortreux and Barnett (2017) have called the first-
generation assessment of adaptive capacity. Noting
people’s adaptation anomalies despite asset owner-
ship, Mortreux and Barnett (2017) introduced a second-
generation assessment method, also known as mobili-
sation capacities, which accounts for household-level
factors, including risk attitudes, past experiences, faith
in authorities, and competing concerns. Barnes et al.
(2020) have expanded the second-generation research
to include other factors such as organisation, learning,
socio-cognitive constructs, and agency. Elrick-Barr
et al. (2022) have proposed a third-generation assess-
ment of adaptive capacity to include mobilisation and
transfer of capacities between individuals and groups.
There are also growing numbers of studies on
vulnerability assessment or mapping techniques.
Chambers and Conway (1992) have developed the
Sustainable Livelihood Approach (SLA) that considers
five different types of assets, which are natural, physi-
cal, human, social, and financial. Hahn et al. (2009)
have modified the SLA to introduce a new tool called
the Livelihood Vulnerability Index (LVI), which
employed multiple indicators to assess three different
aspects of vulnerability at a household level: exposure
to natural disasters and climate variability; sensitivity
determined by access to health, food, and water
resources; and adaptive capacity determined by socio-
economic status, livelihood strategies, and social
networks. Likewise, Pandey and Jha (2012) have
introduced the Climate Vulnerability Index (CVI), which
also included all three dimensions of vulnerability. The
Governance and Climate Vulnerability Index (GCVI)
introduced by Jubeh and Mimi (2012) has normally
applied quantitative measures, incorporating gover-
nance indicators along with other CVI indicators. One
of the problems with these approaches, however, has
been that they analyse vulnerability quantitatively,
ignoring non-climate related factors, the stories and
sentiments of people and communities. Thus, they are
not flexible enough to consider social, economic, and
political causes of vulnerability (Hinkel, 2011; Sapkota
et al., 2016).
Studies on climate vulnerability have shown a direct
correlation between poverty and climate change
impacts; however, other factors also affect vulnerability.
Floods affect poor people because they live in poor
quality cheaper lands, usually risky floodplains
(Hallegatte et al., 2016; Nguyen & James, 2013). Work-
ing in the South Pacific, McEvoy et al. (2020) have
established that those people who do not have access
to critical infrastructure and financial resources, particu-
larly the right to land, have reduced adaptive capacity.
Ghimire et al. (2010) have found that Nepal’shill
farmers with access to land had high adaptive capacity
to droughts. Where people live has also affected their
vulnerability (Thomas et al., 2019; Turner et al., 2003).
Vulnerability is also increased by: (a) lack of availability
of diversified income options (Gerlitz et al., 2017; Giri
et al., 2021); (b) lack of potable water, health, and
transportation facilities (Gentle & Maraseni, 2012;
Hallegatte et al., 2016); (c) lack of knowledge and
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dilapidated infrastructure (Giri et al., 2021); (d) reliance
on weather-dependent or climate-sensitive incomes
(Gentle & Maraseni, 2012; Hallegatte et al., 2016); (e)
restricted access to critical information (Casse, 2013;
McEvoy et al., 2020); and (f) lack of influential presence
in governmental, non-governmental, and local commu-
nity organisations that can help communities at times of
need (Chau et al., 2014; Gerlitz et al., 2017). Neverthe-
less, Sapkota et al. (2016, p. 62) have argued that the
social production of vulnerability to climate change in
Nepal’s rural hills has happened because of “multiple
interactions of social, cultural, economic and political
processes happening at different times and places.”
At larger scales, the IPCC (2014, p. 49) has stated
that “challenges for vulnerability reduction and adapta-
tion actions are particularly high in regions that have
shown severe difficulties in governance.”Although that
statement was made in the context of violent conflicts
arising from the impairment of necessary features for
adaptation such as assets, institutions, infrastructure,
and livelihood options, it applies to other cases of
governance. For example, McEvoy et al. (2020) have
found a strong link between good land governance and
climate resilience planning and practice in the Pacific.
However, there is limited research on the linkage
between governance and climate vulnerability.
3|RESEARCH WITH THE KOSHI RIVER
COMMUNITIES
Applying vulnerability as a relational concept in the
context of transboundary river governance, this study
uses the IPCC (2007b) definition of vulnerability and
considers susceptibility and in/ability of riverine commu-
nities to cope with adverse effects of flooding in the
Koshi river basin. Thus, it examines communities’
exposure and sensitivity to flood hazards and adaptive
capacity to recover from them. In doing so, it explores
the relationship between the governance and the
hazards in the study area and considers how it affected
the communities’access to safe housing and security,
potable water, health and transportation facilities, and
food. In turn, it examines how such factors affected
people’s socio-economic and livelihood strategies to
adapt to and cope with hazards to understand
governance-induced vulnerability among the study
communities.
3.1 |The study site
The research site was located along the Koshi River in
eastern Nepal, about 200 kilometres (km) southeast of
Kathmandu. Koshi is a transboundary river in the cen-
tral Himalayan region, originating in China, passing
through the breadth of Nepal, and finally draining into
the Ganges in India. The Koshi river basin is the largest
in Nepal, encompassing about 42% of the total catch-
ment area of the river (Sharma cited in Devkota &
Gyawali, 2015). The basin is susceptible to flash and
riverine floods, landslides, erosion, sedimentation, and
glacial lake outburst floods due to its diverse topogra-
phy, young geology, intense glaciation, and heavy mon-
soon precipitation (Shrestha et al., 2010), all of which
increase the vulnerability of many riverine communities.
The KRA governs the river. The main aim of this
agreement is to control floods, irrigate, generate hydro-
power, and protect erosion of land in Nepal. After the
agreement was signed, works for flood control, irriga-
tion, and erosion protection were carried out under
what was called the Koshi River Project (KRP). Accord-
ing to a revision, project leaders were authorised by the
government of Nepal to lease for 199 years a portion of
the river and adjacent land area, about 10,000 hectares
(ha), in Nepalese territory close to the Nepal-India
border. Three major structures resulted on the river: a
barrage; two flood embankments (respectively 146 and
123 km long) along the river running across the border;
and two canals protruding from the barrage for irrigating
land in both countries. The barrage and embankments
were completed in 1962 and the eastern canal in 1964
(Pun, 2009). As per the agreement, India’s state gov-
ernment of Bihar is responsible for all project-related
management, repair, and maintenance works. For the
purpose of this article, “the Government of India”will
be used to denote both the Government of India and
the Bihar Government.
Fieldwork was carried out with Nepali river communi-
ties on two river islands (Figure 1). The islands are
located in what were then Prakashpur and Gobargadha
Village Development Committees (VDCs),
2
respectively
upstream and downstream of the barrage, which allows
for useful comparison of the communities’vulnerabil-
ities. They were also among the most recurrently flood-
affected places along the river. Both islands are
surrounded by the Koshi River on the east and west.
The main stream of the river was on the east during
fieldwork but was flowing to the west of both islands until
the early 1990s according to the islanders. During
two months of fieldwork in April and May 2015, hun-
dreds of people were living on the islands. (Re)visiting
this work at this point is important because it contributes
to a better understanding of the islanders’vulnerability
to recurring floods amidst transboundary river gover-
nance problems and increasing climate change effects.
The island in Sunsari, located 25 kilometres
upstream of the Koshi barrage, is also known as Sri-
Lanka Tapu or just Tappu, because of its resemblance
to the island nation of Sri Lanka. People started living
on the island by clearing forest areas in the late 1940s.
During the fieldwork, the land was mostly occupied by
the past flood-displaced people and people who
migrated from the eastern neighbouring districts.
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The island in Saptari (also known as Gobargadha)
lies seven kilometres downstream from the barrage
and touches the Nepal–India border. During the field-
work, the islanders included the families of people
residing there even before the signing of the KRA,
and some new people who migrated from the sur-
rounding areas and from India, while some islanders
were living in neighbouring villages due to displace-
ment by severe flooding in the 1990s, who are also
included in this study.
3.2 |Research methods
A critical pragmatist research approach was followed
for this study. “Critical pragmatism appreciates multiple
and contingent or evolving forms of knowledge, local or
scientific, initial opinion and considered judgement”
(Forester, 2013, p. 6). Critical pragmatists argue that
truth cannot be absolute, that multiple realities exist,
and that knowledge generation takes place where inter-
action and experience occur (Vannini, 2008).
Following ethics clearances, during fieldwork on the
islands, informal key-informant interviews were carried
out with locally respected people such as teachers,
NGO activists, political and community leaders, and for-
mer Village Development Committee (VDC) chairper-
sons living in what were previously Prakashpur and
Gobargadha VDCs. Semi-structured interviews (SSIs)
were used to collect data from 93 households selected
via a systematic sampling technique. Of these, 30 were
from Tappu and 63 from Gobargadha, which also
include households displaced from Gobargadha and
living in the VDCs of Joginiya (21 households) and
Haripur (12 households). Fifteen in-depth interviews
were conducted with household heads, based on the
information received from the SSIs to gain insights into
their life stories and historical contexts and situations
related to flood disasters. Of these 15 interviews, seven
were conducted in the upstream whereas eight were
conducted in the downstream settlements. All in-depth
interviews were audio-recorded.
Secondary data and grey literature such as project
reports and policy papers on climate change and its
impacts in the Koshi river basin were examined. Semi-
structured interviews with the household heads were
analysed using descriptive statistics for quantitative
data and content analysis for the qualitative data. The-
matic data coding was done for content analysis using
Microsoft Excel. In-depth interviews were transcribed
FIGURE 1 Fieldwork sites in Nepal (adapted from OpenStreetMap [OSM], 2022).
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and analysed using narrative analysis. The data were
grouped, organised and reorganised, categorised and
conceptualised for interpreting the meaning. The find-
ings are presented in the sections below.
4|INSIGHTS FROM THE KOSHI RIVER
COMMUNITIES
4.1 |Exposure of the communities to
floods
Floods on the Koshi River affected communities every
year, particularly during monsoons or because of ero-
sion, inundation, and siltation but as well as the
destructive flood of 2008, riverine communities from the
study site have faced many other disasters.
On Tappu, interviews revealed that flood devasta-
tion started only in 1965, three years after the Koshi
barrage was built. Some people interviewed claimed
blocking natural water flow with the barrage was the
reason for harmful floods. People recalled that land
erosion due to floods, which started in the early 1980s,
completely eroded two wards of Prakashpur VDC,
adjoining Tappu, within the five monsoon seasons up
to 1985. Some disaster-displaced people moved further
west to live on Tappu. Currently, floods erode land
from the eastern areas of Tappu adjoining the river
every year.
On Gobargadha, people reported that intense ero-
sion began only after the barrage was built but said
inundation had existed for a long time. They claimed
that floods after the construction of the embankments
eroded agricultural land from the western part of the
island. Later, in the late 1990s, floods eroded a large
area of land and destroyed many houses in the eastern
part, displacing many people to nearby villages. Harm-
ful inundation and erosion of agricultural land persis-
tently happened annually until 2021.
People revealed several reasons for the flood
disasters on the islands. First, the location of the
settlements on the floodplains lies within the embank-
ments. Second, there were no protection measures,
including revetment structures, to safeguard them from
erosion and inundations. Third, the barrage gates
were suddenly opened on occasions without people
being informed by the authority, causing enormous
quantities of water to flow from the barrage. For them,
inundations were a normal annual phenomenon, but
the erosion of their houses and land was a major con-
cern. They stressed that they were informed about
opening the gates only at times of emergencies such
as big avalanches and flash floods in the mountains
in the north (see the narrative below). Fourth, people
alleged the authority would open barrage gates only
during floods and kept them closed at other times,
and that caused erosion and inundation. Fifth, only
the gates on the Nepalese side (the western side)
were opened during floods, and the remaining gates
were closed. Sixth, the authority would create tempo-
rary barriers by depositing stones on the Indian side
causing the river to flood more from the Nepalese
side.
Building a protection wall around our island
[Gobargadha] would save us from floods.
(male, 40–45 years, Gobargadha VDC)
They [usually] don’t inform us when they
open the gates [during monsoons]. The
barrage is opened [by the authority]
whenever they want. Only sometimes when
there is an emergency …the police inform
us. (male, 50–55 years, Gobargadha VDC)
Climate change also affected the river islanders.
According to Paudel et al. (2021), there was an
increasing flooding frequency in the river between
1980 and 2018. At least three studies found increas-
ing drought trends and events in the basin in the
recent several decades (Dahal et al., 2021; Paudel
et al., 2021; Wu et al., 2019), the latter arguing that
the trend significantly affected crops and water avail-
ability, which was also revealed by islanders during
interviews.
4.2 |Sensitivity of communities to
floods
4.2.1 | Access to safe housing and security
Although the KRA envisioned the permanent evacua-
tion of settlements in between embankments, many
people have been living in them because the KRP
authorities were unable to convince them for safe relo-
cation. The island settlements were typically rural with
scattered houses and predominantly in an agricultural
setting. On Gobargadha, all the houses were made
with mud and reed and were thatched. However, some
houses on Tappu were built of wood, which made
them comparatively stronger. Either way, houses built
on the flood-prone islands were more vulnerable to
hazards.
On both islands, the security situation was critical
as the Nepal government offices and national law
enforcement agencies were absent. Rescue attempts
may be jeopardised, particularly in case of flood disas-
ters, as security forces will have to cross the swollen
river. Furthermore, the Nepal government had not pro-
vided both islands’residents with access to the
national electricity grid. However, the people had solar
electricity panels for lighting purposes that were pro-
vided by a non-governmental organisation.
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4.2.2 | Access to potable water, health,
and transportation facilities
River islanders in the study lacked potable water and
health and transportation facilities. Some were using
shared tube wells containing excess iron, which had
been marked unsafe by the government. Sanitary
conditions were poor due to the lack of toilets, so open
defecation on riverbanks. People often faced insecurity
of potable water due to contamination in case of big
floods or inundations, resulting in sickness and fatality.
Health service provision was non-existent or primitive.
From Tappu, people had to travel to Prakashpur village
across the eastern embankment for any health-related
services but travelling to Prakashpur meant using boats
at two places to cross the main stream and a
rivulet along the way, a journey of between 90 and
120 minutes. Such a situation makes it almost impossi-
ble to evacuate immediately in case of an emergency.
On Gobargadha, there was a rudimentary government
health centre, where all health-related materials and
basic medicines were stored in a large traditional
bamboo silo. Consequently, residents needed to travel
to Hanumannagar town across the river to access
health facilities, which would take about 30 to
45 minutes on foot (and by boat during rainy seasons).
The absence of these facilities on the river islands
made the islanders’lives hard during floods.
4.2.3 | Access to food
Food availability is another important factor determining
people’s vulnerability to hazards. The islanders’main
source of food was agricultural produce, mainly rice,
wheat, and lentils. Although all the households were
engaged in farming, agricultural production was insuffi-
cient for the whole year. On Tappu, about 57% of the
population was food insecure, whereas it was only 40%
on Gobargadha. The main cause of food insecurity was
their reliance on the non-irrigated risky land. Food inse-
cure households had to buy or borrow food from their
neighbours or relatives. They had to leave the islands
to obtain food as there were no established market-
places, increasing the risk of food shortages during
disasters.
4.3 |Adaptive capacities of the
communities
4.3.1 | Socio-economic situation of the
communities
People’s socio-economic condition is vital in gaining
easy access to resources, determining their ability to
cope with and adapt to disasters. The survey showed
that the islanders had low socio-economic status than
those living outside the embankments. Many islanders
were poor, not being able to meet their expenses.
About 47% of the Tappu households had insufficient
income to meet their annual household needs, while it
was about 59% on Gobargadha (92% in Joginiya and
37% on the island). To address their unmet needs, they
employed several strategies, including borrowing at
high interest rates from informal sources such as family
and friends (common) and formal sources such as
cooperatives and banks (few).
The main asset for the islanders was agricultural
land, as access to land benefits them in several ways.
First, they can farm and grow their own food; second,
they can build houses permanently; and third, they get
access to basic amenities provided by the Nepal gov-
ernment such as national electricity grid and the piped-
drinking water. The government denies people access
to such facilities without a land ownership certificate,
necessitating land ownership.
On both islands, people secured land access in dif-
ferent ways, such as buying privately, occupying public
land, and leasing.
3
The survey showed that only 35%
of the surveyed Tappu households owned land pri-
vately, whereas 65% cultivated public land. Private land
ownership for the Tappu residents means they became
capable of buying land elsewhere, safe from floods. A
Tappu resident (anonymous male, aged 55–60 years)
was able to purchase land in a neighbouring village
away from the river by selling some cattle and agricul-
tural produce. However, moving to a safe location was
a dream for many islanders, as a Gobargadha resident
(anonymous male, aged 50–55 years) remarked, “We
lack capital to go out from here. We can’t afford to buy
enough land [outside] for us.”Besides, the Tappu resi-
dents also traded public land they occupied, mostly the
land adjoining the river. The very poor islanders bought
the flood-prone cheap land to erect temporary shelters,
increasing their vulnerability to floods. On Gobargadha,
only a few people occupied public land (23%) because
many received ownership certificates for their previ-
ously occupied public land in 1979 after it was declared
a Village Panchayat.
4
As the land was mostly free or in-
expensive, some residents from both islands shifted
their houses towards the back several times whenever
the floods washed them away. A Joginiya resident
(anonymous male, aged 45–50 years) recalled doing
so 20 times.
4.3.2 | Livelihood strategies
From the survey, islanders’economic activities por-
trayed their vulnerability. Agriculture was the main
occupation for about 54% and 66% of the economically
active people surveyed on Tappu and Gobargadha,
respectively. The people who were in foreign
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employment such as the Middle East, Malaysia, and
India had the higher economic status than the rest. On
Tappu, about 43% of the households had at least one
person working either in Malaysia or the Middle East
countries such as Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and Bahrain
(Figure 2). Most of them acquired land elsewhere in
flood-safe areas with remittances. In contrast, only
about 24% of the households on Gobargadha had fam-
ily members working overseas, and about 29% had
family members working in India. More Gobargadha
residents were employed in India than Tappu inhabi-
tants because they were nearer India and had relatives
there.
Some Joginiya residents had their farming on
Gobargadha. One of them (anonymous male, aged 45–
50 years) remarked, “During floods, my family live here,
but I live at Tappu [Gobargadha] in the recent years. I
have to look after my cattle and produce there.”
Almost all Haripur residents were engaged in wage
work because of farmland inadequacy. A Haripur resi-
dent (anonymous male, aged 70–75 years) said,
“Everybody is working here; some as wage labourers;
some sell firewood; some sell dried cow dungs; some
sell fish.”Tappu residents found it hard to find labour
work because of their unaffordability to hire fellow
islanders. The islanders lacked income diversification
opportunities, limiting their adaptive capacity.
4.3.3 | Social networks
The survey showed that some islanders received assis-
tance from other people and institutions during disas-
ters. They received short-term relief assistance from
the government and some non-governmental organisa-
tions that included essential food and clothes, and
boats for crossing the river. Besides, they received help
from their relatives, and friends, demonstrating almost
non-existent formal community networks on the islands.
A Joginiya resident (anonymous male, aged 55–
60 years) remarked, “All political leaders give assur-
ance to people during elections, but they don’t do any-
thing afterwards.”Another islander (Anonymous male,
aged 75–80 years, Joginiya) recalled borrowing money
FIGURE 2 Type of occupation of households by percentage.
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from local money lenders even though the interest rate
was about 36% per annum, instead of borrowing from a
bank because, “We need to pay them exactly by the
deadline, which is very hard.”
5|KOSHI RIVER GOVERNANCE AND
COMMUNITIES’VULNERABILITIES
Vulnerability studies on the global South’s marginalised
communities have put forward several dominant narra-
tives in explaining vulnerability. According to Jackson
(2021), the narratives are poverty or lack of economic
development; global environmental change, particularly
climate change; and various development processes
that have regularly omitted vulnerability’s historical and
socio-ecological aspects, as well as people’s percep-
tions and stories. Particularly, the climate vulnerability
literature has ignored stories and sentiments of people
and communities in analysing vulnerability’s multidi-
mensional socio-economic, political, and historical
aspects, obscuring the link between water governance
and vulnerability. By exploring the Koshi River gover-
nance and the riverine communities of Nepal and
employing vulnerability concepts and mapping, this arti-
cle has demonstrated that vulnerability is a relational
concept, and the governance has contributed to the
islanders’heightened vulnerability.
The findings show that there is a strong correlation
between the Koshi River governance and the river
islanders’vulnerability. The vulnerability was caused
by multi-scalar interactions of various processes oper-
ating at various times and concomitantly. The gover-
nance reinforced the existing vulnerabilities with
irresponsible and unaccountable decision-making pro-
cesses and arrangements. On numerous occasions,
the main decision-makers, the Nepalese, and Indian
governments misused and failed to effectively use their
power in making and executing critical decisions.
Examples include allowing migrants to occupy and later
trade risky floodplains, issuing land certificates on
Gobargadha, and inadequate provision for proper com-
pensation and relocation of the islanders. During the
half-century of the barrage’s post-construction, the gov-
ernments did not take a single protection measure,
such as revetment walls for the islands. Regarding the
authorities’negligence, a key informant from a down-
stream settlement remarked:
The barrage people [Nepalese administra-
tion] are only concerned about the customs
duty for goods that people bring from
Bhimnagar, India. They don’t care about the
condition of the barrage. The Indian govern-
ment also doesn’t care because it has been
getting the needed quantity of water from
the canals. (Male, aged 50–55 years)
Interestingly, many spurs were built to strengthen
and protect the embankments, but the lack of coordi-
nated decision-making and implementation between
the Nepali and Indian governments made the islanders
vulnerable. Such decision-making resulted in weak
planning and practice, resulting in haphazard decisions
and/or inaction on critical and urgent issues. For
instance, coordination was lacking between the two
when making decisions about opening specific barrage
gates during floods and unilaterally constructing tempo-
rary river barriers. A key informant from Gobargadha
happily shared, “The late King visited here [in 1979]
and declared it an administrative unit.”, confirming the
KRP authorities’inability to persuade the islanders to
relocate elsewhere. Furthermore, they could not collab-
orate during severe floods, frequently denying critical
flood information to Gobargadha islanders giving them
less time to prepare for coping and adaptation. The
findings are important for policy-makers in understand-
ing the major factors of riverine people’s vulnerability in
a transboundary context and devising necessary inter-
ventions tailored to their specific needs.
This study also found that the local, national, and
international governments’weak presence and support
during the flooding were other causes of vulnerability.
The islanders neither got help from the government nor
the KRP authorities. Instead, the Indian side exclusively
opened the barrage gates on the Nepalese side and
built artificial barriers to safeguard land just on its side,
affecting the Gobargadha islanders. Besides, the
authorities left the islands isolated from the outside
world even during non-monsoon times, which was
noted from the islanders’compulsion to drink ground-
water tainted with excess iron, a lack of connection to
national electricity grid, a lack of proper health, sanita-
tion, transportation, and security facilities. Lack of gov-
ernment assistance in obtaining irrigation and other
livelihood support services forced the islanders to rely
on rain-fed agriculture and live without diversified
income sources and access to necessary assets, exac-
erbating their food and income insecurity and reducing
their adaptive capacity. As a Tappu resident commen-
ted, “We have a plenty of water flowing in the river
nearby, but we don’t have water for irrigation.”The lack
of economic opportunities pushed them to seek foreign
labour employment in Malaysia and the Middle East,
albeit a few islanders were able to meet the recruitment
costs. The employment also became the highest-
paying occupation on the islands. Some islanders uti-
lised remittances sent home from the overseas to pur-
chase land outside the island in addition to the land
they previously occupied, hoping to reduce flood risks.
It was because their vulnerability to flooding did not
decrease despite owning land on the islands.
In other words, the river’s poor governance has a
substantial impact on the islanders’adaptive capacity.
First, only a few islanders could afford the basic assets
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required to adapt to floods. Second, many of them
lacked the capacity to mobilise their assets for better
adaptation due to a lack of agency and competing con-
cerns, such as managing day-to-day food needs, illus-
trating the lack of mobilisation capacity essential for
enhancing adaptive capacity, as argued by Mortreux
and Barnett (2017) and Barnes et al. (2020). Only a few
islanders were able to buy property in safer locations
using remittances, income from farming, and animal
sales. Third, they lacked the ability to transmit adaptive
capacity from elsewhere, contrary to what Elrick-Barr
et al. (2022) suggested about capacity transfer
between individuals and groups. The lack of transfer
ability was because of an absence of social networks
outside of their islands. This study supports prior find-
ings by McEvoy et al. (2020) in the South Pacific
regarding the weak planning and practice, resulting in
haphazard decisions and/or inaction on critical and
urgent issues, and Chau et al. (2014) and Gerlitz et al.
(2017) on the weak presence of the local, national, and
international government authorities in supporting peo-
ple when needed. It also resonates with Gerlitz et al.
(2017) and Giri et al. (2021) regarding the escalating
vulnerability due to the unaffordability of diverse income
options. However, the lack of diverse income options
was mainly due to the authorities’irresponsibility in not
facilitating the islanders in any income-generating activ-
ities despite their reliance on the neighbouring villages
for almost everything. Because of lack of livelihood
options, they had to rely heavily on weather-dependent
income, which further increased their vulnerability to
floods, echoing studies by Gentle and Maraseni (2012)
and Hallegatte et al. (2016). McEvoy et al. (2020) in the
South Pacific and Ghimire et al. (2010) in Nepal found
that access to land rights reduced people’s vulnerabil-
ity; however, this did not happen with the Koshi River
islanders. They remained vulnerable because they
lived on the risky locations, which instead resonated
with studies by Thomas et al. (2019) and Turner et al.
(2003). Another factor contributing to the islanders’
increased vulnerability, notably among the Gobargadha
residents, was a lack of critical flood information during
the opening of the barrage gates, which is exactly what
Brunn and Casse (2013) found in Central Vietnam and
McEvoy et al. (2020) discovered in the South Pacific.
The findings of this study show that lack of good
governance was one of the major causes of vulnerabil-
ity. The main actors, the governments of Nepal and
India, failed to act responsibly and accountably towards
the river islanders. They either misused or failed to use
their power effectively in making critical decisions and
implementing them. Besides weak planning and
absence of government and project authorities on the
islands, poverty, location, house type, security situa-
tion, health and transportation facilities, access to
food, income and land, and the islanders’capacity to
mobilise and transfer adaptive capacity, including
historical aspects of the KRA determined vulnerability.
In addition, climate change is happening. Although
studying the impacts of climate change on the islands
is beyond the scope of this study, it is evident that the
basin has experienced both increasing flood frequency
and extremely severe droughts in the past several
decades that have had an impact on agriculture and
water supply (Dahal et al., 2021; Paudel et al., 2021;
Wu et al., 2019). Pradhan and Shrestha (2022) esti-
mated over 10% increase in monsoon rainfall in the
basin’s low-lying plain region between 2021 and 2076.
The rainfall pattern is expected to increase future cata-
strophic events including floods, flash floods, soil ero-
sion, and landslides. Such a situation will increase the
islanders’vulnerability to floods, resulting in disasters.
The situation will become much worse unless the vul-
nerability contributing factors are addressed well. For
this, good governance is required, which includes
responsible and accountable decision-making pro-
cesses and arrangements, as well as the effective and
efficient use of power in critical and coordinated roles
that address the needs of the local people.
This study has some limitations. First, this study
was conducted only on the Nepalese side due to field-
work logistics. The inclusion of riverine people from the
Indian side would portray a different story. Second, the
fieldwork was conducted during the period just before
the monsoon started, which prevented me from
experiencing and observing the islanders during flood-
ing. Third, the use of local research assistants posed a
challenge in collecting some sensitive information from
the islanders, for example, income. However, data tri-
angulation and correction during the data entry from the
field notes helped overcome the hurdle. Fourth, the
study did not investigate climate change variables and
examine climate change impacts on the islands. Thus,
future research on the production of vulnerabilities in
transboundary river communities in the context of
anthropogenic climate change is necessary. As riverine
people living in the transboundary governance settings
become vulnerable when governance mechanisms are
not effective, future studies that examine the responsi-
bility and accountability of key actors involved in the
governance are needed.
6|CONCLUSION
This article has shown how the Koshi River governance
has disproportionately shaped the two river communi-
ties’vulnerability to flooding on the upstream and
downstream islands of the Koshi barrage, and revealed
how it will continue to shape their vulnerability in the
future with increasing effects of climate change. The
question of governance in relation to vulnerability
assessments that was generally missing in the vulnera-
bility assessment literature, particularly the climate
MAHARJAN 521
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vulnerability literature, has been addressed here. The
findings suggest that the islanders’vulnerability is pro-
duced locally and also shaped by national and
international social, political, and economic contexts.
Multi-scalar social, economic, political, historical, and
ecological processes occurred in isolation and also
concomitantly influenced escalating flood exposures,
elevated levels of sensitivity, and shrank adaptive
capacities to cope with the hazards. When there is lack
of coordinated governance and the main players
become irresponsible and unaccountable to the people,
planning and practice become weak, increasing vulner-
ability to hazards to the extent that recovery is difficult.
Authorities’inefficiencies and ineffectiveness in making
proper decisions and managing people and floodplains
influence people to live on floodplains. Unless major
players make responsible decisions, even having
access to a critical resource, such as land in the case
of the islanders, is insufficient to reduce vulnerability.
Furthermore, people are left defenceless because of
the lack of strong government agencies and institutions
in communities, timely access to critical information on
hazards, diverse income opportunities, and their
pursuit of weather-dependent subsistence occupations.
People’s vulnerability to hazards escalates when major
players overlook them and fail to act on critical matters
in a governance process.
The article has also shown that vulnerability is a
relational concept, demonstrating that governance fail-
ure leads to severe climate vulnerability. Just asking
“how”people become exposed is insufficient. To
understand vulnerability holistically, asking “why”is
crucial because it brings out underlying or hidden rea-
sons or causes of vulnerability. For such ends, explor-
ing people’s stories becomes crucial for understanding
who and how decisions are made and then dissemi-
nated to people. Understanding the political economy
of hazard production is, therefore, crucial for under-
standing vulnerability. Therefore, the study of historical,
social, economic, political, geographical, and ecological
processes is critical in any social vulnerability analysis.
Last, as climate change is real and happening,
highly uncertain precipitation patterns and water flows
in rivers are becoming more frequent. This outcome, in
turn, is directly escalating the vulnerability of riverine
people and indirectly affecting other people who
depend on river waters, especially across political bor-
ders. It is vital to reframe transboundary river gover-
nance, stressing powerful players’responsibility and
accountability towards the people being governed.
More research is needed on the construction of vulner-
abilities, especially in transboundary river settings that
are highly prone to anthropogenic climate change
impacts. The historical and socio-ecological aspects of
vulnerability and people’s perceptions and stories need
to be integrated into the climate vulnerability literature.
A better understanding of relationships between water
governance and vulnerability is necessary to enhance
people’s lives and livelihoods.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank Professor Phil McManus and Dr
Robert Fisher, my research supervisors, for their con-
tinuous encouragement and constructive feedback dur-
ing this article’s development. Open access publishing
facilitated by The University of Sydney, as part of the
Wiley - The University of Sydney agreement via the
Council of Australian University Librarians.
CONFLICT OF INTEREST STATEMENT
The author declares no conflict of interest.
DATA AVAILABILITY STATEMENT
Data sharing not applicable - no new data generated
ETHICS STATEMENT
All participants gave their consent before they partici-
pated in the interviews and surveys. The study was
done in accordance with the Human Research Ethics
Committee (HREC), the University of Sydney.
ORCID
Kiran Maharjan https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6542-
0466
ENDNOTES
1
The region encompasses eight nations, from Myanmar in the east
to Afghanistan in the west, with China, India, Nepal, Bangladesh,
Pakistan, and Bhutan in between (Satyal et al., 2017).
2
Since the fieldwork was done a new constitution has been adopted
in Nepal and the former VDCs have been abolished and the islands
are now in new administrative units. In this article, the names of the
administrative units applying at the time of fieldwork are used.
Currently, Prakashpur and Gobargadha VDCs have been renamed
as Barahkshetra Municipality-09, Sunsari, and Hanumannagar
Kankalini Municipality-13, Saptari, respectively.
3
The contract was locally known as adhiya.Adhiya is an informal
oral contract between the landowner and the tiller, under which the
tiller promises to provide a certain percentage, usually half, of
agricultural produce to the owner.
4
Then the lowest administrative unit, later renamed VDCs.
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How to cite this article: Maharjan, K. (2023).
Transboundary river governance and climate
vulnerability: Community perspectives in Nepal’s
Koshi river basin. Geographical Research,61(4),
512–524. https://doi.org/10.1111/1745-5871.
12598
524 MAHARJAN
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