ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION AND PERCEPTIONS IN EASTERN NEPAL: ANALYSIS OF STUDENT DRAWINGS By Sara D. Keinath Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Forestry Michigan Technological University 2004 The project paper: “Environmental Education and Perceptions in Eastern Nepal: Analysis of Student Drawings” is hereby approved in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the Degree of MASTER OF SCIENCE IN FORESTRY. School of Forest Resources and Environmental Science Signatures Advisor: __________________________________ Blair D. Orr Dean: __________________________________ Margaret R. Gale Date: __________________________________ ii TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS vi CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER 2 NEPAL Geography and Climate 5 People and Culture 14 Agriculture-based Economy 19 History and Current Situation 22 Education System 26 CHAPTER 3 STUDY AREA: MECHI ZONE 33 CHAPTER 4 ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION 45 CHAPTER 5 METHODOLOGY AND DATA Literature Review 49 Study Design 53 CHAPTER 6 RESULTS AND DISCUSSION Description 60 Interpretation 66 CHAPTER 7 CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS 78 LITERATURE CITED 81 APPENDIX A 89 APPENDIX B 90 iii LIST OF FIGURES Page Figure 1: Class 8 students in Jhapa 1 Figure 2: Reference map of Asia 6 Figure 3: Major geographical regions of Nepal 7 Figure 4: Langtang National Park 8 Figure 5: The middle hills 9 Figure 6: The Terai 10 Figure 7: Royal Chitwan National Park 12 Figure 8: Lumbini, the birthplace of Buddha 13 Figure 9: Road during monsoon season 14 Figure 10: Rai neighbors 15 Figure 11: An urban Nepali family 16 Figure 12: Plowing in the hills 19 Figure 13: Livestock in a smallholder mixed farming system 20 Figure 14: Flooded fields in the Terai 21 Figure 15: Class 4 students 27 Figure 16: School assembly at a private school 28 Figure 17: A private school student in upper Kindergarten 29 Figure 18: Uniforms and material cost extra money 30 Figure 19: The number of girls attending school in on the rise 31 Figure 20: A Nepali boy gets ready for school 32 Figure 21: Map of Mechi Zone 34 Figure 22: Delays are frequent on the roads 35 Figure 23: Chiya bhari in Ilam 36 Figure 24: Cardamom in a Community Forest 37 Figure 25: Women harvest allo 38 Figure 26: Limbu matriarch 40 Figure 27: Trekking in the Kanchenjunga region 42 Figure 28: Panchthar district 43 Figure 29: Living in Panchthar district 43 Figure 30: Harvesting chiya in Panchthar 44 Figure 31: Students draw in shifts at the larger schools 55 Figure 32: Students all draw at once in the smaller schools 55 Figure 33: Students draw their environment 57 Figure 34: Example of the present environment 60 Figure 35: Example of the past environment 61 Figure 36: Depiction of future environment 62 Figure 37: Example of biased perspective 64 Figure 38: Example of x-ray vision 64 Figure 39: Example of visual realism 65 Figure 40: Cultivated landscapes 67 Figure 41: Wilderness-type landscapes 68 Figure 42: Identification of local environmental elements in Ilam 69 Figure 43: Identification of local environment in Taplejung 69 iv Figure 44: Mountains, birds, trees, houses and rivers are common in the 71 posters Figure 45: Depiction of environmental problem 71 Figure 46: Illustration from textbook 73 Figure 47: Student vision of the future 73 Figure 48: Scenes with no interactions 74 Figure 49: Example of an interaction: bird eating a fish 75 Figure 50: Example of an interaction: man cutting down a tree 75 Figure 51: Identified environmental problems 75 Figure 52: Students are enthusiastic to learn 80 v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Bear with me, I have a story to tell. One steamy July morning in Nepal… Drew and I realize there’s trouble right away – the air is unusually quiet and there is no traffic. Birtamod, a pit-stop town on the East-West highway, is never this still. As soon as we ask, we come to know that there’s a bhand (general strike). The neighbor tells us it is a gadi bhand (vehicle strike), but it looks like all the stores are closed, too. This is a considerable problem, because I need to buy more brown paper for today’s activity, the second of my research activities at Drew’s school. We search everywhere Drew knows of for an open store – we finally find one, but they don’t have big brown paper, they don’t have newsprint, they don’t have cardboard (poster board), they don’t have chart paper – what to do? There are no other stores open. I ask Drew how far away Kakarbhitta is. One of my rolls of butcher paper is in Melanie’s dhera (apartment) in Kakarbhitta. He says “Not far – when the buses are running.” Oh, yeah. “Well, maybe we can get a taxi for a couple hundred rupees.” “I think that may be our only option at this point, so let’s see if we can find a taxi.” We roam the streets of Birtamod looking for a taxi. Nothing, nothing. We see only rickshaws on the road and one random Tata truck. The sun beats down on the unusual silence. Drew thinks maybe he knows a guy who could arrange a taxi, so we go to an eyeglasses store that is half-open. His friend the shopkeeper thinks there may be something near the police station, so we walk back towards the police station – Birtamod really isn’t that big, so by now we’ve walked back and forth on the same main roads several times. In the vicinity of the police station we ask a police officer where we can get a taxi, but he doesn’t know anything. In fact, he turns out to be the most unhelpful police officer we’ve ever met; he will barely even move his lips to speak to us, let alone actually give us any real information. He just grunts and picks his teeth. Drew and I don’t see any taxis nearby, so we walk down the road. As we walk, Drew muses out loud, “You know, the school might not even be open today. A lot of the teachers live far enough away that they might not be able to make it to school, though I suppose some of them may walk.” Great, so we may pay through the nose for a taxi to Kakarbhitta and back just to get my paper, and the school might be closed?! Arg. But we can’t call to check if the school will be open or closed, because it’s just after 9:00 now, and no one will be there till 10:00. (My activity is supposed to start at 11:00.) If there’s no school today, I’m in big trouble – Friday is a half day, which means nothing gets done, and next week summer vacation starts. Maybe I could double up and do two activities on Thursday, but that would mean commandeering a lot of class time right before vacation starts, and I don’t know if the teachers would be willing to give up so much time. Quite a pickle, as Drew says. We keep walking. Suddenly we see a vehicle up ahead, but as we get closer we notice it has a ‘Shuva Beeha’ banner on the hood, meaning it’s for a wedding. As we stand in the road wondering where our next brilliant idea is going to come from, an astute Nepali approaches us asking where we want to go. “Kakarbhitta.” He looks at his watch, vi looks back up at us, says, “Gadima janay?” (Go in the car?) We ask how much – after much haggling, we agree on Rs. 700 for going and returning, as well as a promise to be less than a minute in Kakarbhitta because he has to get back by 10:00 to pick up the bride for the wedding. We leave at 9:20. A few minutes down the road, Drew turns to me from the front seat. “Hmm, I hope Melanie’s still home when we get there. We’re really rolling a lot of dice today, aren’t we?!” We speed down the road like nobody’s business and get to Kakarbhitta in 20 minutes (a 40 minute bus ride on a good day) where we rush into Melanie’s dhera (she is home), grab the paper, throw a few explanatory phrases over our shoulders as we run back out, and leave a very confused Melanie behind us as we jump into the Shuva Beeha cab and speed away. We make it back to Birtamod just at 10:00. We run to the dal bhat didi (woman who cooks the traditional Nepali meal), shovel down khanna (food), flag down a rickshaw and bargain for him to take us to Garamani. As we start down the road, awkwardly wedged into the small rickshaw seat, we take stock of the situation: we have the paper now, we will still make it to school on time, and we even had a chance to eat. However, we don’t know whether the school will actually be open when we get there. One more roll of the dice. Just then, the sky opens up and it starts raining – within minutes the wind picks up and the rickshaw driver is really struggling. I pull out my rain jacket and drape it over my backpack and the top of the paper tube and a little bit of me. The rain sheets down harder. The poor rickshaw wallah is working his darndest to move us forward, inch by painful inch, in the driving headwind. Drew yells, “What should we do?” I can’t see anything at this point because my glasses are full of rain; I say, “I don’t know, do you think we should stop? Is there a place to stop?” “I don’t see anything, but the driver is really struggling, and we’re getting soaked…” He asks the driver if he wants to keep going, and the driver says yes yes we’ll keep going.