How a hydro project company violated the rights of Nepal’s indigenous communities

The list of alleged crimes and lies is long: accusations of forging local signatures, signing children’s names on contracts, creating false reports, bulldozing through farmlands under the cover of night and trapping sacred animals.

While speaking with Mongabay, Karma Bhutia had dozens of legal documents running through his hands, spilling over his desk, enough to fill a book, all pointing to Sangrila Urja Pvt Ltd, a Nepali hydropower company. The Chyamtang activist and adviser to the Chyamtang-Kathmandu Welfare Society was exasperated.

“They [the company] put price tags on our rivers, our sacred forests and biodiversity and did not even ask what we wanted,” Karma said. “If not for the community’s resistance, we would have lost everything at the hands of government.”

Nepal is experiencing a hydropower construction boom to meet its increasing energy demands, and the Himalayan Sankhuwasabha district in Lungbasamba where Bhutia lives is no exception. With this infrastructure boom also comes a trail of conflicts with nearby Indigenous communities, many of which rely directly on the land for survival, and a steady mix of reportedly illegal activities and rights violations. Often, the projects still go through, and communities say they feel swept under the rug. This particular conflict, however, briefly made global headlines after celebrity Leonardo DiCaprio amplified local outrage on social media.

In this case, Mongabay was able to verify most of the claims and confirm fabricated information in the environmental impact assessment, lack of proper consultation with the community and forged signatures. We also analysed the proposed site to be 90 times bigger than what the company received approval for. Despite community pleading, construction and road building related to the Chhujung Khola Hydropower Project still went forward under the cover of night until May 2024, and every side now awaits an upcoming lawsuit to plead their case.

The director of Sangrila Urja Pvt Ltd, Shreelal Chapagain, refuted all the allegations that locals have made, including the evidence Mongabay collected. He told Mongabay the project is progressing legally with the community’s consent. When asked about the environmental impact assessment report and the allegedly fabricated information, he said the company chairperson and contractors could provide more details. However, they were unable to provide Mongabay evidence backing their claims. Despite disagreements with some members of the community, the director said he is looking forward to the project seeking full support from the locals.

“There is no point in discontinuing it [the project] now that we have completed almost 100% of paper works and the legal processes,” Shreelal said.

Tucked between the sacred Kanchenjunga and Makalu mountains, dense forests and lush vegetation, Sankhuwasabha district is home to numerous villages of the Indigenous Bhote Singsa people, one of the country’s marginalised communities.

In May, Kijamajhiya Bhote, a 59-year-old local of Chyamtang village, said he woke up to a demolished temporary stone fence he had built the day before. Ironically, this was built to safeguard his land, which itself was bulldozed by employees of Sangrila Urja Pvt Ltd to construct a road for the project.

“In the night, a few men hired by the hydropower company demolished the fence and threatened me not to take any action against them,” said Kijamajhiya, who then filed a complaint to the rural municipality office to no avail. “The men say they have the authority to build roads, but this is my ancestral land and I have not permitted them.”

The project, initially set to build on 20 hectares (50 acres) of land, will clear pasturelands and forests that three villages have depended on for their people’s livelihoods for generations. Since the inception of the hydropower project in 2021, villagers in Chyamtang, Ridak and Thudam have witnessed roads built that directly impact the Lungbasamba area.

While locals in Chyamtang earn a living through collecting and trading traditional plants and medicines, yak herders in Thudam and Ridak remain the most vulnerable. The proposed project area comprises kharkas (pasturelands) that nomadic locals of Thudam entirely depend on.

“The yak herding culture, which is the lifeblood of the herders, will die if the project sees any progress,” said Lakpa Angjuk Bhote, secretary of Chyamtang-Kathmandu Welfare Society.

Located within the landscape is the Chhujung River and an ecosystem protected as a biocultural heritage site that boasts a diversity of flora and fauna, including the red panda (Ailurus fulgens), blue sheep (Pseudois nayaur), Asiatic black bear (Ursus thibetanus), Himalayan goral (Naemorhedus goral), snow leopard (Panthera uncia), musk deer, (Moschus moschiferus) and Himalayan monal (Lophophorus impejanus). It is also a cultural hub for many marginalised ethnic groups to carry out their ceremonies.

Surprises at the door

Across the high and breathtaking Himalayas near the Tibetan plateau are many glacial lakes where herders take their yaks (Bos grunniens) to cool them down. This is especially done in the summertime between May and October. When the winters get harsh near these Himalayan lakes, the herders bring their yaks to the pasturelands, where they spend the rest of the year until the next summer.

“The nomadic herders of Thudam and Ridak rear about 50 livestock on average including yaks, cattle and goats. Along with the pasturelands, our sacred forest and glacial lakes are under threat as they seek to use heavy explosives,” Lakpa said.

According to the environmental impact assessment, the company seeks to use about 192,000 tons of explosives and 188,000 detonators for construction, which locals say would directly impact the glaciers.

“All 26 glaciers located nearby are about 5 km away, and three of the glaciers are about 2 km away from the project site,” Lakpa said. “The rivers, lakes and forests are at the center of many people’s faith and folklore stories and therefore sacred to locals. The destruction of untouched sacred forest around the project area is desecration of our sacred spaces, deities and our communal faith.”

The way most people from the communities came to know there would be explosives was a surprise. No one told them until they happened to read it in the environmental impact assessment report. Another surprise came in 2022 when they found out this environmental impact assessment was approved when the company published a public notice in a national newspaper and requested local feedback.

“The notice outraged all of us, as the EIA [environmental impact assessment] report was flawed and was approved without our free, prior and informed consent,” Karma said.

The environmental impact assessment report, approved by the Ministry of Forests and Environment, includes fabricated details that are “copy-pasted” from another report, sources told Mongabay.

Although Mongabay was unable to identify the copied source, we were able to confirm that the report includes false, inaccurate and missing information. The names of some villages, districts, plants and animals impacted are false and are from other regions in the country. The provided percentage of people living in the Himalayas is wrong, and the report did not mention all the winter pasturelands lost to the herders.

The Lungbasamba landscape is a habitat of several endemic species, including a range-restricted endemic fern, Huperzia cavei, exclusively found in the Thudam region. But the report does not mention these endemic species potentially impacted.

“For instance, there is no mention of species like the red panda, blue sheep, Asiatic black bear, Himalayan goral, snow leopard, musk deer and Himalayan monal that are found here. But the report mentions a species of porcupine and chestnut tree that is not found in the region,” Karma said.

Mongabay also georeferenced the map of the site in reports the company shared with civil society organisations and found that it is about 90 times bigger than what is mentioned in the environmental impact assessment. The area is about 1,800 hectares (more than 4,400 acres), while the environmental impact assessment report only mentions 20 hectares (50 acres) of land proposed for the project and 952 trees will be cut down.

“We also doubt the number of trees described in the EIA [environmental impact assessment],” Karma told Mongabay.

The company is not only taking more land than mentioned in the report, but its extended area is also covering a river not mentioned in the environmental impact assessment. The Chhujung and Chhunjam rivers are the tributaries that meet in the Arun River, but just one is mentioned.

“Despite Sangrila Urja having the EIA approval to construct the Chhujung River hydropower project, it tries to cover the Chhunjam River, which is illegal,” said Shankar Limbu, vice chairperson of the Lawyers Association for Human Rights of Nepalese Indigenous Peoples.

This is not the first time environmental impact assessment reports approved by the Ministry of Forests and Environment have had such technical discrepancies.

In 2022, the Supreme Court of Nepal canceled a mega airport project plan due to severe backlash from conservationists due to a flawed environmental impact assessment that copy-pasted passages directly from a hydropower project’s environmental impact assessment.

Environmental impact assessments in the country go through several rounds of review committees that include an independent team of 10-15 professionals holding expertise in different fields. This committee is significant because they go through the report, critically analyse the details and provide recommendations as a further step.

But of these recommendations provided, “there is no mechanism to assess and verify if these are followed, addressed in the report and implemented on the ground,” said Ramesh Prasad Bhatt, executive director at the Institute of Ecology and Environment.

Bhatt was part of the environmental impact assessment review team for the Ministry of Forests and Environment and said the quality of these reviews is compromised because mega infrastructure projects are corporate-backed, politically influenced and some reviewers are hand-picked by the government depending on if they comply with interests. Instead, he said, the review commission should be more independent and have the power to actually ensure their recommendations are implemented.

“The experts are not paid well,” Bhatt told Mongabay, and they often feel like they’re doing volunteer work, which can compromise how seriously they take their task.

Locals, including Karma and Lakpa, take it a step further. They say they believe local government officials are receiving bribes from the company “because how is it possible the local government approve such a controversial project in the first place?” he said. Government officials deny bribery and Mongabay was unable to collect any evidence on the subject.

The spokesperson at the Ministry of Forests and Environment, Badri Raj Dhungana, said environmental impact assessments are approved by diverse review teams with necessary legal documents.

“As for whether they got consent, this is what public hearings are for – in order for the concerned parties to express their disapproval. But in case of any disagreement, the EIA could be monitored again,” Dhungana said.

‘That’s not my signature’

According to the law, part of assessing a project in Nepal requires holding a public hearing to share facts with the local community. This is an indirect way of gathering consent but it does not take into account all the elements of getting communities free, prior and informed consent as per international law.

On March 31, 2022, the company summoned a meeting between their representatives and some locals. Out of 22 households in Thudam, 85 in Ridak and 125 in Chyamtang, the meeting concluded with 61 signatures just from people living in Chyamtang. This represented barely a third of the total households to be affected, less than the half required, and did not include herders in Thudam, whose pasturelands are affected. While some members of the community are in favor of the project, of these signatures, Karma and Lakpa alleged, 17 were forged. One of these signatures, locals told Mongabay, was that of a 10-year-old child, Yompang Bhote.

“Just to show they completed the process, the company abused its power to do everything possible, also issued and pasted the public hearing notice two days after the meeting was conducted,” Lakpa said.

Pictures of the meeting provided in company documents show that around 30 people, including locals and company representatives, participated in the meeting. There was only one woman involved. Kami Rijek Bhote, a local and member of the elderly women’s group, said she had no idea what was happening, as she was not included in the meeting.

“They called a meeting, discussed with a few of the community people and took decisions on our behalf,” Kami said. “We [the group] were not engaged despite asking to participate when a district forest officer visited the village for forest surveillance around the project area a few months ago.”

Mongabay spoke with three sources whose signatures appear on the document, but who are not included in the pictures. They said the signatures on the document were not theirs.

“Thudam village will be completely wiped out by this project, but not a single herder was included in the meeting. And to show more people, up to three signatures are collected from a single household,” Lakpa said. Mongabay was also able to obtain written evidence of multiple signatures from one house.

More violations

It’s no doubt that the Lungbasamba landscape is idyllic and a scene of lush life. It connects neighboring conservation areas, including the Kangchenjunga Conservation Area to the east, the Makalu Barun National Park to the west, the TMJ (Tinjure-Milke-Jaljale) landscape to the south and the Quomolong National Nature Preserve to the north. It’s a crucial site of biological connectivity in the eastern Himalayas.

Pictures and videos that Mongabay received from locals showed bulldozed lands and a Himalayan goral trapped and killed. However, Mongabay was unable to independently verify whether company workers were responsible for trapping the animals.

Citing the long list of crimes and allegations, the welfare society led by members of the Indigenous Bhote Singsa peoples filed a lawsuit against the company claiming that the hydropower project is progressing under illegal grounds. They are hoping the court will give a stay order to halt the ongoing activities.

One of the lawyers pleading for the lawsuit, Shankar Limbu, highlighted a series of violations of national and international laws. The environmental impact assessment report, for example, has no mention of getting their free, prior and informed consent, he said.

“There is no way the project can get away with severely violating the local act and procedure and the rights of Indigenous peoples guaranteed by the Constitution of Nepal and ILO 169 [Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention] that it has ratified.”

Chapagain, director of Sangrila Urja Pvt Ltd, on the other hand said, “We will have to see what the court decides.”

With the case looking forward to its next pleading at the end of August, Lakpa anticipated there were strong grounds for the hydropower project revocation. This would be a rare win for communities against large companies in Nepal.

“And if that’s not the likely scenario for us,” he said, “we shall keep seeking justice and raising our voices until we are heard.”

This article was first published on Mongabay.