LANGTANG PARK
Central Himalaya, NepalThe former Langtang Village, in Langtang National Park, was buried by an earthquake-triggered rockfall. Glacial till filled the valley. The size and scope of the fall created entirely new land, spread across ten square kilometers. Following the devastation of the avalanche, a process of reconstruction was formally initiated but, unlike the event, help was slow and discriminating. The purpose of this account is to shed light on the relations that bind people and place, not to criticize the lack of aid following the earthquake. The extents of the landscape of retreat are multidimensional as villagers participate in a process of healing through everyday acts of design and plants help to restore relationships severed by the earthquake.
A kind of narrative repair that chooses to enlighten, rather than accuse. The ambition is to learn how to approach a vulnerable. Making any sense of the friction challenges research because the Chilean coast.
It took us ten days to reach our destination. The reasons are manifold, including the distance to Kathmandu and the length of the trek itself, changes in altitude, and intermissions brought on by illness. In the Himalayas, distance cannot be measured in days, miles, or altitude so much as periods of rise and fall, a reminder that “site” is inconsequential until it is associated with direct experience. In this case, it was the experience of getting there, a visceral reminder of the meaning of remote; from the Latin remotus, meaning a far off, distant place. Remoteness, while physical, often underlies the intellectual gap created between cultures—a gap that conflates the remote with disconnection and creates exoticism. When considering remoteness up close, it grows to encompass earthly matters. For instance, the ups and downs register distance by forging a very different relationship to terrain than the one I am familiar with: gentle foothills are bounded by jagged mountains and overlap with rangelands. Each elevation between mountain and valley extends in an almost parallel direction from East to West in the Himalayas, as folds of topography mark everyday life for villagers and herders. For those who inhabit the land, borders are drawn in verticals, an agitation to the planar map and the round globe, because Nepal is a country perched at elevation. Its borders are more like a shadow cast by the Himalayas.
What I learned from my walk to Langtang is that studying maps to gauge altitude and distance, or training for endurance are only helpful distractions to the fact that there is no way to sufficiently prepare for being in a particular place at a particular time. In Nepal, time broadens and expands to include the cadence required to reach high-hard ground, snow squalls, landslides, and deeply incised rivers that swell with geologic rules. The traveler cannot take a straight line, measure distance, or anticipate the topography around each bend. Rather, she trips, marches, bounds, and crawls. Forget GPS technology or landmarks, nothing looks the same on ascent or descent, as fog hangs in surprising ways that blurs and reveals the journey. Wayfinding becomes relative at a certain altitude. Still, it is hard to get lost, because there is only one path well-traveled, a foot pass that curves along a narrow range. The alternative is usually a steep downward slope on one side, or the loose remnants of a landslide on the other, a stark reminder to stay the course. A pasture is a relief, a wide course where feet and mind wander. It is an entirely new kind of walking, as Jamaica Kincaid remarks with respect to her own trek in Nepal, “As much as I looked down to see where I should place my feet, I looked up to see the sky because so much of what happened up there determined the earth on which I stood.”
The Abode of Snow
It took us ten days to reach our destination. The reasons are manifold, including the distance to Kathmandu and the length of the trek itself, changes in altitude, and intermissions brought on by illness. In the Himalayas, distance cannot be measured in days, miles, or altitude so much as periods of rise and fall, a reminder that “site” is inconsequential until it is associated with direct experience. In this case, it was the experience of getting there, a visceral reminder of the meaning of remote; from the Latin remotus, meaning a far off, distant place. Remoteness, while physical, often underlies the intellectual gap created between cultures—a gap that conflates the remote with disconnection and creates exoticism. When considering remoteness up close, it grows to encompass earthly matters. For instance, the ups and downs register distance by forging a very different relationship to terrain than the one I am familiar with: gentle foothills are bounded by jagged mountains and overlap with rangelands. Each elevation between mountain and valley extends in an almost parallel direction from East to West in the Himalayas, as folds of topography mark everyday life for villagers and herders. For those who inhabit the land, borders are drawn in verticals, an agitation to the planar map and the round globe, because Nepal is a country perched at elevation. Its borders are more like a shadow cast by the Himalayas.
What I learned from my walk to Langtang is that studying maps to gauge altitude and distance, or training for endurance are only helpful distractions to the fact that there is no way to sufficiently prepare for being in a particular place at a particular time. In Nepal, time broadens and expands to include the cadence required to reach high-hard ground, snow squalls, landslides, and deeply incised rivers that swell with geologic rules. The traveler cannot take a straight line, measure distance, or anticipate the topography around each bend. Rather, she trips, marches, bounds, and crawls. Forget GPS technology or landmarks, nothing looks the same on ascent or descent, as fog hangs in surprising ways that blurs and reveals the journey. Wayfinding becomes relative at a certain altitude. Still, it is hard to get lost, because there is only one path well-traveled, a foot pass that curves along a narrow range. The alternative is usually a steep downward slope on one side, or the loose remnants of a landslide on the other, a stark reminder to stay the course. A pasture is a relief, a wide course where feet and mind wander. It is an entirely new kind of walking, as Jamaica Kincaid remarks with respect to her own trek in Nepal, “As much as I looked down to see where I should place my feet, I looked up to see the sky because so much of what happened up there determined the earth on which I stood.”
1
Jamaica Kincaid, Among Flowers: A Walk in the Himalaya (London: Picador, 2020),
23. Notably, the author traveled to Nepal to collect seeds for her garden in Vermont.
Kincaid’s prose is always arresting, but reading her account prior to the trip did little to prepare me for the incomparable experiences that were both so absorbing and so unprecedented.
The entire country of Nepal is situated between the collision zone of the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates, which shift underfoot as the two landmasses move closer and closer. Each peak, mountain, and hill are a geophysical reminder that the heights of dramatic landscapes are the layered result of relatively young, recent events in earth’s history. Paleozoology reveals that about 65 million years ago the slow friction of plate movement pushed the seabed of the Tethys to the high mountain ranges. Movement continued in several epi- sodes, and continues today as the Indian plate is thrusting north about two centimeters every year, causing the Himalayas to rise about five milimeters each year. While this broad movement is beyond everyday experience, there are localized clues along the steep slopes: shallow slides, rock falls.
During one of our longest days walking uphill, I asked our guide and friend Babu when we might see some flatter terrain. Although I needed to catch my breath, I was not yet unaware that I was suffering altitude sick- ness. He motioned ahead and told me it was around the corner: “Coming, coming.” After another hour or so, I asked him again. This time Babu replied: “This
is flat.” There was a long pause between us. As we stood on a steep slope, he said, as if I had not understood: “Nepali flat.”
The name Langtang comes from the Tibetan language: Lang means Yak, and Teng means to follow. It is located in the Himalayas, whose names comes from Sankrit: Him means snow, and alaya means abode.
“Following in someone’s tracks is a peculiar form of reiteration: most often we imagine and encounter those who have passed before us in terms of their uniqueness, their peculiar gifts, but everyone walks, and to repeat others’ walks is to insist on their commonality.”
— Rebecca Solnit, “Footwork”
— Rebecca Solnit, “Footwork”
Avalanches are triggered by disturbance, construction, and monsoon. Folds and sheets that appear to trace the ground. The Earth’s crust is crumpled and pushed upward. The land is not timeworn and stable; it is young and unsteady.
The weather in and around Langtang Park
is relatively dry except for two distinct
periods January to February when it snows, and June
to August, when skies are heavy with monsoon
rains. These periods of wet induce landslide processes
that can be seen across the landscape in skid
patterns. Change arises in small- and large-scale
movements that can impede daily movements as
warmer, drier weather motivates herds to ascend to
higher elevation, within the expansive high meadows
that provide summer habitat.
Before embarking on a description of the events that brought me to Langtang, it is worth noting the draw of Nepal as a popular destination due to the physiographic variations of the land that etches daily life. The people and plants of Nepal are engraved with the consequences of rapid transformation, from high altitude grazing, foraging lifestyles, and terraced farmlands developed across centuries of pastoralism.
3
Dane Carlson, who supported my research, works on landscape in Nepal with
a focus on pastoralism. See Dane Carlson,
“Agencies of the Present: Landscape-Making
and the Herders of Lower Mustang, Nepal,”
Landscape Research 47.3 (2022): 300–15.
In the 21st century pastoral settlement remains active and dynamic as since Nepal’s borders were closed to the rest of the world until the 1950’s. Politically, the Himalayas traverse Nepal, Bhutan, a part of Pakistan, the Tibetan (Xizang) Autonomous Region, and northeastern India.In Nepal, sacred fossil ammonites are called shaligram.
In Hindu and Buddhist ritual practice, shaligrams
are divine beings, and intimate kin with families and
worshippers. Geologically, shaligram ammonites are
fossilized forms of prehistoric mollusks that lived in
the shallows of the Tethys Sea between 400 million
and 65 million years ago, where the Himalayas stand
today. Finding sea fossils in the high Himalaya reveals
the geological story of plate tectonics and continental
drift. Spirituality and geology find different
approaches to sacred meaning, between
humankind, climatic forces, and topographic
evolution.
Time To Let Go
Remaking Humanitarian
Action for the Modern Era
Sara Pantuliano
As the mismatch between aspiration and achievable results grows, the humanitarian architecture and tools are increasingly being called into question as the right way to address the multi-faceted needs in many of today’s emergencies. Despite a decade of system-wide reforms, the sector still falls short in the world’s most enduring crises, and and perceptions of humanitarian work suggest that the formal, Western “system” is not doing a good job in the eyes of the people it aims to help. Past responses to changing circumstances and acknowledged problems in humanitarian assistance have tended to be piece-meal and uneven, tweaking the current system rather than challenging the underlying structures and assumptions on which it operates. Given the challenges the system faces, incremental reform may no longer be enough.
Understanding why the formal humanitarian system is organised and managed as it is requires an understand- ing of its historical evolution, from its roots in the mid-nineteenth century to its institutional growth in the years after the end of the First and, especially, Second World Wars, and its continued evolution and expansion with the end of the Cold War and the emergence of a multipolar world. Born during the age of European colonialism and maturing in a period of unprecedented US power and reach, the formal system of UN agencies, the Red Cross Movement and the large international NGOs is the outcome, not of an inevitable and ineluctable process, but of a particular period of Western economic and political hegemony. It is, in other words, contingent on the circumstances that created it, and as such neither monolithic nor immutable. Nor does it represent the humanitarian impulse tout court: other traditions and cultures express very similar—and frequently very ancient— ideas, even if the particular trajectories these parallel narratives have followed mean that humanitarianism has taken many different forms over time. As such, humanitarian actors habitually labelled “new” may in fact have histories as long as or longer than their Western coun- terparts. They may also not subscribe to the historically evolved norms and principles that underpin Western humanitarianism.
For some, the humanitarian princi- ples of humanity, neutrality, impartiality and independence are universally applicable, regardless of context or culture. But like the organisations that claim adherence to them, they were established at a particular historical juncture: they are not necessarily innate or intrinsic to humanitarianism, and for actors outside the tradition that created them they may represent a Western ethos they question or reject, and may not speak to the type of “humanitarianism” they wish to espouse. Adding to this tension has been a push for greater coherence and complementarity between humanitarian and aid interventions to meet development, security and peace objectives and link emergency relief to other forms of intervention. While for some this search for coherence challenges humanitarian principles by subsuming humanitarian action under political and security objectives, the vast majority of humanitarian organisations accept a wider interpretation of their life-saving remit that includes addressing the causes of crises, as well as their effects.
In practice, humanitarian principles often sit uneasily with the reality of crisis situations and require trade-offs in their use. They also sit uneasily with the reality that most organisations engaged in humanitarian assistance, the so-called multi-mandate organisations, both UN agencies and NGOs, combine their humanitarian work with development and human rights or conflict-resolution work. To be effective, crisis response requires differentiated approaches, ranging from those based on a narrow interpretation of what constitutes humanitarian action and humanitarian actors to those based on a more expansive, flexible and coordinated form of relief. It also requires greater honesty about the way the sector frames its intentions, greater transparency about the way
it conducts its operations and greater openness to other actors within the humanitarian space.
Despite evidence that local actors and organisations are driving response in many areas, the formal humanitarian system has failed to connect meaningfully with national and local institutions and groups. As currently structured,
the incentives for such engagement do not exist: the sector’s power dynamics, culture, financing and incentive structures create compelling reasons to remain closed and centralised and averse to innovation, learning and transforma- tion. This creates unhelpful rivalries and inefficiencies within the formal sector, and erects high barriers—financial, cultural and regulatory—that stand in the way of more constructive and fruitful engagement between those within and outside the current formal system.
Aid theorists point to a persistent performance gap as long as the system remains centralised and bureaucratic, the relationships between donor and implementer, aid provider and recipient remain controlling and asymmetrical, and partnerships and interactions remain transactional and competitive, rather than reciprocal and collective. What is less clear, however, is what a more inclusive, diverse and distributed sector would actually look like, and how precisely it can be achieved.
Acknowledging that there is no single response model would be a significant step towards engaging a wider and more diverse set of actors in crisis response. These would in turn act in a complementary fashion on the basis of their respective operational abilities and the relevance of their activities in relation to the situation on the ground, without being asked to aspire to a more restrictive form of humanitarianism that does not conform to their beliefs or op- erational models. Effectively addressing people’s needs—not ideology—should dictate operational approaches and tools. Accepting that different forms of humanitarianism co-exist would go a long way towards removing the ideological blockages that prevent skilled and capable responders, whether international, governmental or local, from working more cohesively, and with the full capacity, skills and resources, to meet people’s needs. Driven by this understanding, the next era of humanitarian action must find more commonality than distinction in approaches to the way the human impacts of crises are addressed. This includes:
Letting go of power and control.
A more modern humanitarian action requires letting go of power and control by the formal Western-inspired system and reorienting the sector’s view outwards. It should ask, not “what can I give?” but “what support can I provide?” Rather than reforming mandates, this requires mindset change and the development of a more diversified model that accepts greater local autonomy and cedes power and resources to structures and actors currently at the margins of the formal system. This also requires
a commitment by UN agencies and large, multi-mandate NGOs to embrace difficult changes in the approach and architecture under which the sector currently operates.
Redefining success.
Ensuring the depth and perma- nence of future reforms means changing the prevailing humanitarian culture and incentives that work against evolution and change, and redefining success so that the longer-term incentives for mutual cooperation in the interest of crisis-affected people outweigh the short-term incentives to compete for resources and visibility. At the heart of the matter are the financial incentives set by the sector’s core and emerging do- nors, which currently drive competition among its key players and enable
a powerful few to dominate.
Remaking humanitarian action.
Finally, redefining humanitarian action requires acknowledging the specificity of different spheres and approaches, implementing more devel- opmental or solidarist responses where appropriate, while safeguarding independent and neutral humanitarian action in a limited number of situations where it is essential. This would not make one form of humanitarian action less valuable or legitimate than another, but it does require that aid organisations be explicit and upfront about the nature of their aspirations, objectives and operational frameworks, and transparent about delivery lines and methods. Acknowledging that there
is no single response model would facilitate the engagement of a wider and more diverse set of actors in crisis response, without asking them to aspire to a more restrictive form of humanitarianism that does not conform to their beliefs or operational models.
Sara Pantuliano is an internationally recognized scholar on conflict, peacebuilding, and humanitarian issues. She is the Chief Executive at Overseas Development Institute (ODI), the Editor-in-Chief of Disasters journal, Vice-Chair of the Board of Muslim Aid and a Trustee of The New Humanitarian. Sara has served on a range of executive and advisory boards, including SOS Sahel and Oxford University’s Refugee Studies Centre. This text is an excerpt from the Humanitarian Policy Group, “Time To Let Go,” originally published in April 2016; odi.org/en/publications/time-to-let-go-remaking-humanitarian-action-for-the-modern-era.