Bioengineering Holding Up the Himalayas in Nepal

Correspondent: Every year Nepal experiences too many landslides to count. Some
are large scale and are killers but the majority just add to the hardship
already experienced by people living in this mountainous cave. Those
which called most inconvenient are located in Nepal’s main highway the
roads between Katmandu and Pocono Gita Gurung, Farmer.

Gita Gurung: (Farmer)-The landslides use to cause many problems as we blocked the
road and damaged it time after time. For us farmers the landslides would
even sweep away our farmland and sometimes they would destroy
people’s homes as well.

Correspondent: Now thanks to a new environmentally sound technique called
bioengineering which uses live plants along side traditional civil
engineering the devastation caused by landslides is being dramatically
reduced.

Holding Up the Himalayas

The techniques used are complicated every slope requires an individual
strategy. There’s no simple recipe but there are steps that you can follow,
check the slopes angle, length, drainage and moisture levels, decide if
using plants is the best option, check that the slope has stabilized
sufficiently. Choose which method and which plants to use.

Start work. Trim back the slope and chip off loose soil… prepare the plants ready for
use…plot a line for the plants to take… and plant.

Keep the slope in good order, remove undergrowth and weed when necessary. Make sure
your nursery is well stocked with the right species for the next planting season…and
…chase off goats if they attack your plants!

Correspondent: Usually stabilizing a landslide will demand that you use a
combination of methods. For instance on this slope grass will be planted in
straight lines across the top and diagonal lines a third of the way down and
towards the bottom shrubs are planted in close rows. In the middle, a stone
channel drains off excess water while at the top and bottom of each
section small walls are used to further strengthen the slope.

Gita Gurung: (Farmer)-The plants look green and good while they reach hold the soil.
Although a wall can control the landslides the plants are equally able to
keep the soil intact with their roots.

Correspondent: Gita is not the only believer in bioengineering. A group of Civil
Engineers from the Department of Roads have also been convinced.

Shankar Rajbhandari: (Civil Engineering, Dept. of Roads)-To think that bioengineering
would work in Nepal it took me about two or three years and now I think
that it is very good technique, low cost technique where we can use our
resources and human resources also and local technology is very simple
and labor intensive in a country like Nepal this method is very suitable.

Correspondent: Using plants to stabilize slopes like this one provides a cheap
environmentally sustainable solution.