Plastic Won't Be a Problem in Bhutan

In school we were told plastic was among the worst things that could pollute our environment because it would not disintegrate in 800 years, ok, just say forever. It means that the very first batch of plastic mankind produced, which was in 1862, hasn't yet disappeared and in last many year god knows how much more plastic the world would have produced. Imagine if Zhabdrung had thrown a plastic bag in a field in Punakha it would still be there. But don't worry there wasn't plastic during Zhabdrung's time.

From 1862 to 1970, plastic was seen as a magical material that could be crafted into variety of shapes and substitute precious natural substances like tortoiseshell, ivory, horn, and linen. The revolutionary discovery gained the reputation of being the saviour and protector of natural environment because it drastically reduced on the hunting of elephant and tortoise.

It was the beginning of material abundance that helped people gain access to affordable essential resources when inexpensive plastic replaced the scarce natural resources. Things became cheaper, lighter, safer and stronger. The development of computer, cellphone, and all the advanced technology was made possible by plastic, including electricity and transportation. It raise the living standard of people.

Suddenly in 1970s world woke up and made the once saviour of the natural world into the terror of the natural world. It wasn't the plastic that changed its property suddenly in 1970s. It's like the common Bhutanese saying about how even mother's breast milk can be poisonous if over-consumed. Human beings began using plastic in everything and everywhere without considering where it would land up at the end.

Plastic clogs drainage systems and flood cities, it overwhelms landfills and leach out dangerous chemicals that are threats to lives, in river system it can endanger aquatic lives, it will soon invade our agricultural fields make them infertile, and at the end it will take away our forest. But remember plastic doesn't go there on their own, it's us who ill-manage it. Plastic is a Frankenstein and we are being very insensitive with it.

But in Bhutan we have our smallness on our side, today it may seem like we have plastic problem but if you have observed carefully, one moment you see lots of plastic bottles thrown around and next moment it's gone. It's just a matter of one good solution, because plastic is a magical element. My little niece Bumchu won't leave any plastic pottle at home or in our cars, because her school has the practice of collecting and selling plastic waste to Greener Way.

Now Greener Way has a local market in The Green Road right in Thimphu, where a young entrepreneur, Rikesh Gurung, with the technical capacity and legal right in executing the revolutionary idea of using plastic in blacktopping roads has opened shop. "The technology involves coating of aggregate with molten waste plastic before it is mixed with bitumen. Besides being an effective solution to plastic waste menace, it brings down considerably the cost of laying roads and enhances their life."-The Hindu
Thimphu alone produces 50 tonnes of plastic waste daily and the landfill has over 200,000 tonnes of plastic, says the founder of The Green Road, which means he will have enough resources to make better and cheaper roads in the country, and he will not run out of his key ingredient. And the best part is plastic in Bhutan will not be a problem anymore.

But I'm surprised Rikesh's idea didn't receive red-carpet welcome in the country. If our concerns about plastic waste were genuine and all the headlines meant anything serious I would expect the government to hug the young man because his project can kill two cockroaches at one spank; better road and plastic management.

Interestingly before Rikesh could showcase his first task of blacktopping 30 meters road in Thimphu, another project made a headline. It's about a technology that will be setup at the landfill to convert plastic into crude oil. I am throughly confused now. Rikesh has multi-million plant setup and now another project is threatening to steal away his raw material, what is this all about? Do we have so much plastic waste to feed two big projects? While the rest of the world is suffocating in their plastic waste, it looks like we are going to face plastic waste scarcity. Anyway, it's good for us!

What Can Bhutan Learn From Nepal Earthquake?

Earthquake in Nepal on April 25, 2015 measuring 7.9 magnitude almost flattened the populated city of Kathmandu. As I watched the news unfold on TV, the Death toll rose swiftly as bodies were dug out of endless rubbles days after the first tremor.

The earthquake triggered avalanche on the south face of Mt. Everest killing over a dozen climbers and injuring many more. Few hundred mountaineers are believed to be lost.

Remains of Iconic 19th Century Tower, Nepal (From WSJ)

It's reported that over 31 aftershocks and 2 fresh earthquake happened since then some of which we felt here in Bhutan. These hindered the relief efforts and sent waves of panic among the already devastated survivors. Bad weather made the lives of homeless victims and their search for loved ones excruciating.

As the cameras go beyond Kathmandu and below the Everest I fear the death toll will sky rocket. It's already 4600, rising at the rate of over 1000 per day.

As is always said, earthquakes don't kill, just imagine, our cars shake more when travelling on rough roads than any violent earthquake. It's the collapsing structures that bury people alive and take hundreds of lives. We have to assess our homes and move into better homes because we don't know when the next earthquake will strike.

Temples can't protects themselves though thousands of devotees for ages have gone to seek protection from them. In fact, ancient temples are sure burial places because they don't have load bearing columns. Our heritage buildings like Dzongs and Lhakhangs will face the same fate if we don't reinforce with steel columns. Buildings in our new towns may survive because of our stringent construction laws.

When the earth shakes we are just concerned about our house and TV but we have to know that high up in our mountains we have himalayan tsunami of snow and glacier waiting to happen. Avalanches could burst our glacier lakes and when we lest expect our valleys could be flooded. Are we prepared?

Our telecommunication gets clogged even during a regional event like Tshechus, and during the 2011 earthquake we have seen how badly prepared we are in that term. We haven't improved an inch. Power lines will fail us too and roads will be disconnected. In fact, Nepal has shown us all the horror we too could face, all we need to do is prepare beyond duck, cover and hold.

Bhutan's Last Earthquake

What will make the everything worse is the rumours some evil minds cook up. If someone knew when the next earthquake would happen, world would pay him million dollar for his service. It's also the fault of people who help spread the rumour by calling all their relatives and friends to tell them to sleep outside, and interestingly they obediently follow and make an extra effort to call more people. Be informed that no prediction, no matter where you heard from, is true when it comes to earthquake therefore just avoid them.

My post from 2011 Earthquake in Bhutan

Elephant Problem, Bee Solution

I was watching a documentary on Aljazeera last evening that gave me a wonderful surprise- can you believe elephants are afraid of bees? Jim Carey is right, size doesn’t matter. Well this is one of nature’s many unusual phenomenons. After seeing how elephants panic and run away when they hear buzzing of bees my heart went out to the coward giant.

But the documentary was not intended at insulting elephants whatsoever, it was rather about how farmers in Kenya have used this weakness in elephant to defend their crop. Elephant is the last animal anyone wants to see in their fields because they are infamous for wiping off the entire harvest in a night. Kenya is home to a large population of elephants, which is good news for nature lovers but a very bad one for farmers whose only source of livelihood is their crop. They have been in continuous state of war for survival ever since the natural habitats of elephants were disturbed by the growing human population and developmental activities.

Killing elephants is the only option the farmers had but that was illegal, and other option was to die of hunger. They don’t have the luxury of using electric fence like Bhutan (They don’t even have the power to light their homes). But out of the blue an idea came that is going to change everything. Now farmers are encouraged to do bee farming along with their usual crops. The bee hives are hung strategically around the field interconnected by a string that runs around the field like a fence. When elephants encroach into the farm they will touch the string, which will shake the bee hives and excite the bees. And you know that happens when elephants hear the bees buzzing- right they run for their lives.

Bee Fence!

In southern Bhutan, our farmers are bothered by elephants too, and the best we have done so far was setting up electric fences around the fields. Due to heavy investment government could not provide electric fences to all the farmers. It will take another round of foreign grants from friendly countries to have our southern farms protected against elephants. But there are a few questions we have to ask:

1.       Is the investment worth the return?

2.       Is the method sustainable?

3.       Is it Eco-friendly?

4.       Is it safe for other wildlife?

5.       Is it safe from humans?

Bee fencing method will not only be the answer to all the questions but also give farmers sweet harvest of honey. It will defend them from elephants and also enhance their harvest with so many bees pollinating their crops. Solar electric fence might sound like a very green idea until you see the cost attached with it. After listening to Gunter Pauli, the founder ofBlue Economy, I admire what Kenyans have learned from nature. When will we do this? 

 

This Video explains Blue Economy!

Ruddy Shelduck- the Ill treated Guest in Bhutan

Today I went to photograph the migratory ducks on the sands of the Punatshangchu river with my family. I have seen them year after year and admired them since I know a little about them. It was at this time of the year my class teacher in junior school would ask me to join him down to the Paa Chhu in Paro to photograph these ducks. Mr. Karma Wangchuk, a born naturalist and self taught artist, is an encyclopedia of birds, plants, butterflies, and animals and has great love for nature. He now teaches in Paro College of Education. He told me about this bird that flies from Tibet to spend their winter with us like the famous black necked crane. The duck is known as Ruddy Shelduck and it's found along the banks of the Punatshangchu at this time of the year.

The Sands of Punatshangchhu

However, ruddy shelduck is not as fortunate as black necked cranes because they are not yet endangered. They are among the least concerned category of birds since there are plenty of them across the world. Perhaps the way we are treating this birds might explain why so many birds are already extinct or endangered.

Ruddy Shelduck in Punatshangchu

They are our winter guest as much as Black necked cranes are but they are left to their own fate. There are posters talking about conservation of herons and cranes but this bird is pushed aside.

They are preyed by wild dogs and there are also rumors of construction workers finding it easier to hunt duck then to buy chicken. With increasing number of workers in Wangdue the fate is this visiting bird is further doomed.

Group of Ruddy Shelduck basking in the sun

If we had records, we might discover that the sands along with Punatshangchu river were their homes long before we knew the sand could be used for construction but now our aggressive and indiscriminate excavation of sand has made them homeless. We are not even waiting for the water to dry up to excavate sand, hundreds of truckloads are carried away everyday. Soon the water will dry up in the place where the ducks are sitting now and then the trucks will come there, where would the birds go? They have come to spend their whole winter here.

The Ducks Flying over Trucks and Dozers 

Riverbed filled with machines 

Every guest coming to Bhutan goes back happy but we are forgetting to be Bhutanese with this poor guest.

Who will take the Broken Glass?

Last week we got to see a few Bhutanese entrepreneurs who made living on waste business, whose business has moral beyond money. I would like to congratulate Karma Yonten for his visionary Greener Way. He has made it his moral responsibility to take care of our waste while the rest of us wait for the government to handle it.
Last month a few people from some organizations came to talk to us on waste management, and they enlightened us on how we could locally do what Greener Way is doing in Thimphu. I asked them about the Broken Glasses and they said it has no commercial market, therefore it goes to Landfill. That didn't surprise me because I knew it already, but I at least expected them to have a better suggestion.
Then I asked if they would fund a project that would make use of Glass waste and create commercial market right here in the country, to which they said they have no considered that yet. Which means they only bank on stuff that will sell, and not on making things sell. This is very Bhutanese in nature.
I know Greener Way has done so much to demand any more from them, but I also know a young engineer who has tried to use glasses in concrete (Ask him how he was going to do that). He has done a project on this and even went meeting people but he gave up on the way because he only received warm doubts, and cold cynicism from people of whom he expected support. He was going to create commercial market for broken glasses but he realized we are only waiting for India to open up markets.

Congress Grass and Bad Nose

Sinusitis is a very common disease among Bhutanese and most common among people living in Wangdue. This is based on no formal research but every other person around me has the infection, including myself. The local medical pharmacy tells me that thousands have come to him with the problem because he is known for his ability to treat this disease with his own combination of medicine. People trust him more than they trust hospitals.
Depending on the severity of the infection people go to extremes to free themselves from the suffocation disease, and like a myth this disease has strange treatments; Smelling the stinking waters in Gasa Hotspring, smoking cigarette filled with fragments of samba deer's horn, inhaling smoking from burning human body at the cremation ground, and of course the regular medical treatments at hospitals and indigenous hospitals.
People have come up with various causes of the disease in the region, (of course we can't expect our hospitals to do this out of their box), some say it's because of our water source that carries dirt from several villages from Samtengang to Boelangda, while others say it's the strong wind that carries all sorts of dust in the air we breath in daily. However, the water and wind story prevails across the country and attributing Wangdue's mass infection to it comes with little logic, that's when I heard and discovered the story of a toxic grass.
Santa Maria Feverfew or Whitetop Weed is originally from American tropics. It became widespread in Asia through contaminated wheat that the Congress Party of India imported from the US, which is why now the plant is known as Congress grass. It doesn't take much intelligence to find out how the grass made it to Wangdue. The grass is invasive and can spread at epidemic proportions triggering pollen allergy in human and even livestock. Due to toxic parthenin it contains it causes dermatitis and respiratory malfunction in humans, which explains why so many of us are struggling with out nose every day. 

The Political Grass- Imported from India

Losing Drinking Water for Lemon Grass Oil

I am watching the people of Mongar struggling for drinking water on BBS and asking to myself- has the time come already? By any logic Bhutan should be the last country worrying about drinking water given the bounty of our forest resources, but we are already losing so many water sources across the country.
With so many fresh water rivers flowing down the valley the world must think we are crazy to complain about water shortage of all the things- we are forgetting the moral of Kuchu&Kumbu story ourselves. But the question is not about going down to the rivers yet, we have been blessed with so many spring water sources running down our hills which we forgot to value so much so far.

Kuensel Photo

As I watch the people of Mongar running with their empty buckets and complaining I remembered the countless forest fires this Dzongkhag had over the last many years- of which many were deliberate. Mongar was blessed with lemon grass, the herb that adds scent to many cosmetic and toiletry items in the international market. And because it generates good income the forest was deliberately set on fire every year for the greed of better lemon grass growth, but those many fires are finally charging their interest- Mongar is now paying the huge price, they had traded they fresh water sources with lemon grass oil.

This Article is not supported with any research and therefore please treat it as an opinion.

Butterfly-4.0

The only thing I know about butterfly is that it comes from Caterpillar- I don't know their names, I don't know their family, I can't even say if it's a butterfly or a moth but I still love photographing them. I wish to learn about them.

The story of Monarch Butterfly on National Geographic amazed and inspired me to take a closer look at this beautiful insect.

This is my fourth post on Butterfly and interestingly my Butterfly-II fetched me huge number of hits from search engines. But I know it must have disappointed the readers since I didn't have anything worth in there. So each time I put up a new butterfly post I am thinking harder and defining what I want out of this modest interest in photographing Butterfly.

Here are links to my older Butterfly posts:

• Butterfly (6 June, 2010)
• Butterfly II (25 September, 2010)
• Butterfly III (9 October, 2010)

Greener Dream of Bajo

Bajo has as many trees as twenty schools in Thimphu could dream for and all the thanks to its alumni who had spared no June 2 since 1997. It's sad that the day is no more a national holiday but Bajo has no hard feelings against whoever is responsible. We have enough tree to breath for next hundred years.

Bajo Campus!

But not all part of Wangdue is as lucky. The magnificent dzong is exposed to the full fury of the wind, which has left it as the last dzong without CGI roof. Everything around the dzong points in the direction of the wind. There is hardly any tree left to shield the massive structure from the wind, and therefore over three hundred students from Bajo School joined the foresters and Dzong project workers in planting over thousand tree saplings around the dzong. If the wind would spare it, in next twenty years you would see how beautiful Wangdue dzong looks in the green wood rather than wild cactus.

Bajo Students on the mission!