An Awareness of the Environment

Last week, I took the opportunity to join a family on a very Norwegian Easter holiday up north near where the arctic circle passes through the country. We skied and picnicked through remoteness, often with very little sign of fellow skiers or concept of land ownership and boundaries. It was the most true experience I have found of Allemannsretten, and leads me to a better understanding of the relationship between Norwegian culture and the environment.

The Scandinavian Easter is about the sun. It is an important holiday period marking the end of winter darkness and celebrating longer days. And the days are noticeably longer - where I was, around 66 degrees latitude, a slight glow from the sun still remained over the nearby mountain ridges at 9:00pm. What is more, the Easter week is one of the first times when one can feel full radiation from the sun, after many months of only seeing glimpses of it from shallow angles.

My hosts from Rana introduced me to many Easter traditions, and thinking back, it is impressing how many of them are related to the sun and environment in general. Skiing is a major activity, as even so far north, they are approaching the last month of skiing. Beyond recreation, skiing becomes a form of transportation in and of itself, allowing people to reach places beyond car and utility access - pristine nature. It is also the best weather for outdoor activity, as the temperatures creep above freezing, and the sunlight makes spending hours outside very pleasant, even without multiple layers of clothing.

Sunbathing and outdoor picnicking is probably a close second to skiing over Easter. Families ski for hours and then search out perfect spots in the wintry landscape. The goal is to find a large rock or mound that can shelter any wind, then make camp on the sunny face - taking advantage of the natural heat. When at a lack for an ideal spot, it is not uncommon for Norwegians to dig their own. Carrying a shovel (and often a compass) on any trip - the ability to dig a few feet into a snow bank and create a leeward, sun facing bench comes naturally to those making ski tours. Any chance to be outdoors was seized and celebrated.

I was greatly impressed to be able to comfortably spend so much time outdoors in such a climate.

Copper Trees

Providing a bit of green in a park that is covered by snow perhaps 5 months out of the year, Vigeland cast his trees in copper for the Frogner Park in Oslo.

Open Space in Kathmandu - 2

Taking a short break from writing my latest research proposal, I just wanted to return to this Kathmandu story about open space which I have left to this point, unfinished on the blog. Realizing that some of the particulars of the story have also lead me to my current research focus, I hope that writing this will better help to sort the many ideas in my mind concerning public space, property ownership, and environmental stewardship in urban areas.

On one of our first days in our Kathmandu study site of Sawal Bahal, we found a very large green lot, backing up into the dense developed neighborhood we had been studying. As you can see in the photo below, the buildings of Sawal Bahal end at the border of this space with no windows looking out onto the rather lush green area.

In fact, the only way to see this open lot from Sawal Bahal was to climb a small ladder and peer over an 8' tall wall - the top of which was covered in shards of glass to discourage possible crossing. Upon questioning some residents, a high school girl finally gave us the story. When she was young, some 10 years ago, she and her friends used to play in the area. The farmers in the next community got upset by the children being on their land and built the wall which we had found - successfully closing the lot off from anyone in Sawal Bahal. Later talks with the farmers confirmed this, and further informed us that caste discrimination is still an issue in Nepal. The open space existed because the farmers had purposely elected to build as far away as possible from the lower caste neighborhood of Sawal Bahal. While only a small percentage of the open land was being used for farming (much of it stands overgrown), and all access to the space is now pedestrian only, the farmers had no intention of sharing the land or allowing its use by their neighbors.

So, I started to wonder where the children of Sawal Bahal now play. For the most part, the narrow streets are the only playground they have, as the lot sizes prohibit yards for most of the buildings. These areas are all paved over, and further, the height of newer construction blocks sunlight from reaching the ground in most of this community. It seemed disappointing that there was not a green field around where children could play, until we found a second open site.

Again, this site was on the fringe of Sawal Bahal, but unlike the former space, it held no immediate neighbors due to a steep change in topography down to the next neighborhood. While the condition was considerably less clean and less maintained than the former area, we did find that children sometimes took it upon themselves to go through the gate and use the space for play. More local interviews informed us that the land is held by several owners and changes hands too often to keep track of, but its history so far has made it rather taboo to build upon. I immediately wanted to clean up the space and find a way to give it back to the community - realizing that it was neglected because the owners were not local, and the local residents had no incentive to keep it clean.

The local community group also wanted the land, and expressed interest in using it as a place for play. The biggest barrier, however, was the complicated nature of the land ownership, doubled with high prices for land in Kathmandu. While the land should have been public land, but had been illegally sold into the private market some years before, the muddy local governance that existed did not provide a solid framework for attempting to return the property to the community. Any legal proceedings would be both costly and far outrun our few months in Kathmandu. Slowly, all hope of our group helping in the matter of the land was given up (our money was from the Norwegian government and the United Nations, so matters of legality and documents of ownership would have been necessary for the class to justify any expenditure).

While the focus of our class turned to other places in the community, the issue of the land was not forgotten by everyone. Just before we left, this lock appeared on the gate (which had never been locked previously). At first this scared me, I thought perhaps the owners had gotten wind of our interference and wanted to close the land permanently to Sawal Bahal. However, when we spoke to the local community group leader (who is also the area representative for the Maoist party), he told us not to worry, he had put the lock there. He and his peers had decided to take it upon themselves to clean up the land for the children to play, and had put the lock up so that people would stop dumping things in the meantime. He told us that he was confident that if they cleaned the space, local people would stop dumping garbage there. When we asked what about the owners, he basically laughed. "We in Sawal Bahal own the only road that accesses the open space, if the owners complain about us using the land that they are neglecting, we will simply block the road so they cannot access it," he said.

This all came about in our final days there, when the Maoists were making a lot of waves throughout Nepal blockading roadways and calling for massive strikes in transportation and other services. For better or for worse, it seemed a bit of empowerment goes a long way with members of this group.

Infrastructure in Kathmandu

Almost had forgotten about this photo - a pretty good overall description of place.

Boundary-less cities?

Since I cannot sleep back in the land of dark winters, I figure I will share my most recent thoughts. Most of today I spent putting together a presentation for Fulbright regarding the problems of land ownership in making public use of undeveloped land as contrasted with the Norwegian idea of shared rights to uncultivated land. Thinking more about this, I would like to study how this Allemannsretten concept could be applied to urban areas. Granted, even in Norway there has been much debate on it, as people strive sometimes for privatized property. However, to move towards a true balance, it seems that people bringing their (spare) land together for the appreciation of all could be a small compromise to a greater goal.

If cities could take down walls and fences, encourage vegetation in parcels of land between buildings, make full use of utility easements in ecologically sensitive ways, and allow public passage, could this give the city back to the people - encouraging them to take ownership and show environmental stewardship? And how much land could be given back to nature, for purposes of natural drainage, shading, and CO2 reduction? Maybe planners should think more about un-developing urban areas, if holistic sustainability is truly our goal.

Open Space in Kathmandu - 1

Flying into (and out from) Kathmandu, the density was striking. But living for an extended period in the city was even more impressive - open, green space almost does not exist here. From afar, one can make out some groupings of trees, only to realize upon closer inspection that they live in the yards of an embassy or the old palace - in either case, the 'yard' is so walled off that a pedestrian on the adjacent street has no concept of what lies on the other side.

There is one large, open green lawn for the city, called Tundikhel. Informally, I would guess that it's perhaps half the size of Central Park, but clear lawn with just two or three trees. While it is a public open space, it is actually the city's parade ground - where protests and riots take place. The area is completely fenced in with perhaps two gates, but I never could determine exactly where those gates were. Outside of military affairs, I seldom witnessed more than sparse groups of families using the space (despite perfect weather for two months).

To make matters worse at the Tundikhel - the area used to be twice as large, with the second portion holding athletic fields for Kathmandu. Some years ago though, the military took over this parcel and currently use it for training - even with its very central location in the city. This parcel now has a different characteristic - instead of a simple (albeit very tall fence) as found at the "public" space, the next parcel has a perimeter of barbed wire and huts with armed guards. A few scattered soccer goals and basketball hoops still stand across the land, providing a reminder to the once public facility of the city.

The Better Side of Fieldwork

So as to not be unfair to the process and experience of fieldwork, I wanted to include some images of the better points. Overall, no matter the structural issues of the program, being in Kathmandu and working with these communities was an amazing experience. There was an excellent amount of collaboration and warmth found in the Nepali people, and also between our (extremely multicultural) classmates. Everyday was a new situation in learning how to communicate and realizing at times the careful importance of language, and at other times finding that language isn't really necessary.

I think the experience of playing various clapping games with the kids is one that will always stay with me. Often the children would initiate them, one brave one making the connection to get our attention, then others following until they were all in a big mass trying to take turns joining in on the games. It was such a small thing, so common in the international realm of play and everyone could understand the concept without verbal instruction. What made it all the more significant was realizing that these are the children of generations that used to be marked as "untouchables" in the Nepali context. Even just one generation ago, if a Dyola accidentally ran into someone of an upper caste the member of the upper caste had to repeatedly wash themselves and throw away any food or such that he was carrying on the basis of it being contaminated. In a society where a large part of social interaction involves touching and standing close, it was really great to see these habits now are possible between all different castes, no matter if they are Nepali or foreigner, local or migrant, upper caste or lower caste. Children here are just as children anywhere, and their future seems hopeful for truly ending caste and ethnicity based discrimination.