Contribution of Micro Hydro in Promoting Rural Livelihood (A Case Study of Bhalayedanda Village, Udayapur, Nepal)
Date
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Department of Rural Development
Abstract
Livelihood covers the activities necessary to protect a person's ability, wealth, income, and living
needs, so it is a means of survive. A sustainable livelihood enhance people's well-being and
preserve the natural environment or resource base for future generations, and it helps people
recover from conflicts and stresses, such as natural disasters, and economic or social upheavals.
Micro hydro projects play a major role in sustainable rural livelihood. The facility of electricity
has not been fulfilled yet in most of the remote villages of mountain and hill region, which leads
to the negative impact in health, education, business, technology and whole economic status of
the rural people. Generally when we focus on people in some remote sectors who don’t use
heater, light, fan, radio, television, computer because they have no electricity facilities. There are
no good hospitals, health canters having no x-ray and other lab facilities which bring difficulties
to find out the diseases and where immediate treatment is required is not all possible because
there is no electricity. They cut the trees and use woods for their daily cooking which not only
invites the environmental degradation but also pollute the air and brings health problem and
harms biodiversity.
Nepal is rich in water resources which prove to have huge potential in hydropower. Hydro power
is an easy available and reliable source of energy needed for human beings. However, there are a
lot of possibilities of making the country rich by producing electricity from our innumerable
rivers flowing across the country. Nepal has low rate of per capital energy consumption. Energy
consumption is considered to be one of the key factors of measuring the development of the
country.
The remote hilly and mountainous areas of Nepal are suitable for installing Micro Hydro Power
Plants. The research work was carried out focusing on the contribution of micro-hydro in
promoting rural livelihood. The specific objectives are; to determine the socio-economic impact
of micro-hydro in rural communities and to analyze the role of micro-hydro in environmental
conservation. The research was carried out on the basis of social research methodology. Primary
data are collected with the help of users' questionnaire, field survey, key informant interview,
and observation, focusing on group discussion whereas the secondary data were collected from
different documents or literature from individuals, experts and organization which is related to
micro hydropower etc. For details of data analysis the help of computer program was taken and
simple statistical tools were used.
The research indicates increasing of self-employment, improvement of health condition of the
people, work load reduction, forest conservation, community development, economical progress
and fulfilling the expectation of the rural people after installing the micro hydropower.