One River, Two Governments

In Murgauwa of Rajapur Municipality-1, Bardiya, 47-year-old Raniya Sonaha comes from a long line of traditional gold panners who sift sand from the Karnali River in search of gold. Although she never had the opportunity to attend school, she learned the skill from her mother and grandmothers and can still identify which riverbanks are likely to contain gold. But these days, there are hardly any places left where that skill can be put to use.

“Gold isn’t found on every riverbank,” she says. “Where it is found, either embankments have been built or the national park has claimed the area as its own.”

Another resident, Maiya Sonaha, used to sift sand for gold every day at a riverbank where the river now flows. Places where she once found gold, including Satkhauli, Tehariya, Manau, Rajipur and Bankatti, now fall within Bardiya National Park.

“We can only sift for gold there secretly,” Maiya says. “If the army sees us, they take action immediately.”

These days, they form small groups of two to four people and put up makeshift shelters along the river to search for gold. Some days they find two or three laal, a traditional unit of gold measurement. Other days they find nothing.

“We use whatever we sell to buy food,” Maiya says.

As it has become increasingly difficult to make a living by searching for gold in the river, young people from the village have turned to foreign employment. Those unable to borrow money to travel to the Gulf countries have gone to India instead. Maiya’s son has been working in Dubai for the past two years. She remains at home with her daughter-in-law and grandson.

Shanti Sonaha, founding chair of the Sonaha Development Society, says many people have been forced to abandon their traditional occupation as it has come under increasing pressure.

But this is not a story unique to Rajapur, nor are the Sonaha the only community suffering from it. Similar problems faced by local residents, and disputes among federal units over natural resources, can be found elsewhere in Sudurpaschim and across the country. At the root of these disputes lie both Nepal’s constitutional arrangements and gaps in the law.

Schedule 9 of the Constitution places natural resources and the royalties derived from them under the concurrent jurisdictions of all three levels of government: federal, provincial and local. Article 51 goes further, making the sustainable use of natural resources and the equitable distribution of benefits, including priority rights for local communities, a matter of national policy.

The Local Government Operation Act, 2017 gives local governments the authority to manage riverbed materials and collect revenue from them. But because the law does not clearly specify who has the right to collect revenue from rivers that form boundaries between two municipalities, two districts or two provinces, the same problem keeps recurring: one government awards a contract to extract the materials, while another arrives with the police, declares the activity “illegal” and collects a fine.

As such disputes between federal units continue to grow, rampant illegal extraction from rivers is putting areas from the Chure hills to the Terai at risk. At the same time, it is displacing marginalized communities such as the Sonaha, whose livelihoods have long depended on the rivers.

When the Resource in Your Own Backyard Is Not Yours

Geruwa Rural Municipality in Bardiya is surrounded by the Karnali River on two sides. In terms of the extraction and potential sale and distribution of riverbed materials, the municipality should be relatively wealthy.

“We could collect around NPR 60 million a year if we were allowed to award contracts for the extraction of stone, gravel and sand from the river,” says Karma Prasad Chaudhary, chair of Ward 1. “We are losing that revenue. Large logs also come down the river from upstream, but local people are not allowed to collect them. Instead, they end up in India.”

In practice, Geruwa does not collect any revenue from the Karnali River because the municipality has not been allowed to award extraction contracts.

“Our municipality falls within the buffer zone of the national park on one side, while the other boundary extends into Kailali District,” Chaudhary says.

In the past, the Karnali River eroded land belonging to Geruwa Rural Municipality. That land has now shifted across the river into Janaki and Lamki municipalities in the neighboring Kailali district. Trees have grown there and the area has become forested. It has since been designated as the Amiliya and Chhatiban community forests. Local residents of Geruwa are responsible for protecting these forests, but the royalties from gravel, stone and sand extracted from the area are collected by Lamki and Janaki municipalities.

The dispute with the national park is even more contentious. Local residents complain that areas of land eroded from their jurisdiction are now under the park’s control.

Prem Bahadur Rawal, a businessman from Geruwa-3, Bardiya, says, “We are not even allowed to use soil from registered private land to fill and level our homes and yards. The national park controls everything.”

Rawal illustrated the impact of losing local control over resources in their own backyard with a simple example. A tipper-load of sand bought from Kailali costs him NPR 4,000, whereas collecting the same amount of sand from his own municipality costs NPR 10,000. If the national park discovers that the sand was brought in from Kailali after the required revenue was paid there, it can still impose a fine.

“One day you pay the revenue, the next day you get the recommendation, and on the third day you go to collect the gravel and sand,” Rawal says.

Local residents not only lack access to resources they once used; they also live under the constant threat of action by the national park.

Rawal says preparations are under way to file a case against Kailash Chaudhary, chair of Tikuli Community Forest, alleging that he cut down trees planted on his own land, or trees that had already dried up, and distributed the timber to community members. The proposed penalties include a fine of NPR 260,000 and one year in prison.

For the past two and a half years, local residents have been campaigning to have the area of Geruwa Rural Municipality outside the national park’s buffer zone, arguing that they should be able to use the natural resources and forest products within their own territory.

Rawal, who is also coordinator of the Geruwa Struggle Committee for Abandonment of the Buffer Zone, formed in April 2024, has a straightforward demand: the area that was designated as the national park when it was established in 1976 should remain under the park’s jurisdiction, but land subsequently eroded by the Karnali River and turned into riverbed should be returned to the people.

He says the Karnali River has eroded more than 750 bighas of Geruwa’s land and that this land should be returned.

“If that is not done, there is no prospect of resolving this dispute,” he says.

The national park, however, gives a different response to these concerns.

Mahesh Neupane, conservation officer and information officer at Bardiya National Park, says forest products, gravel, stone and sand from within the buffer zone are made available to local residents in accordance with the rules. He says local residents are permitted to collect gravel and sand through established procedures under the five-year plans prepared for the national park and buffer zone.

Neupane says the main problem is a lack of coordination.

“Local governments call for contracts worth tens of millions of rupees without coordinating with us at all,” he says. “When contractors begin extracting materials from within the national park or buffer zone, the dispute escalates. Better coordination would allow the work to be carried out in accordance with the rules and procedures.”

He says revenue from riverbed materials is divided with 50 percent going to the federal government, 25 percent to the province and 25 percent to the local government. Of the amount received by the federal government, at least 30 percent is returned to the national park, after which compensation is provided to landowners whose property has been affected by river erosion.

Neupane acknowledges, however, that the amount available is insufficient to adequately compensate those affected, which is why complaints from the community continue.

Across the Karnali River, in Sudurpaschim Province, Ganesh Chaudhary, chair of Janaki Rural Municipality in Kailali, says the dispute has now shifted from royalties to the river’s flow itself.

“There is a problem whether we collect the royalties or not,” he says. “Bardiya did not extract riverbed materials, so an island formed there. On this side, there was haphazard extraction. As a result, the course of the Karnali shifted toward Kailali and has now begun causing damage here.”

The Fight Over Ownership, and the Legal Roadblock

At the root of these disputes is the unclear ownership of rivers when it comes to collecting riverbed materials. The Constitution provides that benefits derived from the use or development of natural resources must be shared equitably among the federal, provincial and local governments. It also requires that a defined share of such benefits, in the form of royalties, services or goods, reach project-affected areas and local communities. Revenue collected by the federal government must likewise be distributed fairly among all three levels of government, with the National Natural Resources and Fiscal Commission (NNRFC) recommending how much should go to the provinces and local governments.

The Constitution also provides mechanisms for resolving such disputes. The NNRFC is responsible for studying disputes that may arise over the distribution of resources among the three levels of government and recommending ways to resolve them. An Inter-Provincial Coordination Council, chaired by the Prime Minister, is tasked with resolving political disputes between the federal government and provinces and between provinces, while the Constitutional Bench of the Supreme Court has final jurisdiction over disputes concerning the division of powers between the federal government and provinces, between provinces, between provinces and local governments, and among local governments.

The NNRFC and the intergovernmental fiscal framework are designed to resolve disputes over how royalties should be distributed. But these disputes have not even reached that stage. They remain stuck on the more fundamental question of who owns the resource in the first place. The closest institution for resolving such disputes, the District Coordination Committee (DCC), does not have the authority to settle them. Tikakumari Chaudhary, DCC chair of Kailali, says, “Our role is only to facilitate coordination. We do not even have the authority to impose fines.”

Chaudhary says disputes over the extraction of riverbed materials also remain unresolved between Chure Rural Municipality and Gauriganga and Godawari municipalities, and between Lamkichuha Municipality and Mohanyal Rural Municipality. Some of these disputes have already reached the courts. The Constitutional Bench of the Supreme Court is the final avenue, but expecting Geruwa or other local governments to travel to Kathmandu and engage in litigation simply to award a sand extraction contract is both costly and time-consuming.

Sudurpaschim Province had therefore also sought an executive solution rather than leaving the matter to the courts. After its own efforts at coordination failed, the Sudurpaschim Provincial Cabinet recommended on 30 May 2023, that the federal government resolve the boundary disputes between local governments. No response has been received to date.

There have also been attempts to address the problem at the provincial level. On December 19, 2023, Sudurpaschim Chief Minister Kamal Bahadur Shah and Lumbini Chief Minister Dilli Bahadur Chaudhary met in Thakurdwara, Bardiya. The meeting recommended amendments to the National Parks and Wildlife Conservation Act, the Forest Act and the Bardiya National Park Regulations to reduce the impact on the livelihoods of buffer-zone residents and improve river management. But these are federal laws, and the federal government was under no legal obligation to amend them in response to recommendations from the provinces. The recommendations have remained stalled.

Sushil Basnet, coordinator of the Dialogue Group, an informal mediation committee formed at the local level for conflict transformation and peacebuilding, and a member of the task force, says the obstacle lies in the law itself. The law prohibits local governments from extracting materials from within national park areas. But if the accumulated stone and sand are not removed, islands form in the river, which can divert the river toward the Kailali side and cause even greater damage.

“That is why local governments are demanding that they be allowed to extract materials from these areas under clearly defined standards,” Basnet says. “The discussion on amending the law was intended to address precisely this issue. But the amendment has still not been made.”

Since 2019, the eastern branch of the Karnali in Geruwa has fallen within the national park and is therefore not subject to extraction, while uncontrolled extraction has increased on the western, Kailali side. As a result, the Karnali’s flow has increasingly shifted toward Kailali. The consequences have been severe. According to the 2023 report of the task force on the use and conservation of Karnali river resources, 62,573 people in Kailali and 18,000 in Bardiya were directly affected by disasters in 2022 alone. Infrastructure was also washed away. A flood on October 18, 2021, entered the main canal of the Rani Jamara Kulariya Irrigation Project, damaging more than NPR 140 million worth of structures in the canal and power project.

The report recommended preparing an integrated riverbank management plan for the Karnali, removing accumulated stone and gravel from nine locations inside Bardiya National Park, and making the relevant laws and regulations more disaster-responsive. None of these recommendations has been implemented.

Disputes Spread from Lakes to Forests

The problem seen in the rivers is also playing out around other natural resources in Sudurpaschim. Officials of the Om Shanti Community Forest User Committee, including its chair Rajkumar Chaudhary, have been appearing before the Kailali District Court for 27 months over a dispute about how revenue from Ghoratal should be shared. The lake covers around 52 bighas within the community forest in Bhajani Municipality-9. Although two separate executive decisions in both 2020 and 2022 called for the revenue to be divided equally, those decisions have not been implemented.

After the contract expired, the community forest user committee decided to manage the lake itself and stocked it with fish fingerlings. The municipality, however, extended the contract of the previous contractor. Prem Bahadur Bhul of Lamkichuha-1 then filed a case against the committee officials, claiming losses of NPR 17 million.

Bhajani Municipality Mayor Kewal Chaudhary says they extended the contract in accordance with the Local Government Operation Act. “I have no personal interest in this matter. Nor is there any intention to cause hardship to the people. Since they themselves could not agree, the dispute ended up in court. Now everyone must abide by whatever decision the court makes,” he says.

Like Ghoratal, similar disputes exist in 14 community forests within Bhajani Municipality alone. Koilhawa Lake in Kailari Rural Municipality-9 is facing similar conflict. Local residents are demanding that the lake be declared a wetland, arguing that the contract awarded for the lake has destroyed its biodiversity. Local intellectual Santram Chaudhary says, “The contract is destroying the wetland, and we have not even been able to get water for irrigation.”

Another problem with the contracting process has also come to light. Although the community forest had issued a notice for the lake contract with a minimum bid of NPR 20 million, the agreement was ultimately signed for NPR 14.5 million, NPR 5.5 million below the minimum amount. Rural municipality chair Rajsamaj Chaudhary says this happened because of procedural errors. “There are now two different demands. One is to bring the lake, which is currently under the ownership of the forest, under the municipality. The other is for the municipality to take ownership of the ongoing contract,” he says. The municipality has been unable to make a decision because no procedure has yet been established.

Dabal Bahadur Salami, chair of the Koilahi Community Forest User Committee, says the amount had to be reduced after no one was willing to take the contract at NPR 20 million.

A similar dispute in Bajura’s Ranisain area, the eastern base camp of Saipal and a rich repository of medicinal herbs and wildlife, escalated into a physical confrontation after the provincial government allocated NPR 4 million to establish a temporary police post at Lampata. The claim from Kharpunath Rural Municipality in Humla of Karnali Province is that the area belongs to Humla. Naresh Kumar Shahi, a provincial assembly member elected from Bajura, says the dispute intensified because of fears that Bajura could lose its long-standing control over the resources. Govinda Bahadur Malla, chair of Himali Rural Municipality in Bajura, alleges that Bajura residents are being prevented from collecting medicinal herbs and that those who do so are robbed.

Karna Bahadur Rawal, chair of Kharpunath Rural Municipality in Humla, says the dispute arose after Bajura sought to establish the police post with the intention of occupying forest land belonging to Humla. “There would have been no dispute if Bajura had established the police post within its own territory or proceeded with our consent as well,” he says.

He says the dispute began after Bajura sought to establish the post in a forest area that the people of Humla have used for generations. The confrontation eventually involved physical assaults, and the matter has now reached the courts. According to Chair Rawal, some local residents of Humla have been charged in connection with unlawful confinement. He says charges were filed against 21 people, of whom 10 remain in jail, eight have been released on bail of NPR 200,000 each, and three have been released on ordinary bail pending trial.

Not every shared resource, however, has led to disputes of this kind. There are also examples of communities resolving such conflicts themselves. Som Prasad Chaudhary of Naya Gaun in Rajapur Municipality-2, Bardiya, has been resolving water disputes in his area for 40 years, and not a single dispute has escalated into a major conflict.

Water diverted from the Karnali River is distributed through 12 branches at the Okhariya intake. There are occasional disputes when water fails to reach some branches during the spring paddy planting season in February-March or during wheat irrigation in November, but these are resolved through community initiatives. “First, we hold a village meeting. Then the chairs of the 12 branches sit together and settle the matter immediately,” Chaudhary says. When water is scarce, he explains, it is divided equally. If there is still not enough, it is distributed on a rotational basis. Anyone who violates the rules is fined. The community itself carries out cleaning and maintenance through voluntary labor.

This example stands in stark contrast to many of the disputes in Sudurpaschim. Although the Karnali River is a shared resource, communities have managed it collectively for decades through meetings, equitable distribution and voluntary labor. Some local governments, however, are fighting to claim such natural resources as their exclusive property, and those disputes have ended up in courts.

The difference between these two examples is not the resource itself, but the governance model used to manage it. Experts say Nepal’s model of federalism is based not on competition, but on cooperation and coordination.

Published in Himal Khabar on 1 Septembre 2026