Nepal’s climatological record officially begins in 1879, when the British established a weather station at the Legation Hospital Compound in Kathmandu, an initiative documented by Nayava (1982)[i]. Temperature and rainfall were recorded, although intermittently, until the mid-1940s. Yet, archival traces of early colonial writings on Nepal suggest that meteorological interest in Nepal predates this by many years: temperature was reportedly measured in Kathmandu as early as 1793, several years before the British Residency was officially established. Notably, it positions Kathmandu ahead of India under East India Company rule in terms of meteorological measurement.

Department of Forests and Soil Conservation (DOFSC) Nepal, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) organized the National Consultation on Freshwater Challenge (FWC), in Kathmandu, at Hotel Himalaya, Kupundole, on December 16, 2024. In the meeting, participants discussed the challenges of operationalizing the FWC, a global initiative launched at the UN Water Conference in March 2023. The FWC aims to restore 300,000 km of degraded rivers and 350 million hectares of wetlands by 2030 in 44 countries, including Nepal.  My reflection as one of the panelists at the meeting.