Nepal’s proposed new international airport has been mired in controversy ever since it was first proposed three decades ago, but what may finally put the plan to rest is the collapse of the aviation industry due to the global pandemic.
The $6.7 billion mega project in Nijgad, 75km south of Kathmandu, has been criticised for being an expensive white elephant and for threatening the last remaining tropical forest in the eastern Tarai. But it is the longterm impact of the COVID-19 crisis on tourism and the international airline industry that could kill it once and for all.
“Even before this global pandemic, awareness about climate change was starting to reduce air travel which means the need for huge new airport projects will have to be rethought,” says aviation analyst Hemant Arjyal.
On paper, the Nijgad airport is the perfect alternative to the country’s only international gateway in Kathmandu, which had reached saturation point long before everything came to a standstill last month.
Nepal’s Environment Impact non-Assessments, Yadav Ghimirey
Congestion on the only runway meant planes spent hours on hold, some having to divert to Indian airports after running out of fuel. Kathmandu’s air pollution reduced visibility, and added an extra hazard to an already challenging approach over the mountains.
Proponents of Nijgad airport which include tourism entrepreneurs, airline executives and the politicians said the aeropolis would be a catalyst to propel Nepal’s economic growth into the future. They said distance was not an issue because the proposed expressway would cut travel time to Kathmandu to one hour.
They also played down the environmental impact, saying some trees have to be sacrificed for infrastructure development, and cited the 2018 Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) report that gave the project a green chit.
However, the veracity of that EIA itself has been questioned because it deliberately played down the impact of the felling of 2.4 million hardwood trees in a jungle that is the habitat and corridor of wild elephants, tigers and other endangered animals.
Even before the COVID-19 crisis, the Supreme Court in January issued a stay order on construction of the airport when a group of lawyers filed a public interest litigation citing what they said was a fraudulent EIA. Further hearings have been on hold due to the lockdown.
But more than the environmental concerns, criticism of Nijgad is on economic ground and, even if it is needed, for not exploring alternatives. The project could easily be shifted 9km away to Simara without clear-cutting forests. Another alternative would be Murtiya of Sarlahi district which is 30km to the east of Nijgad and would require clearing only 2,700 hectares of newly-planted eucalyptus. The EIA ignores both alternatives.
A pre-feasibility study in 1997 was shelved because of the Maoist war. In 2008, the government decided to revive the project under a Build Own Operate and Transfer model, and in 2010 contracted the South Korean firm Landmark International to conduct a feasibility study.
But the company was not paid and its report in 2011 was never made public. Yet in 2016 the government went ahead and contracted a company specialising in hydropower projects to prepare an EIA.
Critics say that EIA is a cut-and-paste job that has bent science to made it sound like there is no alternative to Nijgad. It plays down the destruction of nature, and longterm impact on biodiversity.
“EIAs should be scientific, and must have a cost-benefit analysis and assess inter-generational equity. But the Nijgad EIA is riddled with logical and technical errors and is based on assumptions at best,” says Sanjay Adhikari of the group Pro Public that filed the writ at the Supreme Court. “In fact, it looks like the government signed MoU with the Army even before the EIA was passed. The EIA was just a formality.”
The project has ignored the Forest Act, which mandates felling only for a national priority project for which there are no alternatives, and if there is no adverse impact on the environment and wildlife. Developers also need to submit detailed project report before an EIA, but this was never done.
The EIA is actually based on a pre-feasibility study conducted over two decades ago, rendering it obsolete. There is evidence that entire paragraphs of the EIA have been plagiarised from the Upper Tama Kosi Hydropower report, and mentions plant and animal species found at high altitudes, and not in the Tarai.
The EIA does admit that the airport at Nijgad will ‘cause an imbalance’ in biodiversity, but does not mention any mitigation measures. In fact, the airport will destroy 80sq km of the last remaining primary forest in the eastern Tarai, home to over 500 plants, birds and animal species, many of them endangered.
Clearing the forest will destroy a crucial migration corridor for endangered wild elephants and tigers, deplete the buffer zone of the Parsa Wildlife Reserve, and remove vegetation that recharges groundwater for farms in the Tarai and India. The sound pollution from aircraft will also disturb wildlife in nearby sanctuaries.
None of this is discussed in any great detail in the EIA. Nor is the fact that two rivulets that flow across the project area become raging torrents in the monsoon. Deforestation and sand and boulder extraction upstream have made the floods worse every year.
“The site chosen for the airport has seen a change in weather patterns with tornados, cloudbursts and floods, and the Nijgad project is right in the middle of it all,” says activist Shristi Singh Shrestha.
The COVID-19 pandemic has once again reinforced the crucial relationship between the loss of biodiversity, new emerging diseases and the climate emergency. A mega project like Nijgad airport would therefore raise even more questions about adverse environment impact.
Elsewhere in the world, large airport expansion projects have been scrapped due to their ecological costs. In fact, questions were raised in the Swiss parliament after Zurich Airport International AG was shortlisted for developing and operating Nijgad.
Sanjay Adhikari who has minutely studied the EIA compares Nijgad airport to Sri Lanka’s Mattala Rajapaksa International Airport, which has earned the moniker ‘world’s emptiest airport’. The Chinese-built airport was also supposed to be a hub for cargo and tourism, and uplift Sri Lanka’s economy. But airlines have ignored the airport 200km south of Colombo.
“From the perspective of climate justice, there are now serious doubts if European countries would allow their aircraft to fly into Nijgad knowing its environmental cost,” says Shrestha.
In Nijgad, real estate speculators and squatters have already started clearing the forests in anticipation of the project going through, giving an indication of what the future holds in store for the region. Critics say the government does not care if the airport is feasible, they are only interested in profiting off logging concessions and construction contracts.
The Nijgad International Airport’s proposed two runways will accommodate up to 60 million passengers annually – six times more than Kathmandu airport. The airport is based on the hub concept from 20 years ago so airlines can use it as a transit point for passengers moving from various parts of Asia to the rest of the world.
Aviation experts say the hub model is now obsolete and replaced by the point-to-point concept because modern airliners can fly non-stop for 18-20 hours, unlike two decades ago when they needed refuelling stopovers.
The pre-feasibility and EIA make a case for Nijgad because both have said Pokhara and Bhairawa were not suitable as international airports. However, two new international airports are now under construction in both locations.
Analysts like Arjyal say global aviation will take years to recover from the COVID-19 crisis. But even before the pandemic, flight shaming was already starting to affect the airline business, which raises serious questions about whether Nepal should gamble on such an expensive airport project.
Says advocate Sanjay Adhikari: “This airport is not being built out of necessity, and if it goes ahead despite all these issues, Nijgad will not only destroy the environment but push future generations of Nepalis into debt. The COVID-19 crisis is a chance for us to pull out of this wasteful project now.”
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