Topic: Climate Resiliency for Ourselves and Our Communities
Rumtek Monastery hosts the 9th Annual Environmental Conference for Tibetan Buddhist Monasteries and Nunneries (April 2 – 5, 2018)
Around 90 monastic representatives from 34 Tibetan Buddhist monasteries and nunneries from across the Himalayas have attended the 9th Annual Khoryug Conference. The 4-day conference is sponsored by the Kun Kyong Charitable Trust and provides the opportunity for Khoryug monks and nuns to learn about climate change resilience, report back on their ongoing projects, and discuss and share lessons learned from their previous experiences. The topic of the conference is: Climate Resiliency for Ourselves and Our Communities. The workshop includes trainers from partnering organizations such as ATREE, ECOSS, WWF, UNDP, and the Science and Tech Department of the Government of Sikkim.
DAY 01:
His Holiness the 17th Karmapa spoke from afar, sharing his thoughts via video, with the Khoryug representatives. He said “I am aware of how hard you have been working on environmental protection for the last nine years and very pleased with the success you have all achieved. Due to the importance of Tibet and the Himalayas as a source of water for billions of people downstream, I appeal to you all to take up the responsibility of addressing climate change. We should see our actions of preserving nature and protecting the environment not only as ways of minimizing climate change impacts but also as part of our Buddhist practice because everything we do will benefit other sentient beings.”
The event was inaugurated by Drupon Dechen Rinpoche. Khenpo Kesang Nyima gave a welcome speech on behalf of Rumtek Monastery and Shedra. Ms Dekila Chungyalpa and Mr. Lhakpa Tsering, the conference facilitators, began the presentations. Dekila taught about the basic science behind climate change including the carbon and nitrogen cycles. Following a fun question and answer session, Mr. Keshav Koirala from the UNDP Strengthening State Strategies for Climate Action Program gave a talk on the overall impacts of climate change in the Himalayas and in Sikkim.
DAY 02:
The second day of the conference was set aside for monasteries to report back on their projects and annual outcomes. Many of the monasteries had taken on new activities such as rooftop water harvesting, biogas, and disaster preparedness training and shared lessons learned with each other.
Rooftop water harvesting has been a very successful strategy for the monasteries and nunneries implementing it. Benchen Monastery was one of the early adopters of this strategy and reported that their tank continues to provide water for the bathrooms, for cleaning, and gardening purposes. This activity has now been adopted by another 9 monasteries and nunneries. Most monasteries and nunneries in Khoryug now use solar as one of the major sources of energy with many of them reporting that they see significant savings in their electricity bills. Pullahari monastery in Nepal had successful implemented biogas as a fuel source for cooking the monastery kitchen. They found that it not only provided a cleaner and cheaper source of energy but that it also helped eliminate odours from their waste. Other monasteries and nunneries that had some difficulty with biogas received advice on how to improve their projects.
Karma Drubgyu Thargeling Nunnery in Tilokpur, Himachal Pradesh reported that they were working on forest plantation of a landslide-affected area close to their nunnery in partnership with the local community. They have planted in total 400 different tree saplings in that area and continue to monitor it. They expressed their happiness in being able to benefit and work closely with their community and felt that this was rewarding in many ways. Another monastery that is also partnering with local communities and reforesting outside their monastic grounds is Dilyak Monastery in Kathmandu. They requested the Nepal Government to reforest degraded government owned land in a nearby area called Sundarijal and began plantation last year. Lava Rigpe Dorje Institute also chose to reforest a land-slide stricken area and planted 500 tree saplings there in the hopes of stabilizing the hill.
Karma Samtenling Nunnery in Pharping, Nepal, shared that following the 2015 earthquake and the last 2 years of disaster preparedness training, they were reconstructing their nunnery to be earthquake resistant. They also installed a rainwater harvesting tank with a capacity of storing 160,000 liters of water in order to become more self-sufficient. Thrangu Tara Abbey in Nepal reported that they not only themselves received disaster preparedness training including CERT but that they also administered the training to over 1,000 people in their local communities.
Many of the monasteries and nunneries that began organic farms in the past few years reported that they are now able to feed a significant percentage of their members with the produce. In the case of Pullahari Monastery, 50% of their vegetable and fruit diet comes from their own farm. Similarly, Tilokpur nunnery reported that their average weekly harvest is 50-60 kgs of each vegetable crop. Thegsum Dechenling Monastery in Bhutan said that their organic farm was very productive this past year and due to that, they decided to invest in planting many different kinds of fruit trees in 2017.
Following each presentation, there was a question and answer session with the trainers gathered also providing feedback. One of the final presentations was from Thrangu Tashi Monastery who showed a simple contrast between two photos: the first of the monastery’s surrounding barren lands from 2009 when they first started Khoryug activities and the second of the rich verdant forested lands of today. It spoke of how much impact Khoryug has had in helping conserve nature around the monasteries as well as in making monasteries leaders in environmental protection.
DAY 03:
Day Three consisted of 3 sections; a presentation and discussion on Agricultural Adaptation to Climate Change; three presentations from monastic centers of excellence – Pullahari, Bokar Mirik and Benchen; and a citizen science biodiversity training session outdoors.
The morning session began with a presentation by Dr. Sarala Khaling, the Northeast Director for ATREE (Ashoka Trust), whose office is based in Gangtok, Sikkim. Her presentation was titled: Mountain Agriculture and Resilience to Climate Change, Case of Darjeeling Hills: Uncertainties, Potentials and Adaptations. Heavily dependent on rainfall for agriculture, Dr. Khaling said that in the mountains, crop cultivation varies by altitude. People living in the mountains are heavily dependent on forests for food and the majority of local experience climate change due to their awareness of how crop cycles and forest food availability have changed. She said that local people acknowledge and fear climate change because they are the warming of weather, the drying of water sources, food shortages, and outbreaks of new diseases. The immediate impact of climate change on farming has led to loss of fertile soil, more landslide, drying up of natural springs, droughts, more pest infestations and decrease in yield and productivity. Remedies against climate change for farmers in the mountain areas include multi-cropping with little dependence on mechanization and outside inputs, nature protection for food and medicine, backyard mixed vegetable farming, enhancing soil organic matter, agroforestry and agro-tourism.
After a lively question and answer session from monasteries and nunneries carrying out organic farming, Pullahari Monastery in Nepal gave a presentation on their own experience with organic farming. The monastery began an organic vegetable garden in order to become more self-sufficient. They were able to compost their kitchen waste and apply that in their farm, which also helped manage waste efficiently. They plant seasonal crops such as okra and bitter gourd during the summer. Sometimes, their harvest is so rich, that they sell the surplus to the market in a low price or can n the products into jams and jellies. In 2017, their farm had the following harvest: 167 kg of spinach, 1106 of bitter gourd, 1312 of carrot, 153 of french bean, 994 of potato, 792 of cabbage, 137 of okra and so on. They use grey water for farming, especially from kitchen and washrooms which is filtered before it is used to water their garden.
Bokar Mirik Monastery, is a recognized centre of excellence among Khoryug monasteries for waste management. They started by explaining that from 2009 to 2017, they planted over 10,000 trees which made a big difference in turning their surrounding environment from a barren wasteland to a beautiful forested area. Their second step was to choose a very visible area for a waste segregation site so that everyone in the monastery and community can see that this is a priority for the monastery. They built it with great care and asked Bokar Yangsi Rinpoche to inaugurate it so that everyone feels a sense of pride about accomplishing proper waste segregation and management. They are able to raise a considerable amount of funds through selling recyclable material, which in return funds Khoryug activities.
Benchen monastery was the first Khoryug monastery to implement rainwater harvesting as a water conservation nstrategy. Their two institutions in Swayambhu and Pharping saved 20,800 litres and 300,000 litres of rainwater respectively. Based on their experience, they said that it is better to invest more funds in the beginning and create strong and high-quality systems that are sustainable in the long term than to worry about saving money and have to repair it again and again. They encouraged all monasteries to invest in such schemes pointing out that their yearly cost for buying water, especially in the dry season, has decreased by 35%. The water is generally used for bathrooms, cleaning, farming and construction. However, it can be filtered and used for drinking as well.
In the afternoon, Dr Sarala Khaling and Mr. Rohit George from ATREE took the 90 monks and nuns to the Jawaharlal Nehru Botanical Garden nearby. After presenting on the importance of biodiversity science and the need for biodiversity research, they began their training. Their aim was to demonstrate to monks and nuns that they could also carry out biodiversity research, helping scientists better understand and verify what kind of and where different species exist in the Himalayas. Since the Himalaya is home to thousands of unique flora and fauna, collaborating with professional scientists would make monks and nuns also be part of the data collection and analysis of our common natural resources.
They walked the monks and nuns through 3 website portals, www.indiabiodiversity.org for those who live in India, www.bhutanbiodiversity.bt for those who live in Bhutan and www.inaturalist.org who live in Nepal.
These portals allow anyone to upload pictures of flora and fauna along with date and location that then give scientists new information or allow them to verify the data they have already collected. All of the monks and nuns returned with photos of plants, animals and insects which they could input into the application on their phones.
DAY 04:
The last day of the workshop started with a presentation on climate resilience from Ms. Dekila on global climate policy frameworks and how that affects us in the Himalayas. She explained the significance of the Paris Agreement, the concept of creating carbon sinks and carbon markets, and emphasized the importance of individual action. She pointed out that in terms of carbon emission, eating 6 ounces of steak is equivalent to a car driving for 2 miles, and the fact that monasteries and nunneries going vegetarian has a larger impact on climate change than one would think. She and Mr. Lhakpa Tsering, the Kun Kyong Program Officer, led a session on collective impact and impact assessment. They pointed out that Khoryug is now in its 9th year and how its collective impact can be aggregated and assessed during that time frame. For example, if we count how many monasteries attending this conference have solar projects, we know at least 20 do. Similarly, we know 12 monasteries have rainwater harvesting programs and 10 monasteries have organic farms. Aggregating these results allows us to understand collective impact and select goals that help us work together. For that reason, Mr. Lhakpa Tsering advised the monks and nuns to brainstorm freely and ambitiously about designing new collective projects in the afternoon.
Mr. Rajendra Gurung, the head of ECOSS, gave a presentation on the potential of ecotourism in the Himalayas and how homestays, in particular, could be very beneficial to monasteries and nunneries. He said that ECOSS had created homestays in many parts of Sikkim including Yuksom, Dzongu, Rey Mindu and Lachen, with positive results. Homestays provide a much-needed source of income to women and adults who might otherwise migrate to cities. At the same time, tourists are able to experience local life and local culture when they stay in people’s homes. He pointed out that some monasteries and nunneries are part of the tourism itinerary but that monasteries rarely engage with local homestays and with local communities. However, doing so would bring many benefits to both groups and create a more symbiotic relationship.
In the afternoon session, 3 young students from Rumtek School shared poems that they had written for the environment and for His Holiness the Gyalwang Karmapa.
Mr Tenzing Phuntsok, M. Sc. EM, gave a short presentation on Environment and Individuality. Following that, the monastic representatives broke into groups based on their country in order to develop next year’s plans for their monasteries and collectively for their country groups.
Following this final session, the 9th Khoryug Annual Conference came to a close with Drupon Dechen Rinpoche chairing, and the heads of the Rumtek Dasang, Shedra, and Labrang attending the appreciation ceremony. His Holiness sent a recording conveying his gladness at how well the conference had gone and his appreciation for how much the monasteries and nunneries had achieved in this past year. There was rejoicing and happiness as the representatives relayed how successful the last nine years of Khoryug had been for them and for their monasteries and how they looked forward to the next year.
Last Updated: May 14, 2021 by kunkyong
9th Khoryug Conference
Rumtek Monastery hosts the 9th Annual Environmental Conference for Tibetan Buddhist Monasteries and Nunneries (April 2 – 5, 2018)
Around 90 monastic representatives from 34 Tibetan Buddhist monasteries and nunneries from across the Himalayas have attended the 9th Annual Khoryug Conference. The 4-day conference is sponsored by the Kun Kyong Charitable Trust and provides the opportunity for Khoryug monks and nuns to learn about climate change resilience, report back on their ongoing projects, and discuss and share lessons learned from their previous experiences. The topic of the conference is: Climate Resiliency for Ourselves and Our Communities. The workshop includes trainers from partnering organizations such as ATREE, ECOSS, WWF, UNDP, and the Science and Tech Department of the Government of Sikkim.
DAY 01:
His Holiness the 17th Karmapa spoke from afar, sharing his thoughts via video, with the Khoryug representatives. He said “I am aware of how hard you have been working on environmental protection for the last nine years and very pleased with the success you have all achieved. Due to the importance of Tibet and the Himalayas as a source of water for billions of people downstream, I appeal to you all to take up the responsibility of addressing climate change. We should see our actions of preserving nature and protecting the environment not only as ways of minimizing climate change impacts but also as part of our Buddhist practice because everything we do will benefit other sentient beings.”
The event was inaugurated by Drupon Dechen Rinpoche. Khenpo Kesang Nyima gave a welcome speech on behalf of Rumtek Monastery and Shedra. Ms Dekila Chungyalpa and Mr. Lhakpa Tsering, the conference facilitators, began the presentations. Dekila taught about the basic science behind climate change including the carbon and nitrogen cycles. Following a fun question and answer session, Mr. Keshav Koirala from the UNDP Strengthening State Strategies for Climate Action Program gave a talk on the overall impacts of climate change in the Himalayas and in Sikkim.
DAY 02:
The second day of the conference was set aside for monasteries to report back on their projects and annual outcomes. Many of the monasteries had taken on new activities such as rooftop water harvesting, biogas, and disaster preparedness training and shared lessons learned with each other.
Rooftop water harvesting has been a very successful strategy for the monasteries and nunneries implementing it. Benchen Monastery was one of the early adopters of this strategy and reported that their tank continues to provide water for the bathrooms, for cleaning, and gardening purposes. This activity has now been adopted by another 9 monasteries and nunneries. Most monasteries and nunneries in Khoryug now use solar as one of the major sources of energy with many of them reporting that they see significant savings in their electricity bills. Pullahari monastery in Nepal had successful implemented biogas as a fuel source for cooking the monastery kitchen. They found that it not only provided a cleaner and cheaper source of energy but that it also helped eliminate odours from their waste. Other monasteries and nunneries that had some difficulty with biogas received advice on how to improve their projects.
Karma Drubgyu Thargeling Nunnery in Tilokpur, Himachal Pradesh reported that they were working on forest plantation of a landslide-affected area close to their nunnery in partnership with the local community. They have planted in total 400 different tree saplings in that area and continue to monitor it. They expressed their happiness in being able to benefit and work closely with their community and felt that this was rewarding in many ways. Another monastery that is also partnering with local communities and reforesting outside their monastic grounds is Dilyak Monastery in Kathmandu. They requested the Nepal Government to reforest degraded government owned land in a nearby area called Sundarijal and began plantation last year. Lava Rigpe Dorje Institute also chose to reforest a land-slide stricken area and planted 500 tree saplings there in the hopes of stabilizing the hill.
Karma Samtenling Nunnery in Pharping, Nepal, shared that following the 2015 earthquake and the last 2 years of disaster preparedness training, they were reconstructing their nunnery to be earthquake resistant. They also installed a rainwater harvesting tank with a capacity of storing 160,000 liters of water in order to become more self-sufficient. Thrangu Tara Abbey in Nepal reported that they not only themselves received disaster preparedness training including CERT but that they also administered the training to over 1,000 people in their local communities.
Many of the monasteries and nunneries that began organic farms in the past few years reported that they are now able to feed a significant percentage of their members with the produce. In the case of Pullahari Monastery, 50% of their vegetable and fruit diet comes from their own farm. Similarly, Tilokpur nunnery reported that their average weekly harvest is 50-60 kgs of each vegetable crop. Thegsum Dechenling Monastery in Bhutan said that their organic farm was very productive this past year and due to that, they decided to invest in planting many different kinds of fruit trees in 2017.
Following each presentation, there was a question and answer session with the trainers gathered also providing feedback. One of the final presentations was from Thrangu Tashi Monastery who showed a simple contrast between two photos: the first of the monastery’s surrounding barren lands from 2009 when they first started Khoryug activities and the second of the rich verdant forested lands of today. It spoke of how much impact Khoryug has had in helping conserve nature around the monasteries as well as in making monasteries leaders in environmental protection.
DAY 03:
Day Three consisted of 3 sections; a presentation and discussion on Agricultural Adaptation to Climate Change; three presentations from monastic centers of excellence – Pullahari, Bokar Mirik and Benchen; and a citizen science biodiversity training session outdoors.
The morning session began with a presentation by Dr. Sarala Khaling, the Northeast Director for ATREE (Ashoka Trust), whose office is based in Gangtok, Sikkim. Her presentation was titled: Mountain Agriculture and Resilience to Climate Change, Case of Darjeeling Hills: Uncertainties, Potentials and Adaptations. Heavily dependent on rainfall for agriculture, Dr. Khaling said that in the mountains, crop cultivation varies by altitude. People living in the mountains are heavily dependent on forests for food and the majority of local experience climate change due to their awareness of how crop cycles and forest food availability have changed. She said that local people acknowledge and fear climate change because they are the warming of weather, the drying of water sources, food shortages, and outbreaks of new diseases. The immediate impact of climate change on farming has led to loss of fertile soil, more landslide, drying up of natural springs, droughts, more pest infestations and decrease in yield and productivity. Remedies against climate change for farmers in the mountain areas include multi-cropping with little dependence on mechanization and outside inputs, nature protection for food and medicine, backyard mixed vegetable farming, enhancing soil organic matter, agroforestry and agro-tourism.
After a lively question and answer session from monasteries and nunneries carrying out organic farming, Pullahari Monastery in Nepal gave a presentation on their own experience with organic farming. The monastery began an organic vegetable garden in order to become more self-sufficient. They were able to compost their kitchen waste and apply that in their farm, which also helped manage waste efficiently. They plant seasonal crops such as okra and bitter gourd during the summer. Sometimes, their harvest is so rich, that they sell the surplus to the market in a low price or can n the products into jams and jellies. In 2017, their farm had the following harvest: 167 kg of spinach, 1106 of bitter gourd, 1312 of carrot, 153 of french bean, 994 of potato, 792 of cabbage, 137 of okra and so on. They use grey water for farming, especially from kitchen and washrooms which is filtered before it is used to water their garden.
Bokar Mirik Monastery, is a recognized centre of excellence among Khoryug monasteries for waste management. They started by explaining that from 2009 to 2017, they planted over 10,000 trees which made a big difference in turning their surrounding environment from a barren wasteland to a beautiful forested area. Their second step was to choose a very visible area for a waste segregation site so that everyone in the monastery and community can see that this is a priority for the monastery. They built it with great care and asked Bokar Yangsi Rinpoche to inaugurate it so that everyone feels a sense of pride about accomplishing proper waste segregation and management. They are able to raise a considerable amount of funds through selling recyclable material, which in return funds Khoryug activities.
Benchen monastery was the first Khoryug monastery to implement rainwater harvesting as a water conservation nstrategy. Their two institutions in Swayambhu and Pharping saved 20,800 litres and 300,000 litres of rainwater respectively. Based on their experience, they said that it is better to invest more funds in the beginning and create strong and high-quality systems that are sustainable in the long term than to worry about saving money and have to repair it again and again. They encouraged all monasteries to invest in such schemes pointing out that their yearly cost for buying water, especially in the dry season, has decreased by 35%. The water is generally used for bathrooms, cleaning, farming and construction. However, it can be filtered and used for drinking as well.
In the afternoon, Dr Sarala Khaling and Mr. Rohit George from ATREE took the 90 monks and nuns to the Jawaharlal Nehru Botanical Garden nearby. After presenting on the importance of biodiversity science and the need for biodiversity research, they began their training. Their aim was to demonstrate to monks and nuns that they could also carry out biodiversity research, helping scientists better understand and verify what kind of and where different species exist in the Himalayas. Since the Himalaya is home to thousands of unique flora and fauna, collaborating with professional scientists would make monks and nuns also be part of the data collection and analysis of our common natural resources.
They walked the monks and nuns through 3 website portals, www.indiabiodiversity.org for those who live in India, www.bhutanbiodiversity.bt for those who live in Bhutan and www.inaturalist.org who live in Nepal.
These portals allow anyone to upload pictures of flora and fauna along with date and location that then give scientists new information or allow them to verify the data they have already collected. All of the monks and nuns returned with photos of plants, animals and insects which they could input into the application on their phones.
DAY 04:
The last day of the workshop started with a presentation on climate resilience from Ms. Dekila on global climate policy frameworks and how that affects us in the Himalayas. She explained the significance of the Paris Agreement, the concept of creating carbon sinks and carbon markets, and emphasized the importance of individual action. She pointed out that in terms of carbon emission, eating 6 ounces of steak is equivalent to a car driving for 2 miles, and the fact that monasteries and nunneries going vegetarian has a larger impact on climate change than one would think. She and Mr. Lhakpa Tsering, the Kun Kyong Program Officer, led a session on collective impact and impact assessment. They pointed out that Khoryug is now in its 9th year and how its collective impact can be aggregated and assessed during that time frame. For example, if we count how many monasteries attending this conference have solar projects, we know at least 20 do. Similarly, we know 12 monasteries have rainwater harvesting programs and 10 monasteries have organic farms. Aggregating these results allows us to understand collective impact and select goals that help us work together. For that reason, Mr. Lhakpa Tsering advised the monks and nuns to brainstorm freely and ambitiously about designing new collective projects in the afternoon.
Mr. Rajendra Gurung, the head of ECOSS, gave a presentation on the potential of ecotourism in the Himalayas and how homestays, in particular, could be very beneficial to monasteries and nunneries. He said that ECOSS had created homestays in many parts of Sikkim including Yuksom, Dzongu, Rey Mindu and Lachen, with positive results. Homestays provide a much-needed source of income to women and adults who might otherwise migrate to cities. At the same time, tourists are able to experience local life and local culture when they stay in people’s homes. He pointed out that some monasteries and nunneries are part of the tourism itinerary but that monasteries rarely engage with local homestays and with local communities. However, doing so would bring many benefits to both groups and create a more symbiotic relationship.
In the afternoon session, 3 young students from Rumtek School shared poems that they had written for the environment and for His Holiness the Gyalwang Karmapa.
Mr Tenzing Phuntsok, M. Sc. EM, gave a short presentation on Environment and Individuality. Following that, the monastic representatives broke into groups based on their country in order to develop next year’s plans for their monasteries and collectively for their country groups.
Following this final session, the 9th Khoryug Annual Conference came to a close with Drupon Dechen Rinpoche chairing, and the heads of the Rumtek Dasang, Shedra, and Labrang attending the appreciation ceremony. His Holiness sent a recording conveying his gladness at how well the conference had gone and his appreciation for how much the monasteries and nunneries had achieved in this past year. There was rejoicing and happiness as the representatives relayed how successful the last nine years of Khoryug had been for them and for their monasteries and how they looked forward to the next year.
Category: Disaster Management, Khoryug - Environment Protection Tags: Environment Protection, karmapa, khoryug
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