8 - ICIMOD management threatens staffs and plays with their emotions - Gross National Happiness dropped

Learning from Bhutan, Kathmandu based International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) assured its staffs to introduce the concept of Gross National Happiness in the context of a development institution. Started in 2009/2010, this idea was never implemented seeing increasing level of staff dissatisfaction, management bias, color, nationality, race, gender and positions based discriminations. Weak and controversial leadership of Director General (DG) David Molden and Director Programme Operations DPO) Eklabya Sharma has made ICIMOD extremely unpleasant place for staff to work at. Sources claim new positions are created and old positions are collapsed just to accommodate people close to David and Eklabya and remove others who become fear factor for them. Such appointments and removals do not follow any standard guidelines and neither ICIMOD Board of Governors is notified correctly. Same happens when it comes to staff promotions, travel permissions and assigning project responsibilities. David and Eklabya duo are developing a chain of their loyal people at the institutional level so all their wrongdoings can be hidden and they can easily misreport to ICIMOD member country representatives and donor communities.

When asked, a staff replied – ‘David Molden is a typical scientist who doesn’t have any idea and experience about institutional management and by selecting him as Director General of ICIMOD, Board has made a stupid decision. Likewise Eklabya Sharma is a highly political person who has always tried to develop his own team in ICIMOD and is marginalizing other staffs at ICIMOD. This way ICIMOD staffs are now polarized, one who think ICIMOD is deteriorating every next day and external intervention is needed to improve the situation and other ones who are voiceless and do not want to comment anything. But what is common between them is, none of the staffs (except few loyalists of Eklabya and David) are happy at ICIMOD and the situation may outbreak any time’. Another staff added, ‘on the top DG Molden has threatened several staffs during staff meetings not to go against him. Even though there are several unethical, illogical and invalid decisions DG has made, the staffs are not able to speak up. We need our governments to take this issue up and remove the corrupt and intellectually weak management’.

Sources add, to ensure all the staffs are vulnerable and management can impose anything they want, the DG and DPO have illegally recruited a Dutch national as Human Resources Unit head, replacing other staffs, appointed people close to them as ombudsperson ignoring the result of the staff nominations and voting, brought several other loyalists in key positions and prevented staffs from contacting donors and member country representatives and micromanaging all the projects so staff do not get chance to use any power and influence people outside ICIMOD, who can eventually ICIMOD management. This way majority of ICIMOD staff are trapped within vicious circle without any easy escape and ICIMOD member countries need to intervene in order to ensure good governance at ICIMOD.

7 - ICIMOD falsifying the fact and sidelining Great Himalayan Trail pioneer

With very weak and controversial leadership of David Molden and Eklabya Sharma, Kathmandu based International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) is jeopardizing environmental issues in the Himalayan Countries. We have learned that their wicked leadership has lately tried to sideline the key persons working on development of the Great Himalaya Trail (GHT) concept aiming to falsify the overall GHT development process.

The Great Himalaya Trail is a proposed trail of more than 4500 km stretching the length of the Greater Himalaya range from Nanga Parbat in Pakistan to Namche Barwa in Tibet thus passing through Pakistan, India, Nepal, Bhutan and Tibet in China. When completed, it will be the longest and highest alpine walking track in the world, As of July 2010, only the Nepal and Bhutan sections have been walked and documented thoroughly. The other countries are still being researched.

The concept of GHT was pioneered by Mr. Robin Boustead together with his team members from Nepal, who later partnered with the Himalayan Map House to produce sector specific maps. The idea was later picked up and cashed by ICIMOD to develop development projects, so they can attract money from the government of Netherlands. ICIMOD’s Netherlands funded GHT project failed to meet its objective and ended up issuing an internal report, which was not shared with other organizations involved in GHT development process apart from few closed partners. This questins credbility of ICIMOD's work on this topic and how they are betraying mountain communities in the name of development.

Meanwhile, Mr. Boustead’s effort had multiple positive impacts in documenting local realities, developing sector specific maps, building capacity of local people as well as in promoting commercial treks across the Nepal and Bhutan sectors of the GHT. Fearing from Mr. Boustead’s success and increasing visibility, ICIMOD is reported to be sidelining him and trying to take credit of his works. According to a reliable source, Mr. Boustead’s  was invited to give a talk ICIMOD by newly appointed Tourism Expert for ICIMOD staffs and few partners. However the planned talk at ICIMOD in early 2013 was cancelled after intervention from David Molden, Eklabya Sharma and Anja Moller Rasmussen of ICIMOD Senior Management Committee. It is further claimed that is was supported by Dutch organization in Kathmandu. Besides the talk ICIMOD and Dutch partners are feeding other less effective organizations to work on GHT issues to divert general people and expert’s attention from Mr. Boustead’s work.

Institutions and experts working in the Himalayas need to be more clear and stronger in finding and acknowledging the true people behind such noble works and ignore and expose the institutions who are known for preparing useless glossy reports and  misreporting donors about the work and take credit of others work. More than that it is important to free up institutions like ICIMOD from wicked leaders like David Molden and Eklabya Sharma who have been sidelining experts with noble contributions, dividing Himalayan communities and jeopardizing overall environmental development in the region.

6 - ICIMOD uses Nepalese soil against China

Sources doubt ICIMOD Director General Dr. David Molden (American) and Director Programme Operation Dr. Eklabya Sharma (Indian) are operating anti-China activities from Nepal and the name of ICIMOD is used for this purpose. For this mission, they have reorganized the Kailash Sacred Landscape Project (KSL) allowing their spies to visit china, run ant- China activities in Tibetan part of China and form anti-China groups in northwestern districts of Nepal – Humla, Dolpa, Achham and Bajura among others as well as grow anti China feelings in Indian part of Kailash Landscape.

When envisioned, KSL was seen as an opportunity to bring three countries – India, China and Nepal together to promote transboundary landscape cooperation. Given the complex relations and administrative complications between India and China, all parties agreed that Nepal is the neutral venue to run such activities and Dr. Krishna Prashad Oli, a Nepalese national was selected as the Project Coordinator through international competition.

However within few months of visit of ICIMOD Former Director General Dr. Andreas Schild to India in November 2009, who surrendered to save his position as Director General and made ICIMD a typical pro-Indian organization, several arrangements were changed:

•  In January 2010, Dr. Eklabya Sharma, an Indian National was appointed as Acting Director Programme Operations (for two years) at ICIMOD ruling against ongoing recruitment process in which  four international experts were interviewed for this post and one of them was supposed to be selected. This was the first case in ICIMOD’s history in which a non-candidate was given the post and all formal candidates who were more than capable were trashed for no reason.
• Despite extraordinary performance Dr. Krishna Prashad Oli (Nepalese) was replaced by Dr. Rajan Kortu (Indian) as the KSL Coordinator and role of Dr. Oli was minimized making him unable to do anything against the unfair management. To support Dr. Kotru, two other Indian Nationals - Dr. Gopal Rawat, Dr. Nakul Chhetri were added to the team.
• In December 2012, ICIMOD new Director General David Molden appointed most controversial Dr. Eklabya Sharma as full flexed Director Programme Operations without any announcement (please note Dr. Molden was selected as ICIMOD DG in June 2011 with strong reservation from Indian Government represented by Mr. Mr Tishya Chatterjee). ICIMOD staffs say, they were not even updated internationally about this decision. Interestingly, few months before this decision, Dr. Sharma was portrayed as Indian intelligence agent in a Pakistani newspaper. According to it, Dr. Sharma uses ICIMOD generated and managed data to develop plans against sensitive neighbors, mainly China and Pakistan and passes such sensitive information to India for further actions.
• Since then the team of Eklabya Sharma and Molden is running several activities against China for which Nepalese soil is used.

According to sources, below is the list of ongoing activities:

•  In the Indian side, Spiritual rallies and religious trips are organized aiming to develop religious extremism among the people who can then be prepared as rebellion for Free Tibet movement.
• In the northwestern districts of Nepal – Humla, Dolpa, Achham and Bajura, the team is forming group of people if Tibetan origin who can be mobilized against China in the name of Free Tibet movement.
• In Tibet, ICIMOD official are making unofficial visits to recreate Free Tibet movement among the Chinese Buddhists living in the areas close to Kailash. To keep their activities away from Chinese governments, ICIMOD officials travel to Tibet in Tourist Visa (in which other activities are banned), however they are heavily involved in social and scientific research defying norms of people traveling to China with Tourist visa. The illegal travelers include the ICIMOD DG David Molden as well who visited Kailash in September 2013.

These are few suspicious activities we have recorded so far, but people believe there is much more going on.

To stop anti-China activities from ICIMOD, it is essential that David Molden and Eklabya Sharma are suspended from ICIMDO and the KSL project responsibility is given to Nepalese capable staffs. The Government of Nepal should take smart steps to prevent conspiracy against our good neighbor China misusing Nepalese soil.

5 - Mountain Agenda sidelined as the conflict of political and personal interests at ICIMOD outbalances everything else (ii)

Coming soon. Come back later...

4 - Mountain Agenda sidelined as the conflict of political and personal interests at ICIMOD outbalances everything else (i)

Despite its bright past and some outstanding works, the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) is now giving the worst performance when it comes to advocacy of Mountain Agenda in the HKH region as well as outside, including major international processes. Please note, being a regional intergovernmental organization, ICIMOD's main focus is regional cooperation and policy advocacy.

Experts tell us this is primarily because of lack of vision, feeble leadership and serious lack of management skills of the present Director General (DG) Dr. David Molden who is neither a mountain expert nor a mountain thinker. Given a long list of weakness and inexperience of the Director General other senior staffs at ICIMOD are playing with his mind, manipulating the facts and imposing activities to fulfill their vested interest. Please find below list of selected activities, how they evolved in the past, their glory and how those success stories are unnecessarily killed by Director Molden and other senior management staffs at ICIMOD:

CASE I: Rio+20 Process – Preparations and Follow-up:

Evolution: 

Under the leadership of Dr. Madhav Karki, former Deputy Director General (DDG), ICIMOD made most important contribution to Himalayan and global mountain community by putting high the Mountain Agenda in the Rio+20 process. Started in April 2011, the Rio+20 preparations included several sounds of virtual as well as face to face consultation in the HKH as well as Southeast Asia Pacific Region. Several other experts played key role in making this process inclusive and voices heard. Dr. Golam Rasul, Programme Manger at ICIMOD played key role in developing concept of Green Economy in the context of developing and mountainous countries. Mr. Tek Jung Mahat, Project Manager and Node Manager – Asia Pacific Mountain Network (APMN) took this discussion among the youth and organized the largest ever e-conference among Asian youth that included over 550 contributors. 44 selected youth from 17 countries were invited to gather in Kathmandu in August 2011 for the Asia Pacific Youth Forum on Mountain Issues who later developed the Asia Pacific Youth Declaration on Climate Change and Sustainable Development, and the Asia Pacific Position Paper on Rio+20, the only input from Asian Youth to this global process. The team prepared Sustainable Mountain Development Assessment reports for the HKH and Southeast Asia Pacific region, issued Policy briefs and brought together Asia Pacific stakeholders (government, civil society, youth and media) to make the impacts larger in this process. This preparation was linked with activities in other regions led by trusted partners such as CONDESAN, SDC, UCA among others and the concept of Mountain Pavilion was realized during the Rio+20 conference itself, in which several advocacy programmes were organized, including a very high level meeting led by the Government of Nepal, which was attended by then Prime Minister Dr. Baburam Bhattarai, HE Gyan Acharya, High Representative for the Least Developed Countries, Landlocked Developing Countries and Small Island Developing States, Ministers and senior policy makers from several other mountainous countries. As a result of series of organized preparations, ICIMOD together with number of other global partners, was able to ensure presence of 3 paragraphs dedicated to mountains and mountain issues. Following to this Mr. Mahat involving several local partners organized another youth forum in 2012 in Katmandu and trained 40 youth from 13 Asia Pacific countries on Mountains and Green Economy. He furthered the initiative by developing National Youth Forums on Green Solutions in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Myanmar, Nepal and Pakistan and trained other 280 plus youth in their own countries considering the local reality and actions needed.

Failure: 

Despite huge success and a strong need to continue mountain issues advocacy works in the Post Rio+20, Post-2015 Development Agenda and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) drafting process, ICIMOD failed taking initiatives after December 2012, when Dr. Karki got retired. Several consultation meetings organized by UN systems, Civil Society (called Major Groups), regional institutions and interest groups in the Asia Pacific have not seen any mountain advocates after this (except occasional presence of representatives of the Government of Nepal). By now at least 5 major global initiatives have already completed their regional and thematic consultations on these topics and sadly ICIMOD was nowhere during those meetings. Staffs involved earlier were found complaining about ICIMOD system, lack of vision of its leaders and poor bureaucratic model that has paralyzed staffs from making any contributions. Such failures have caused mountain issues going under noticed in these discussions. If a mountain dedicated institute fails in ensuring these basic preparations or mountain advocacy, what can we expect from ICIMOD in future? How can the thought, vision and plan-less leadership at ICIMOD convince billions of stakeholders in the HKH on what they are doing for mountains and mountain people?

Why ICIMOD failed to continue this legacy?

·         After retirement of its DDG in December 2012, ICIMOD lacked a leadership to continue this legacy and keep the momentum going at global and regional level. Sadly, inadequate vision of present DG, political conspiracy in the background and power games at the Centre created a situation in which ICIMOD was not able to recruit the DDG, who had been leading such initiatives. Interestingly the post of DDG is still vacant (for more than 11 months) and many believe this is another conspiracy being hatched by the DG with other staffs at ICIMOD and select interest groups (few member countries) to sideline the Nepali community at ICIMOD and deviate ICIMOD’s interest from Nepal.

·         Even when previous leaders were leading this process there was extremely high level of opposition and no-cooperation from the DG and other staffs at ICIMOD as they were not able to fulfill their vested interest through ICIMOD preparation from Rio+20. Such oppositions had delayed production of assessment reports, affected several network meetings, and halted advocacy works. Most importantly ICIMOD’s work with Government of Nepal was largely affected as DG was always against Nepali Government and Nepali community at large.

·         Related to previous point, the DG is neither a mountain expert nor mountain thinker. So he rarely cares about such important events. For him keeping few people in his group is more important than overall achievement of the Center and Mountain Agenda.

·         Young professionals coordinating this process during preparations were badly discouraged from taking any actions as the DG and people close to him felt Mountain Agenda is personal work of former DDG and ICIMOD should not work on them anymore.

What a pity situation? If the Rio+20, Post-2015 Development Agenda and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) activities were personal work of former DDG Madhav Karki, let’s ask present Director General Dr. David Molden, what are his institute’s present works and priorities? – spoiling ICIMOD’s management? Marginalizing Nepali staffs and communities? Breaking laws of the host country? Making ICIMOD a battleground of Nepali and Non-Nepali staffs?

3 - ICIMOD milestones - ICIMOD may never see again such beautiful works

The International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) used to be seen as major hope for advocacy of Mountain Agenda and scientific developments in the Hindu Kush Himalayan region and globally when noted experts below offered leadership to some of the most recognized works of ICIMOD. Please find below a tentative timeline (in chronological order):

Dhital, M. R.; Deoja, B.; Thapa, B.; Wagner, A. and number of other experts pioneered work on Mountain Risk Engineering (MRE) in the early 1990s, whose handbook provided ready references of number of major construction works in Himalayas throughout 1990s and 2000s.

Prof Jayanta Bandyopadhyay, an Indian National working at ICIMOD was leading drafting of Chapter 13 of Agenda 21 (output document of the UN Conference on Environment and Development-UNCED, aka Rio Conference or Earth Summit) during early 1990s.

Prof. Narpat Singh Jodha, an Indian National working at ICIMOD defined mountains in terms of Mountain Specificities during late 1980s/early 1990s, which is still seen as the most widely accepted way of defining mountains and analyzing mountain issues and several positive and negative attributes.

Dr. Mahesh Baskota, a Nepalese National and former Deputy Director General of ICIMOD pioneered Mountain Agenda Advocacy in the entire Asia Pacific region by leading organization of the Sustainable Development of Mountain Areas of Asia (SUDEMAA) Conference in 1994, that institutionalised global Mountain Forum in Asia Pacific region through establishment of the Asia Pacific Mountain Network at ICIMOD with more than half dozen sub-nodes across the region. This pioneer work formally linked ICIMOD with rest of the world for Mountain Agenda advocacy.

Mr. Surendra Shrestha, Mr. Basanta Shrestha, Nepalese Nationals working at ICIMOD and others founded MENRIS division in early 1990s, which pioneered GIS and Remote Sensing work in the entire HKH region and trained thousands of experts in all ICIMOD countries.

Mr. Pradeep Mool, Mr. Samjwal Ratna Bajracharya, Mr. Basanta Shrestha, Mr Sharad Joshi (Nepalese nationals) and Mr. Deoraj Gurung (Bhutanese national) working at ICIMOD, among others, broke the silence about scientific understanding of Ice and Glaciers related researches in the region by developing baseline data in early 2000s and periodically updating them until recently.

Dr. Madhav Karki, Dr. Kamal Baskota and Dr Bhaskar Singh Karky, Nepalese nationals, among others penetrated climate change discussions at ICIMOD and took ICIMOD to global stage to advocate Mountain Agenda within climate change discussions from 2004-2012. These experts conceptualized and established provision of organizing dedicated Mountain Day as part of the UNFCCC meetings, helped prepared Government of Nepal to establish the Mountain Initiative (aka Mountain Alliance Initiative), helped Government of Bhutan for successful Living Himalayas Climate Summit and helped Indian mountain stakeholders replicate and learn from Mountain Initiative of Nepal.

Mr. Tek Jung Mahat and Mr. Daan Boom, Nepalese and Dutch Nationals working at ICIMOD gave a new height to the Asia Pacific Mountain Network (APMN) from 2007-2013, making it the most active virtual network of mountain stakeholders globally, conceptualizing and establishing first and largest platforms to capacitate and engage Media and Youth in Mountain Agenda Advocacy. During this period APMN trained over 570 youth from 20 Asia Pacific countries and over 75 media persons from all HKH and South Asian countries to research, understand, take action and report as well as advocate mountain issues, and developed a virtual network of over 6,000 stakeholders. This partnership also gave new directions to Knowledge Management approach at ICIMOD with development and introduction of a large set of KM tools, such as preparations of thematic digests, back to office reports, e-conference, e-surveys, e-election, digital photo contests, knowledge forums and brown bag seminars, write-shops etc.

Dr. Madhav Karki, Dr. Golam Rasul and Mr. Tek Jung Mahat, Nepalese and Bangaladeshi nationals together with global mountain stakeholders such as Mountain Partnership, Mountain Forum, CONDESAN, BIND, NTFP-EP, Indian Mountain Initiative and Governments of Nepal, Peru, Switzerland and Austria, and HE Gyan Acharya, High Representative for the Least Developed Countries, Landlocked Developing Countries and Small Island Developing States and Permanent Representative of Nepal to the United Nations as well as Chair of the Global Coordination Bureau of the Group of Least Developed Countries organized massive preparations to find better place for Mountains in the Rio+20 processes in 2011/12. Supported with more than 30 major events and number of background studies, success of this work is seen in the form of Rio+20 Outcome Document, in which three paragraphs are dedicated to mountains. This is the most important achievement so for the mountain stakeholders worldwide.

Sadly with the ongoing politics at ICIMOD, most of these contributors are maintaining a distance with ICIMOD and we fear ICIMOD may never see again such beautiful works if the present mismanagement at the Centre is not corrected.

2 - ICIMOD compromises its name and fame promoting Skoda Cars

There are some suspicions emerging over a partnership agreement made by Kathmandu based International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) with MAW Nepal - Official Agent of the Czech car-maker Skoda early this year. According to the partnership ICIMOD receives USD 15,000 equivalent (fifteen thousands dollars) from the automobile company to complement its ongoing research. But other side of the coin looks even more interesting:

• ICIMOD is one of most resourceful environmental organization in the Himalayan region with annual budget of approximately USD 20,000,000 (twenty millions dollars) for the year 2013. So, why ICIMOD needed a tiny USD 15,000 contribution from an automobile company to complement its ongoing research? This amount would hardly be equivalent to salary of the project coordinator for 3 months.ICIMOD already has profound financial resource received from donor and member countries, including Nepal and many bilateral or multilateral initiatives. So why it compromises its ethics for tiny USD 15,000?
• What qualifies a polluting automobile company to become first corporate partner of ICIMOD as Public Private Partnership initiative? There could be many other alternatives for good start with better impression, such as banks, and larger companies producing environmental goods and services or trekking companies and rural financing institutions to list a few. In the worst case ICIMOD cold have tried working with companies like REVA who produce electric cars. Most importantly, ICIMOD being a mountain institution it should have picked some mountain development relevant corporate houses for this pilot.
• Can it only be coincidence that out of over 200 staffs at ICIMOD, only two have Skoda Cars and those two are leading this partnership –Coordinator of the Atmosphere Initiative and PPP Officer at ICIMOD. Doesn’t it look fishy?
• All these suspicion looks real or very close to real seeing the promotion below in which ICIMOD is seen endorsing the polluting Skoda cars as environment friendly mobility option and cars are highlighted in the backdrop, which clearly shows Skoda’s sole intention is to market its Cars and ICIMOD is misused for this purpose. Sadly only ICIMOD logo is readable not the texts associated with it.

We leave it up to the readers to make conclusion. Are these kinds of partnerships going to help mountain people in the Himalayas? Or the corporatization of reputed environment organization will further jeopardize environmental issues in the region? Was it needed and wise for ICIMOD to partner with Skoda from any angle? What do you find more in this partnership – CSR or misuse of environmental organization’s name and reputation for exclusive benefit of a polluting automobile company?