Ajaya Dixit

Ajaya Dixit is Executive Director of Kathmandu based ISET-Nepal. His monthly column, Climate for Change, deals with the impact of global warming in Nepal.

Life in a time of cholera

The history of Kathmandu’s past epidemics is the story of power, disease, and dependency

Jan 3, 2026

Lessons for Nepal from the Chennai floods

Catastrophic urban floods are rooted in the mismanagement of key natural resources such as land, water, and ecological hotspots

Oct 6, 2025

Garmi Se Behal? Chalo Nepal.

Increasing heat in the Indo-Gangetic plains could force people to move. Nepal needs to be prepared.

Oct 8, 2022

Back to Glasgow, where it all began

World leaders must also take a walk, and undo the global crisis set off by the invention of the steam engine

Sep 27, 2021

The Water Emergency

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change was agreed in 1992 to deal with the increasing atmospheric concentration of carbon…

Nov 21, 2019

It's a jungle out there in Nepal and the Amazon

UP IN SMOKE: Failure of successive monsoons led to massive fires across Nepal, shown in a NASA satellite image from 12 March 2009, which covered…

Sep 13, 2019

The climate threat multiplier

Lhotse glacier, Chukung village to the far left. Photo: ALTON C BYERSMost of the recent talk within the UN Framework Convention on Climate…

Aug 9, 2019

Where is the monsoon this year?

Pic: MONIKA DEUPALAIn January 2018, Cape Town faced the possibility of executing a ‘Day Zero’ water plan: the city’s residents would have to…

Jul 5, 2019

Toxic bubble

Pic: BIKRAM RAIKathmandu is the centre of everything in Nepal: power, administration, public education, tourism, hospitals. Till the late 1970s,…

May 31, 2019

Life in the time of tornadoes

Tornado in Bara. Photo: RSSThis is the season for windstorms, and even though the whirlwind that hit the central Tarai on 31 March killing 28…

Apr 26, 2019

Climate risk to hydropower investment

In a normal winter, northern India and Nepal get 3-4 westerly disturbances. This year there were 12 frontal systems dumping snow and rain across…

Mar 22, 2019

Turning on the heat

Unprecedented in recorded history, there was a 100 degree C difference in temperature between the northern and southern hemispheres last week.…

Feb 8, 2019

Nepal's silent emergency: springs going dry

DRYING UP: Toni Hagen's famous panorama of Pokhara taken in 1955, and last week from near the same spot at Pokhara airport (below). Snow cover…

Jan 4, 2019

No smoke without fire

In all the debate about Nepal’s increasing fuel imports from India and the country’s growing carbon footprint, what gets lost is that nearly 80%…

Nov 30, 2018

Decarbonise now

The conclusion of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5ºC could not have been more blunt:…

Nov 2, 2018

The great Himalayan thaw

Hurricane Florence and typhoon Mangkhut, droughts and record-breaking temperatures this summer have highlighted the increasing threats of…

Oct 5, 2018

Disastrous unpreparedness

Floods have been part of the life and livelihoods of the people living in the Indo-Gangetic plains for millennia, though written historical…

Aug 18, 2017

Pipe dreams

The politics of water during a political transition

Feb 9, 2007

Many small plans

A 'Marshall Plan' is not an appropriate paradigm for Nepal

May 19, 2006

Greed, Inc.

How we, too, were nearly duped by Enron

Jul 23, 2004

Letter from America

The Americans are heading for elections in November as a deeply fractured nation. They are divided over the war in Iraq, over domestic health…

Feb 27, 2004

Unbundling the World Bank

A paradigm shift in the world's bank is necessary, and possible.

Jul 11, 2003

Beyond buzzwords

How can the planning commission goad the government towards accountability?

Nov 22, 2002

Damning Nepal

Nepal is not responsible for the floods in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh

Aug 16, 2000

Articles by Ajaya Dixit