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| Sustainable Development Agenda for Nepal |
Current Status and Future Agenda
Finding ways to achieve broad goals requires an understanding of the current situations and reality, and formulation of clear objectives. This section discusses status and objectives under following broad topics:
5.1 Income
5.2 Health, Population and Settlements
5.3 Forests, Ecosystems and Biodiversity
5.4 Education
5.5 Institutions and Infrastructure
5.6 Peace and Security.
These themes, rather than traditional sectors, are chosen to organize the discussion because they allow clearer linkages to the broad goals and presentation of crosscutting policies for sustainable development.
5.1 Income
This theme embraces sectors that have a direct bearing on generating sustainable incomes for poverty reduction around which people's livelihood and the nation's resource viability and development activities will be anchored. The included sectors are: agriculture and forestry, industry and services, hydropower and energy, remittance, trade and economic integration, and landscape marketing and tourism.
5.1.1 Agriculture and Forestry
Although its share of the national product is around 40%, an overwhelming majority of Nepalis and over two thirds of economically active population, is dependent on agriculture. In the last 40 years, however, agricultural productivity in Nepal in major grains has gone from being the highest in South Asia to being the lowest. The current rate is less than half its potential. Rural farmlands are usually fragmented and labor productivity is low. Only around 25% of all cultivated land is irrigated year around. Added to this the unpredictability of the monsoons, annual variation in production is wide. Around 50% of Nepal's 75 districts record food grain deficit. The 20-year Agricultural Perspective Plan (APP) launched in 1997 seeks to expand from subsistence farming into value-adding commercial ventures with a focus on infrastructure, fertilizers, research and extension services, and irrigation. However, progress on the APP to date has been less than satisfactory.
The most important objectives in the agricultural sector are to, i) enhance food security, ii) spur annual growth of agricultural GDP to at least 5% to alleviate rural poverty at a faster rate, and iii) increase rural employment. Attempts to increase production will have to go hand in hand with efforts to commercialize agriculture, radically diversify the production and processing of edibles, and increase the marketable value of those products.
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The Agricultural Perspective Plan offers a bedrock to build upon the successes and improve implementation. Ensuring food security in deficit districts will require better and affordable transport links from regions that produce or store grain. Primary focus will, however, remain on increasing total production and its value. Thus, increased irrigation coverage that is cost-effective is a must. Nepal has performed much better in constructing and sustaining small-scale irrigation schemes that are managed by farmers in a participatory manner. These grassroots successes will be replicated and widened. Similarly, Terai has a large potential for ground water irrigation at low cost. This potential needs to be utilized with priority.
Long-term, research expenditures into horticulture and high value crops is necessary for the idea of geographical specialization of mass-produced crops to materialize. Pockets of specialized production will be connected by requisite infrastructure to convenient locations for processing and export. Emphasis will be on international marketing. In the fertile Terai lands, emphasis will remain on grain production to ensure that Nepal can remain as independent of imports as possible to meet its domestic nutritional needs. In the more immediate run, the fertilizer policy will be directed at ensuring a consistent supply of reliable, affordable, and high quality inputs to small farmers. Trained female personnel will increasingly staff extension services. To reflect local needs, devolution of agricultural extension services will be assigned to local bodies, with technical backup from national resource farms and stations. These resource stations will ensure quality materials for local seeds, saplings, and breed multipliers.
Forest resources also play a major role in rural people's livelihoods, often serving as a major source of fuel, food, and fodder. HMG's Master Plan for the Forestry Sector (1989-2010) provides a long-term policy and planning framework, identifying major programs aimed at generating revenue to both the government and local communities. These specific programs are in community and private forestry, leasehold forestry, development of wood-based industries, aromatic plants and medicinal plants, soil conservation and watershed management, and conservation of ecosystems and genetic resources. Implementation will be focused on these programmes.
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5.1.2 Industry and Services
Industry and services together (non-agricultural sector) account for nearly 60% of the gross domestic product. Prior to 1990, Nepal had created a largely state-owned network of production that was heavily protected from foreign competition. Attempts to liberalize in the early 1990s diversified the non-agriculture sector, particularly in services, propelling national growth rates in the sector to as high as 9% in 1991 and 1992. Construction, finance and domestic airlines have seen increased levels of activity.
Political instability and policy inconsistency following the first wave of economic reforms, effects of a porous border with India, high cost of capital borrowing, lack of infrastructure especially power, and a weak civil service delivery have all inhibited a fuller growth potential. In fact, the situation at present, complicated by global economic slowdown and domestic instability and uncertainty, is dire with GDP growth rate having plummeted to 0.6% in 2001/02.
The pattern of industrial growth to be promoted will be consistent with HMG policies on clean energy and environmental safeguards. HMG's long-term objectives in this sector are to orient industries towards lighter areas in which Nepal may have a long-term edge and where transport cost matters less. Attention will also be paid to the production of trademark goods that are promoted by virtue of their origin in Nepal.
In services, HMG will focus upon particular areas that can generate sustainable streams of income while overcoming the hurdles of high transportation cost. Such sectors could be financial services, software, knowledge based industries, and biotechnology, with the first three requiring almost no physical transport of goods.
Industries and services will also need to absorb a greater share of the labor force and lighten the burden on the less productive agriculture sector. Need for better technical know-how and adequate financing also invites a special role for foreign direct investment over the next 15 years.
HMG will urgently harmonize all fragmented policies having an impact on this sector - from export promotion to revenue policies. Commitments to further liberalization will have to be supported by greater supervisory and regulatory roles on the part of HMG together with its obligation to provide public goods in the form of supporting infrastructure to designated industries.
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5.1.3 Remittance
Formal remittance from Nepali workers abroad is about 240 million dollars a year, which is about 4.4% of GDP, and the recent growth rate is in double digits. Money flowing in through informal channels is much higher. Remittance has thus become a significant source of income that has penetration and coverage across the country. The tradition of remittance supporting an unproductive agrarian economy is long, going back over 150 years to the beginnings of Gurkha recruitment. The purpose and pattern of today's youth exodus, however, is different. There are 200,000 officially recorded Nepali workers in the Gulf and East Asia; many times more work in India, but are unrecorded. Poverty, unemployment, and fears of terrorism have fuelled the outflow in recent years. The exodus of rural citizens sheds some pressure off agricultural land but also removes a large chunk of the agricultural labor force. Although remittance as a source of income has recently grown, the sustainability of remittance as a source of income is unpredictable, and the kind of jobs that Nepalis are employed at are mostly unskilled, low paying, and hazardous and have a direct bearing on the long-term sustainable development goals that aspire to assure a life of dignity and honor. Also, there has been a shortage of attractive investment opportunities within Nepal, leading a large fraction of remittance incomes to be inefficiently invested in real estate speculations.
Recognizing the immense growth of remittance in the economy, HMG will seek to channel remittance into productive investment through the nations' formal financial institutions. Monetary instruments such as selling government bonds to finance infrastructure such as roads and hydropower projects will be introduced on a wider scale with the goal of using foreign earned income to enhance domestic productive capacity. Upon accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO), Nepal's multi-lateral negotiations will seek to secure reciprocity in the form of increased access to Nepali workers (mode four of service supply in the General Agreement on Trade in Services) for any binding commitments it may undertake in services, intellectual property or any of the emerging issues (of investment, competition policy, and government procurement).
Three basic policies will govern HMG actions in this arena: i) through economic diplomacy, new and better markets for Nepali labor will be sought whose outflow will be orderly and better managed, ii) what citizens earn abroad will be encouraged to get channeled into the country through proper and formal banking channels, so that part of that inflow can be used for investments that enhance long-term production capacities, and iii) skills and experiences gained by workers overseas will be channeled into the economy with appropriate policies.
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5.1.4 Trade and Economic Integration
Completely isolated and least equipped with infrastructure until the country opened to external contact in 1950, Nepal has made substantial gains since. But, as its population has also almost quadrupled during the period, many of the material gains have been dissipated. Nepal today has one of the most liberal trading regimes in the region, and the extent of integration into the global economy is steadily increasing, with the export and import of goods and services constituting about 40% of GDP. However, in addition to the curable constraints such as lack of incentives, markets, and finance, the country faces a more fundamental handicap. While Nepal's neighbors present potentially lucrative markets to Nepali agricultural and other specialized products, with no direct access to navigable rivers or sea, Nepal's ability to trade globally in manufactured goods and bulky, unprocessed product is restricted.
HMG will seek to secure lucrative markets for Nepali products in the region as well as around the globe. But in the climate of ever-increasing competition, Nepali products will have to be increasingly differentiated. They will also have to come from industries that can be sustained and nurtured on domestic strengths. One neglected aspect, for example, is the export of premium brand, value-added agricultural products. The traditional sectors of strength remain energy and tourism. HMG will learn from lessons of the past where Nepal's primary earners of foreign exchange were fickle and unsustainable.
Nepal will accede to the World Trade Organization. By conforming to the rules and obligations under a multi-lateral trading framework, Nepal hopes to take advantage of global markets as well as offer a predictable policy regime of standardized regulations to attract foreign direct investment. HMG also seeks to be an active player in regional free trade blocs such as SAPTA. However, economic integration requires a high level of institutional preparedness at home. HMG will thus pursue a carefully managed process of opening up, with gradual liberalization. Increasingly, state control of means of production and exchange will also be liberalized.
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5.1.5 Landscape, Marketing and Tourism
Although tourist arrivals have recently declined due to domestic and international violence, the attractiveness of Nepal's landscape and heritage to foreign visitors remain unchanged. The mountains and valleys that provide spectacular vistas can be maintained as Nepal's permanent resource. In addition, Nepal's rich cultural heritage as well as Nepali people's friendly reputation provide further attractions to foreign visitors, as does the rich biological heritage of national parks and protected areas. To date, Nepal has only tapped a small fraction of the potential income and benefit of marketing its landscape: First, average visitors do not stay long enough, and do not spend enough. Second, tourism income is spread unevenly. Third, the last two decades have seen insufficient marketing and promotion of alternative tourist destinations and attractions around the country. Fourth, Nepal has been losing potential visitors to competing countries, because of inadequate marketing and inadequate as well as overpriced flight connections.
Tourism is an easy source of income for Nepal, requiring relatively less investment, and providing many jobs; at times it can even take advantage of the lack of infrastructure in remote areas. However, reliance on tourism income is risky and vulnerable to factors beyond Nepal's control: economic condition in visitors' countries, domestic and international violence and negative media reports.
More has to be done to both promote domestic tourism and to attract foreign visitors who stay longer and contribute more. There is both the opportunity and the need to use Nepal's landscape, and the quality of life (including recreation) that it allows, to attract highly trained professionals to live in Nepal (and institutions that support these) who not only benefit Nepal by providing jobs and services, but also attract visits by thousands of their own clients. In particular, Nepal would be well served by attracting world-class educational and health care institutions, which can then use the Himalayan locations to attract top-paying students and patients. Nepal would also be well served by attracting wealthy retirees who are visited frequently by friends and family, as well as software developers, whose high-value export products are weightless.
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5.1.6 Energy and Hydropower
Today biofuels provide 87% of the energy consumed in Nepal, fossil fuels provide 12%, and electricity around 1%. In rural areas, particularly in the hills, it is likely that efforts of management by communities can regenerate and sustain the forest biomass. Rural livelihoods in Nepal today are also constrained by the limited availability of energy, and by the hard labor costs of obtaining biofuel energy.
In urban areas, imported fossil fuels account for 90% of the total energy use, including for cooking, transport and industry. In sub-urban and newly urbanizing areas, biofuels for cooking are giving way to kerosene and other imported fossil fuels. Substitution in cooking fuels and expansion of the road network makes imported fossil fuels the fastest growing energy source in the country. Except for solar water heating in urban areas and some biogas production in rural areas, the use of other renewable energy sources is very small. In recent years there has been growth in the use of photovoltaic systems in rural communities. However, electricity is available to just 40% of the country's population, mostly urban. Only 5% of the population in rural areas has access to electricity. Yet the energy potentially available from hydropower in Nepal is among the highest in the world. Only 1% of the economically accessible hydropower is tapped. This provides not just a potential for meeting a large fraction of domestic energy needs with a clean source, but, as Nepal is bordered by a heavily populated energy starved region to its south, hydropower also represents a large potential source of export income. Prior to 1992, hydropower in Nepal was developed by HMG with donor assistance. The past decade has seen the growth of private investment and Nepali companies, as well as a drop in construction cost per electricity unit.
In the next 15 years, Nepal is to make strong strides not only towards meetings its own energy needs with domestic renewable sources, but also to produce the energy cheaply enough to make domestic industries competitive, and to create conditions whereby surplus hydroelectricity can be exported. Conditions will also be created to allow the construction of export-oriented hydropower projects, which can earn Nepal an income besides other benefits, including flood control, irrigation and dry-season water source. Especially with large projects, environmental equity and justice issues will have to be properly addressed, such that communities living near power plants are adequately compensated for their losses and receive a fair share of the benefits of the project.
Hydropower investments are to be increasingly financed in Nepali rupees, while design and construction of increasingly larger projects is to be carried out by Nepali expertise. In the initial stage, there is to be complementarity (in terms of who builds run-of-the river and who builds multi-purpose peaking projects) between the government and private investment to avoid a waste of resources. However, the government itself will slowly step out of the business of building power plants and supplying electricity. Development of community-driven, innovatively financed small and micro hydropower plants and other isolated and standalone renewable energy sources like solar, biogas and wind will play a vital role in meeting the energy demand of the country, especially in areas where extending the central grid connection is expensive.
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5.2 Health, Population and Settlements
This theme embraces sectors that impinge on the overall quality of life. This includes longevity, control of morbidity, family planning, population and migratory pressures, housing and living space, quality of air and water, and waste management. Discussed here are those components of the environment that directly impact on human health.
5.2.1 Longevity
The average life expectancy of Nepalis today has reached 61.9 years. Unlike the global trend though, women's life expectancy is lower than men's. More crucially, there has also been a sharp reduction in child mortality in the past thirty years, from 200 deaths per 1,000 live births to around 64.2 today. Maternal mortality rates, however, remain high at around 415 per 100,000 live births with only around 13% of deliveries attended by trained health staff. High prevalence of iron anemia in Nepali women (75%) together with early marriages also contributes to a high maternal mortality rate. Nutritional deficiency affects almost half the children although with supplementary medical interventions (like Vitamin A), it has been slowly receding among the under-5 children since 1990. The average mortality rates, however, hide regional disparity, as well as the serious problems of malnutrition, inadequate health spending and outreach, and lack of viable income in many rural pockets. Problems of alcohol and drug consumption in urban areas are also growing threats to public health.
While increased national incomes have a strong correlation with increased social spending on health, long-term HMG objectives will center around increasing the span of healthy lives by expanding coverage and quality of essential and important forms of health services to all Nepalis. In line with the Millennium Development Goals, HMG will be directing its efforts to reduce under-five mortality by two thirds and to reduce maternal mortality ratio by three-quarters by 2015. HMG also expects life expectancy to cross 70 years by 2017.
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5.2.2 Disease Control and Disability Relief
Incidences of diarrhea, neo-natal tetanus, acute respiratory tract infections, polio, measles, and tuberculosis are all very high among Nepali children. Immunization coverage of infants against diseases is far below universal. In fact, less than 40% of under-fives are fully immunized. HIV/AIDS among adults is a growing problem. Recent estimates that accept the caveat of under-reporting put the total number of HIV/AIDS infected people at over 35,000. Although available records cite only around 2% of the population as disabled, actual figure could be much higher than this. Per capita public expenditures in health is generally low at 2 US dollars per annum. The effectiveness of the existing health infrastructure suffers from bottlenecks ranging from poor supply of medicines in the rural areas to natural disease burdens that arise because of poverty-environmental linkages. Progress has been made in recent years in improving low cost domestic drug production.
A fundamental policy objective of HMG is to universalize primary health care. With the creation and maintenance of health posts in all villages of the country, HMG projects that almost everyone in the country will be able to access a medical institution and cost-effective delivery of treatment within a few hours of travel time. HMG also expects to increasingly transfer management of sub-health posts to local communities. In the debut year of 2002/03, this policy benefited 20 sub-health posts in 10 districts.
Specific policies will center on targeted attention on nutrition for children, access to basic health services, both curative and preventive, in all remote villages including commitments to implement the National Plan for Safe Motherhood (2001-2017). Better coordination with other services such as potable drinking water, sanitation, and education will also be forged together with increased informational awareness on the causes of neo-natal, child mortality and general disease burden. These priorities call for increased per capita spending on public health, procurement of cheap generic drugs, greater involvement of local bodies and communities in communication drive. Policies aimed at reversing HIV/AIDS trend also call for prioritized attention to the most vulnerable groups. All policies and results aimed at enhancing longevity of Nepalis will be centrally monitored and coordinated. For this, the institutional strengthening of the health administration, especially at the district level is needed to step-up preventive and curative health services. HMG will also balance the need for upstream medical specialists and downstream public health workers. Priority on the latter will center on creating a large number of trained health workers, especially female. Nepal's disabled population will also be assisted with socio-economic relief and redresses both from the state and non-governmental organizations.
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5.2.3 Family Planning and Migration
Institutionalized state intervention in family planning began only some 30 years ago. While the total fertility rate has declined much since, it is still high at around 4.1. Knowledge about contraception has increased sharply, but actual use of contraception among non-pregnant married women of reproductive age is low at 30%. High fertility, in addition to lowered mortality rate, and immigration, have caused the population to grow at a fast rate of 2.25%, although it has declined from an even higher rate of 2.6% in the 1980's. Other things remaining the same, at the current growth rate of 2.25%, the population is bound to double in the next 30 years to almost 48.5 million.
Migration, both internal from the hills to the plains and external from India into Nepal, and vice-versa, is widespread. While movement of Nepali migrants to India is seasonal, prompted by low rural wages and agricultural slack periods in Nepal, many of the workers coming from India are more skilled and employed in the high wage paying manufacturing sector. Travel costs and lack of economic opportunities within the country have also distorted migratory movements of Nepalis, with most migrants from far- and mid-western Nepal preferring to travel to India rather than to central and eastern Nepal. Within the domestic labor market, the use of child labor is also a major concern.
Population growth in Nepal will be brought down to around 1% by 2017 through coordinated interventions in reproductive health and family planning, as well as regulation of migratory flows. The fertility rate has to be decreased considerably with an increased contraceptive prevalence rate. While employment-inspired labor movements are not abnormal in developing economies, the problem of seasonal migration in mid and far western regions of Nepal is quite serious - from the point of view of lost national labor, disrupted family and social ties, and health risk brought back by migrants. These demand a targeted attention of HMG in spearheading infrastructure and employment related development.
Over the past few decades there has been growth in the illegal practice of luring a sizable number of young Nepali women into prostitution within Nepal and abroad. Human trafficking of all forms is disgraceful, impacting directly the health, freedom and dignity of a person. HMG will work to eliminate all forms of forced migration and sexual exploitation; introduce stricter legal provisions to convict and punish perpetrators; strengthen efforts, with the help of NGOs, to rehabilitate trafficked girls and women; and address the underlying causes that make Nepali women vulnerable to trafficking and sexual exploitation.
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5.2.4 Urbanization, Housing and Living Space
Although later and slower than in many countries, Nepal's population is gradually shifting from living in villages to living in urban areas. Concentration of population and economic activities in certain urban centers has created imbalance in the demand and supply of infrastructure and services; migration and urban growth has resulted in an urban housing shortage, crowded living spaces, growth of substandard squatter housing, and a rapid loss of per capita public space, including accessible green space and space for children to play, as well as permanent losses of prime forest and agricultural land. Many rural as well as some urban households using bio-fuels for cooking suffer from considerable indoor air pollution. Only 76% of urban households and 71% of rural households have piped water supply; only 76% of urban and fewer rural households have access to toilets. Current home environments and settlement patterns provide unhealthy living conditions for a large fraction of Nepal's population and they represent wasted resources with high opportunity cost. With a few exceptions, urban growth in Nepal has taken place in an unplanned manner that has contributed to public health hazards, as well as to high costs and complications in the delivery of infrastructure and services.
SDAN objectives include providing all people living in Nepal with access to safe drinking water and to adequate sanitary facilities within and around their homes. Smokeless stoves are to be promoted to decrease indoor air pollution from bio-fuel. In the longer run, as Nepal's electricity supply builds up, even rural households will be encouraged to switch to cooking with electricity (or bio-gas). In urban areas, local governments will be directed to create zoning codes that ensure adequate public and recreational spaces, as well as protection of forests, riverbanks, agricultural land, and other common assets. In particular, urban growth will be directed to result in compact settlements that promote walking and use of public transportation, and that both provide adequate public space while protecting the best agricultural and forest lands in the rural areas, healthy settlement environment will be promoted.
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5.2.5 Air Quality
As mentioned in the previous section, a large fraction of Nepal's population is routinely exposed to unhealthy levels of indoor air pollution from biofuel combustion. The problem is especially acute for women (who spend more time exposed to kitchen fires), and during winter heating. Outdoor air quality in Nepal varies widely in space and time, but is generally getting worse. Several urban and industrial areas (particularly the Kathmandu Valley) experience concentrations of airborne particulates that are above WHO health standards. Concentrations of pollutant gases, such as CO, ozone, NO2, and SO2 are today mostly below health limits, but emissions of these gases or their chemical precursors is growing rapidly within and upwind of Nepal. Emissions sources within Nepal include motor vehicles with poor maintenance and little tailpipe emissions control (these dominate emissions in some urban areas and highway corridors), factory smokestacks, widespread use of cooking for firewood, winter heating, as well as forest fires during the dry season. Meanwhile, combustion of biofuels in open stoves is responsible for hazardous indoor air pollution in large numbers of households in Nepal. This affects women more than men, as they typically spend much more time near the stove.
Outdoor air pollution is an especially large concern in the Kathmandu Valley, where half the country's vehicles, 57% of the country's industries, and 6% of the country's population pollute a very small volume of air confined by surrounding mountains and often also by a temperature inversion "lid" over the top. Any mountain valley with little ventilation is susceptible to severe air pollution problem if subject to large local emission sources. Remote areas in the country still have relatively clean air; this is a marketable asset for attracting visitors. However, clean air is under threat even in remote areas without large local emission sources: Nepal is downwind from mega-cities and growing industrial areas in India and Bangladesh.
The 15 years objectives include: setting strictly enforced ambient air quality standards, whose exceedance requires immediate cuts in activities responsible for emission, as well as requiring adequate control of emission from vehicle tailpipes and industry smokestacks. HMG will encourage the shift towards zero-emission vehicles, especially in dense urban areas, and the shift towards clean sources of industrial energy. HMG will also create conditions that foster the growth of institutions that increase domestic research and monitoring capability of air quality, and to create conditions that facilitate the establishment of domestic research and monitoring capacity for tracking the trans-boundary transport of air pollution into Nepal to provide necessary data for effective international negotiations. Meanwhile, HMG will also ensure the spread of cleaner stove technology and alternative cooking fuel sources to reduce indoor air pollution.
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5.2.6 Water Supply and Quality
As most springs feeding Nepal's streams and rivers are within the country (and those outside are on the sparsely populated Tibetan plateau) ensuring water quality is mostly in Nepal's own hands. Himalayan springs provide water that is sufficiently pure and potential for bottling and export. In recent decades, rivers downstream of cities and industrial areas have become increasingly contaminated by raw sewage and industrial effluents. Ponds near dense settlements have fared even worse. Public health in settlements depending upon surface water for drinking water is increasingly threatened. Meanwhile, in the Terai, there is growing concern about high natural levels of toxic arsenic in pumped ground water, while in the Kathmandu Valley, the rate of ground water extraction exceeds the recharge rate.
Access to adequate water is an acute problem in the major cities. In the remote areas supply of piped water is very much limited. Providing adequate quantities of safe drinking water to all households is of utmost priority. The discharge of untreated wastewater into rivers and lakes is to be forbidden, and enforced by local governments. Regulations and incentives are to be introduced for urban and industrial areas to build and operate wastewater treatment plants. Where drinking water sources are not adequately clean (for example with the arsenic pollution in the Terai), HMG will work to ensure that water is properly treated.
5.2.7 Solid Waste Management
The increase in inorganic packaging material and broken appliances has in recent decades created solid waste management problem that did not exist when households mostly composted or reused organic waste. Today garbage litters streets and trekking trails as well as pollutes rivers around many settlements in Nepal. Collection for recycling or re-use of inorganic materials is mostly confined to the informal economy run by low-income laborers whose services are inadequately recognized.
The objectives by 2017 include promotion of a reduction in waste volume, as well as increased reuse and recycling. HMG will also encourage research and industry to work together to create cyclical flows of materials, requiring factory products to be easily disassembled and separated by material, and factory byproducts to be reused. HMG will also create conditions that facilitate the establishment of recycling centers that have economies of scale, and the establishment of hazardous waste management centers whose costs are paid for by products that emit the waste. Only non-recyclable waste is to be disposed in environmentally sound sanitary landfills.
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5.3 Forests, Ecosystems and Biodiversity
Development efforts can never be sustainable if they deplete natural resources and damage ecosystems. Environmental conservation should not be an after-thought of modern economic development; it is an intrinsic and inviolable party to prospects of poverty reduction and sustainable economic growth. In Nepal this is made particularly clear by the vulnerability of the mountains upon which many of our development efforts are centered. Any development effort that involves a physical change (whether through infrastructure construction or incentives that change migration or agricultural patterns) can have a long chain of consequences whose prediction requires deep understanding of the whole system of linkages between human economy, physical environment, and biotic ecosystems that inhabit and maintain the physical environment.
In contrast to other sections, discussion here will not be subdivided into subtopics. This is to facilitate an overview of linkages and to a better understanding of the present status of related topics in context.
The same topography that poses challenges to infrastructure development also has provided Nepal with a rich ecological diversity and forest resources. Within this mostly forested landscape live a large variety of animals, in a large variety of niches and micro-habitats made possible by the differences in temperature, altitude and moisture at different locations. Nepal has 118 types of forest ecosystems and it is inhabited by 9.3% of the world's bird and 4.5% of the world's mammal species.
The relative scarcity of land has forced the cultivation of steep slopes. Farmers have developed intricate, labor-intensive terracing techniques for cultivating slopes, aiming for minimal loss of top soil and micro-control of water flow. The subsistence farming that developed across much of the hills depended upon a close linkage between crop cultivation, livestock raising and forests. Forests provided firewood and animal fodder (among many other products), animals provided milk and meat, as well as fertilizer for the fields. The man-made and natural ecosystems were managed to function together to provide resources and services that sustained human life.
Fast degradation of forest land is a post 1950's phenomenon. During the 1950's, nationalization of forests took place leading to the removal of the ownership and management of resource base away from villagers without changing the demand for forest products. In addition, Nepal's population growth accelerated, roads were constructed that provided easy access to urban areas with growing demand for timber and firewood, while increasing number of foreign trekkers visited mountain areas consuming additional firewood. The result was a significant degradation and loss of hill forests, accompanied by other forms of land degradation.
First illegally and later encouraged by changed government policy, many villagers, with an especially active role by women, took conservation of forests into their own community hands. Today, community forest management in rural Nepal is a rare item in which Nepal has become a world leader. Although the country as a whole still faces net deforestation, many areas in the middle hills, where community forestry has been especially active, have seen a re-growth of forest biomass.
Over the past three decades, HMG has also been active in identifying areas of high biological diversity needing protection. Initially national parks were established from which the local inhabitants were displaced. The social problems thus generated, as well as the limited extent to which national parks could be created by removing people led to much learning and changing strategies. Initiatives were taken with conservation areas where people play an active role in managing the protected areas that they live in or near.
Even today, Nepal's poorest stratum depends most upon biodiversity products freely gathered from forests and other public lands. For instance, species diversity supplies a range of wild plant and animal products on which people rely for subsistence, barter and trade: foods, including fruits, nuts, fish, insects, and roots, wood for fuel, making tools and implements, furniture, grasses, reeds and leaves for thatch, mats, baskets, wrapping and fodder, leaf litter for fertilizer and various other products which are used as medicines, soaps, or for ritual purposes.
Over the next fifteen years, HMG will continue to pursue an adaptive, flexible policy that allows learning from experience to create an optimal management framework. Today, national parks and other protected areas cover about 18% of Nepal's land area, among the highest percentages in the world. Presently, the protected area locations are more concentrated in the Terai and high mountain areas, while hilly regions are underrepresented. The hills, however, are the region where community forest management is also most successful and has a potential of being extended to wider management of ecosystems. The management and conservation of ecosystem in Nepal faces several challenges. Terai and Siwalik forests continue to be lost at a rapid rate, generating concerns that in the future protected areas may become islands of natural vegetation surrounded by growing settlements. Species, such as tigers, rhinos and Asiatic wild elephant, which need large areas for survival are threatened by steady fragmentation of habitats.
Creative, well informed, and enforced land use planning is required to maintain a landscape complex of natural vegetation connecting protected areas together such that species can roam freely over a large enough area to sustain their populations. The Conservation Areas and Buffer zones are managed by local communities. Today such areas represent nearly half of the total protected areas in the country. The future of the biodiversity conservation program lies in the effective broadening of community based conservation programs. In the future, Nepal's biodiversity will also be increasingly threatened by externally imposed environmental challenges, including possible acidification of precipitation as well as changing climates that require species migration.
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5.4 Education
Education is both a strong means and an end to sustainable development. An educated and skilled workforce is not only a crucial ingredient for activities that raise income per capita and well-being in general, but the pursuit of knowledge is an end in itself with immeasurable spill-over benefits to the person, family, community, and nation. Education has a direct bearing also on the quality of leadership that a society produces.
5.4.1 Primary Education and Adult Literacy
Today Nepal's adult literacy rate (15+age group) is still low: about 50%. It also varies by population and gender: 67% for male and 35% for female, giving a literacy gender parity of 0.56. It varies greatly by ethnic and indigenous groups and between regions of the country. Adult education programs have only touched a fraction of the illiterate population. Among school-age children, over 30% of boys and 40% of girls do not begin school. Even students attending school face high dropout and grade repetition rates: children, especially girls, bear heavy household workloads (fetching water, collecting fodders, caring youngsters and grazing animals); schools are a long walk from home for about 25% of the primary school students; and many households cannot afford the cost of sending their children to school. Private schools are mostly concentrated in urban areas and market centers. Many schools in rural Nepal often suffer from poor instruction quality, teacher truancy as well as shortages of books and other educational materials. There is increasing recognition that primary schools would be better run if they were community owned, with teachers directly accountable to parents. HMG has already begun taking concrete steps to support and expand this.
Sustainable development objectives include raising primary school attendance of every girl and boy to 100%, building more schools such that no primary school is more than half an hour walk from home, as well as raising the quality of instruction by providing better educational materials as well as teacher training courses. The primary school curriculum will also be revamped to teach more skills. There will also be more regional specificity in the curriculum so that pupils can learn about their local geographical and cultural vicinity as well as the rest of the world. The growing number of private schools will also need to be regulated through broad legislative directives to rationalize school fees and services rendered. Private educational establishments at all levels will also be encouraged to fulfill social responsibilities by setting aside scholarships for poor, deserving girls and boys especially from disadvantaged ethnic and indigenous groups.
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5.4.2 Secondary, Higher Secondary and Vocational Education
Although the number of lower secondary and secondary schools increased five fold between 1971 and 1997, the enrollment rates are still significantly lower than in primary schools. By secondary school age, the enrollment rate drops to less than a quarter for boys and less than one eighth for girls. The gender difference is a problem resulting from both the lack of awareness about the importance of female education as well as societal assumptions of the role of the male as the breadwinner. Between the secondary and the higher secondary (grades 11 and 12) level, there is a great attrition rate, as less than a third of students each year pass the School Leaving Certificate Examination that gives access to grade 11.
Education objectives include raising the enrollment of girls to the same level as that of boys, and raising the enrollment of both at all levels. The education system is to be improved to allow for better access and quality.
Further objectives include raising the number and quality of schools available throughout the country at the secondary and higher secondary levels, as well as establishing well-endowed scholarship funds to make access to quality education independent of family financial situations. In the short term, enhancing quality in schools would directly depend upon performance of teachers. Their pay and perks will thus need to be partially tied to their performance as measured, for instance, by standardized national and zonal exam results of their students.
Formal vocational training resulting in certificates is in its infancy in Nepal. Most workers learn their skills on the job; in general technical skill levels are low throughout the population. Nine technical schools in Nepal teach 16 different skills to students holding a 10th grade diploma; however the number enrolled is barely a tenth of the number of students who fail the SLC (10th grade) examination each year. The result is that a large number of youths neither can gain the skills needed for productive employment nor can continue to pursue higher education.
HMG objectives also include greatly increasing the vocational training choices available to students who are unwilling or unable to continue formal education. Especially important will be the establishment of a widespread system of stipend-paying, monitored and accredited apprenticeships in the private sector which provide young women and men with the skills necessary to advance in occupations of their choice. Not to fragment scarce resources, and to promote synergies, HMG will also encourage the annexing of vocational wings to existing schools. It will also be important to keep access open to people of all ages by facilitating retraining
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5.4.3 Tertiary Education and Research
College and university education in Nepal has a long road ahead to becoming internationally competitive. Today, about 150,000 students are enrolled in campuses of the state-run Tribhuvan University (TU). In many faculties, quality of instruction and reputation of graduates has much room for improvement, as evidenced by the performance of graduates on the job market. In addition, especially during the past decade, TU's ability to function effectively has been hampered by frequent changes in politically appointed administrative posts, and by excessive political activism among students. A small number of recently founded private universities have established a reputation for quality instruction; but their small enrollment and high prices put them out of reach for most students. The last decade has seen a rapid growth in number of Nepali students pursuing tertiary education overseas, often at high cost to the family, and with a high loss rate to Nepal of students who do not return.
Fifteen years from now, Nepal is to have a university system that provides access and choices to any citizen who qualifies on the basis of merit, and produces well-trained graduates. A homegrown network of independent competing private as well as community colleges, universities, and research institutions is to be fostered through appropriate government policy.
Increasingly, state university students will be expected to cost-share in university education through user fees, or to receive scholarships and loans when deserving. This will screen students with the right motivation to pursue higher education. In order to increase choice, competition, quality, and reputation, and also to increase domestic revenue, Nepal will make itself attractive for private and especially foreign investment in the tertiary education sector.
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5.5 Institutions and Infrastructure
This chapter brings together sectors that facilitate a sovereign citizen's meaningful participation in all aspects of the nation's political, economic, and socio-cultural life, as well as provide the backbone upon which the nation's economy will function. Topics include issues of access and representation in state entities, transport, and communication facilities. Hydropower infrastructure was already discussed in section 5.1.
5.5.1 Access to and Representation in the State and Governance
Exercise of good citizenship and people's participation in community and public affairs is both a means and an end of sustainable development. The 1990 Constitution makes the people of Nepal sovereign and a source of all state power. In a diverse country with many ethnic and religious groups, gender imbalance, and geographical differences, the pattern of access and representation of citizens in institutions of the state is, however, not even and representative. Among the three branches of state, the executive has the most visible presence; however inadequate institutional capacity, inefficiency in management, centralized structure, and systemic bureaucratic apathy coupled with a general lack of accountability and transparency have hindered and weakened proper discharge of state services. Nepal's reinstated democracy since 1990 has allowed citizens to become increasingly vocal and assertive in their demand from the state. Participation in national and local elections is widespread and the ability of citizens to organize into interest groups is becoming stronger. However, adequate participation by women, ethnic minorities and deprived sections has not adequately materialized in public affairs.
HMG's continuing objectives in this area will be to build upon the momentous gains enshrined in the 1990 Constitution - the source of sovereignty and of civic and political freedoms - to secure and increase the level of people's participation in public affairs, and promote the ease with which citizens have access to fair, accountable, transparent, and efficient services of the state. Public institutions will increasingly be represented and staffed by a wide range of ethnic groups and by a fair share of women. HMG's over-arching objective in the structure of government will be to redress the skewed pattern of access and representation. This is most important because HMG explicitly recognizes the country's diversity of heritage, ideas, ways of thinking, and practices as a source of national pride and strength.
Fairer, easier and more equitable access to and representation of citizens in state institutions need consistent, long-term, and coordinated strategies from education and urban policy to legal design and construction of physical infrastructure. All HMG policies will, thus, be informed and influenced by a need to ensure that all citizens irrespective of ethnicity, religion, caste, creed, and sex have access to and become part of all organs of the state. Decentralization of administration and political devolution have remained long-standing HMG policies which will be promoted over the coming years through substantive legal and financial autonomy. It is HMG's view that increased access and participation of citizens in community and state affairs not only expedites meaningful development efforts, but that these are also linked with the fundamental ends of development themselves, such as citizen honor and dignity. HMG recognizes that because this theme is important and all encompassing, it should and will cut across all national polices in every sector.
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5.5.2 Transport Network
The efficiency of the country's transport network affects population movement, the government's ability to deliver services, and the overall economy. A large part of the country is yet to be connected with modern transport; vast areas, especially northern parts of Nepal, are still several days walk from the nearest road; 15 districts have no road access. The domestic air transport network is extensive and plays an important role for many parts of the country, but it is unaffordable to much of the population. There is one international airport with a handful of overpriced flights. Government control, a state-owned monopoly, and bilateral agreements instead of open sky policies have suppressed competition on international routes and kept the number of flights small.
The last decade has seen major achievements in the surface transport sector with a doubling of the total road length, as well as the construction of many roads connecting villages. In some cases, these have been poorly built leading to loss of topsoil and triggering landslides. Cable cars, which have a lot of potential for transporting people and goods in mountainous areas are gradually attracting the private sector. Today, there is one operational railroad connecting a very short stretch. Nepal has several all-weather road connections to India, and one to China. The transport of goods to and from overseas takes place either by air or via a lengthy route through Calcutta harbor, making transportation cost expensive. Meanwhile traffic growth in several urban areas, most notably in the Kathmandu Valley, create the urgent need for planning of sustainable urban mobility that is efficient and flexible, while protecting air quality and cultural heritage.
Objectives by 2017 include providing most of the VDCs with at least one modern form of transport, as well as improving walking and mule trails. Most local roads will be constructed with local level decision-making using eco-friendly techniques. The private sector is to be attracted to the construction and maintenance of roads. There is also to be an exploration of the use of motor barges on some of the larger rivers (perhaps with the removal of key rocks), as well as the invitation for the private sector and foreign investors to build and operate passenger and cargo railroads connecting the major urban areas of Nepal, perhaps through Build Operate Transfer (BOT) arrangements. In urban areas, local governments are to be assisted with necessary expertise to plan their own local transportation systems to efficiently and cleanly transport people and goods.
The private sector and foreign investors are also invited to build, improve and operate airports at sites that allow growth without noise concerns: the largest would be in the Terai area of Nepal with the capacity to develop into an intercontinental air travel hub of a scale not possible in Kathmandu. Connected to major cities in Nepal (as well as northern India) by efficient surface transport as well as by regular shuttle flights, this airport would handle most of Nepal's intercontinental and regional flights. The private sector would also be invited to invest in two somewhat smaller international airports serving the eastern and the mid-to-far western regions of Nepal (as well as adjoining parts of India) with regular flights to important cities in South Asia, to regions with trade/labor connection, and cargo flights.
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5.5.3 Communication Network
Similar to the transport network, communication in Nepal made great strides in the last decade. Telephone lines increased several fold, vast rural areas received telephone lines, and cellular coverage was started in major urban areas and along highways. However, low income, low literacy level, and low access to electricity, among other factors, have to date limited expansion of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and perhaps widened the digital divide between social groups. Radio and television coverage are still not nation-wide, although the number of privately operated FM radio stations has risen from zero to twenty. Local bodies like the Kathmandu Metropolis has also started their own FM radio services. ISPs have started providing internet services in major cities, while two new private television channels supplement the state-owned Nepal Television. The print media has also become most vibrant after 1990, with a healthy growth of national broad-sheets and newsmagazines.
The entire telephone network is operated by a government-owned monopoly. Communication policies are gradually being liberalized and they are showing results. A regulatory body on telecom has already been formed with the expectation that the state-owned telecom corporation will only be one of many players in the future. Some services, such as mobile phones, are already licensed to private providers. Much remains to be done. During the conflict micro-wave telephone repeater towers have been targeted and destroyed, cutting off several districts and demonstrating the vulnerability of a system dependent upon a small number of key nodes.
Telecommunication objectives include further liberalization and privatization of domestic fixed and wireless infrastructure and services, as well as creating a network with built-in redundancies and back-up routings such that destruction of one node cannot interrupt services.
By 2017, there is to be telephone as well as internet service in every VDC. Telecommunication access is to be improved through public as well as private investment. The latter is to be facilitated by legal provisions, fiscal incentives, and supportive operational regulations. HMG foresees a strong private sector role in this area and even public utilities will need to be guided by innovative, cost effective, and value-adding services. HMG has incorporated ICT in academic curricula and seeks to create a growing pool of human resources in this field. Management of local postal services may be handed over to the local bodies.
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5.6 Peace and Security
Like honor and dignity, ability of citizens to lead secure lives is an important objective of development itself. There are many facets of security. We cover here the following: security from violence, peaceful co-existence with neighbors; access to food, prevention from natural disasters, and climate change.
5.6.1 Regional Cooperation
Nepal is not a small country in terms of both territorial size and population. The fact that it is among the 40 most populous is often forgotten because it is nestled between nations with over 1 billion people each. The Indo-Nepal border is porous, only mildly regulated with mobility of people largely unaccounted. India presents a big market for Nepali products if it can be facilitated by mutually beneficial trade and transit treaties and linked by better transport infrastructure. The bordering Indian states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and West Bengal alone offer a regional market with 300 million consumers. It will be HMG's policy to pursue better-negotiated understanding and trading arrangements with India and China. In addition to trade, the border is to be arranged to oversee flow of people, as well as check movement of restricted items, screen diseases, and be vigilant about movement of terrorists. As the host of the SAARC Secretariat, Nepal will also aspire to play a more active role in ensuring peace in the region by assuming neutral, mediating roles.
5.6.2 Strengthening Democracy and Fight Against Terrorism
It is HMG's non-negotiable position that there is no justification for any form of armed insurgency in the country when all civil channels for expression of dissent are open and there are constitutional guarantees to secure political expression peacefully and change of government through elections. Terrorism not only impacts on the security of the current generation of the living, but by disturbing peace, it directly impacts on the development prospect, stability of the country, and security and well being of current and future generations.
There are a few fundamental principles that HMG will uphold in tackling terrorism, subversion, and armed insurgencies. First, they will be sought to be ended through dialogue and peaceful settlement. Second, there is no room for violence in the country, and every citizen has the right to lead secure lives, as well as defend herself. Third, perpetrators of unlawful destruction and violence will be captured and tried as per the laws of the land and no citizen will be allowed to possess unlicensed arms. Fourth, as a maturing democracy, Nepal will honor all its commitments to protect human rights, especially those enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and not misuse state security apparatus in taming any kind of dissent. Fifth, HMG will identify the underlying causes of discontent and seek to implement with sincerity the socio-political-cultural redresses.
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5.6.3 Food Security
Recent decades have seen repeated incidences of hunger and starvation in remote districts of mid-western Nepal. Food security requires meeting two conditions: first, local agricultural production and/or the supply network has to physically bring enough food into a location of need. Second, all people must have the means of acquiring food, whether through access to land, livestock, cash crops and grain, or through sufficient income to allow purchase of needed food. These conditions can be threatened by a variety of factors: by floods and landslides damaging fields and/or the transport infrastructure, by collapse of an income source, or by political violence and instability. Sustainable development cannot proceed under a situation of hunger; and food security cannot be ensured through external supplies alone. HMG will, thus, set utmost priority to food security by ensuring that the regional agro-ecological and economic systems supply enough food to the whole population under normal circumstances, and by preparing for unexpected times of additional threat. The latter will require setting up a dispersed network of emergency food storage centers throughout the country, as well as a fund that allows making that food available to people in need at prices that they can afford. As mentioned earlier, it will also be important to ensure not just access to adequate amount of food but also to nutritionally balanced food, such that malnutrition can be fully eliminated.
5.6.4 Climate Change
Recent research indicates that human induced climate change is real, already taking place, and certain to proceed in future decades. Uncertainties and debates remain in the timing and exact magnitude of predicted changes, but there is little doubt that even a slight increase in global average temperature is accompanied by much larger changes in local and regional climates. Nepal's blame for causing climate change is negligibly small: today Nepali citizens comprise less than 0.4% of the world population and are responsible for only about 0.025% of annual greenhouse gas emissions. Nepal's vulnerability to damage from climate change, however, is large. Temperatures are likely to increase more in high mountain areas than elsewhere. Glaciers and snowfields will recede and may even disappear, reducing Nepal's dry season river water source. This will impact irrigation and drinking water supply as well as the reliability of hydroelectricity. In addition, receding glaciers often leave behind growing glacier lakes that can break through terminal moraines causing catastrophic floods. Global climate change will also likely shift monsoon precipitation patterns in ways that will threaten Nepal's current agricultural practices, as well as threaten infrastructure. Changing temperature and moisture patterns will also threaten biodiversity, especially in mountain areas where migration of species is physically restricted.
Only vigorous economic growth can provide Nepal with the means to withstand and mitigate some of the effects of a changing climate that Nepal did not choose and did not cause. Ironically, in the short run, Nepal's economic development depends on increased domestic GHG emissions, as no alternative fuel today allows as cost effective, efficient, and flexible a transportation system as one based on motor vehicles. However, a move towards investing in cleaner, energy efficient vehicles will make increasing economic sense and provide other benefits, including less air pollution, and less fuel import dependence. Compared to many countries, Nepal's economy is not yet locked into heavy fossil-fuel dependence; this provides many opportunities to choose cleaner paths from the start.
Nepal's foreign policy situation with regard to climate change is different from that of its neighbors as well as most other LDCs. It shares the low-blame, high-vulnerability features of other developing mountain and small island nations. It will thus play an active role in international arenas, vigorously defending its right to continue its economic development unimpeded by restriction on cost effective energy. However, because of its hydroelectricity potential, it is also sitting on a clean domestic energy source that can meet not only most of its future needs, but also supply an exportable surplus. Nepal's ability to export hydro-electricity at a beneficial price would benefit from restrictions on GHG emission upon large nearby countries, as well as improved international recognition of hydroelectricity as a clean source of energy.
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5.6.5 Natural Disasters
The monsoon that brings rain and life to rural Nepal also brings destruction and disaster. Every year hundreds of people in Nepal die from flashfloods and landslides, and thousands more lose their homes, fields, and livestock. Every year landslides damage the country's transport network, and the economies that depend on it. This is due to a number of causes, including young geological structure, steep slopes, unplanned settlements, rapid deforestation and the construction of infrastructure without appropriate protection of the alignments. Nepal's rugged topography is responsible for rainfall patterns and microclimates that vary greatly in space, making accurate weather and flood predictions extremely difficult.
Nepal's location, straddling major faults along the growing Himalaya mountain ensures that the country experiences strong earthquakes once or twice a century. Heavy losses are best avoided by constructing houses resistant to collapse and fire, by training the population to protect themselves when an earthquake occurs and by having emergency response plans, materials, and equipment on stand-by at all times. Apart from a few earthquake resistant building designs, our preparation for a large earthquake is poor. Nepal is also not equipped with any early warning system. Setting this up could save many lives.
Nepal has also experienced several severe floods from rapidly draining glacier lakes. These "glacier lake outburst floods" (GLOF) occur with the collapse of the terminal moraine dam that holds up the water at the lower end of the lake. The recent and future receding of Himalayan glaciers due to a warming climate, and the consequent growth of lakes between the moraines and the receding ice, are causes for concern, since both a larger volume of water is stored (potentially larger flood), and an increasing water level adds pressure on the moraine. Proper monitoring of all glacier lakes is needed in order to allow similar mitigative and corrective measures.
Objectives in natural disaster management by 2017 include decreasing the loss of lives and property by landslides, earthquakes, and floods by orienting new constructions towards appropriate locations, conducting research and setting up monitoring system that provides early warning (rainfall, GLOF, earthquake), as well as setting up alarm system that can convey advanced notification to people in areas at imminent risk. There is also a need to stockpile emergency relief materials and equipment at strategic locations. In urban areas, there is need for creating more open spaces. An urgent task is the establishment of early-response teams at both the local and national level that can be deployed immediately following a disaster. Each disaster will also be analyzed closely to draw lessons to allow faster, more effective deployment the next time.
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Sustainable Development
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EIA - Approved List and EIA on Progress
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