| Sustainable Development Agenda for Nepal |
Opportunities and Constraints
A fifteen-year sustainable development agenda of Nepal must draw upon the country's current and potential strengths as well as take into account its vulnerabilities. Nepal's strengths include its attractive marketable landscape and its unique biodiversity, its large hydropower potential, its fertile Terai lands, good agro climates in the hills, large market prospect in neighboring countries as well as its diverse people and their cultural heritage. Nepal is also already working to build a fifth strength: an educated, skilled workforce. Nepal's development path will be constrained by weaknesses including its landlockedness, its rugged and isolating topography, weak technical know-how and limited financial resource base. In addition, Nepal will continue to be vulnerable to losses and damage from climate change, natural disaster and environmental degradation.
To earn the income necessary for sustainable national development, Nepal must provide to the world market products and services for which it has a comparative advantage. It has a biologically and culturally rich landscape whose marketing for tourism can be greatly increased, that can support rural livelihoods and provide a large variety of forest products, and that can also provide attractive settings for international educational and health care institutions. It also has the potential to produce premium and high value agricultural products as well as medicines from indigenous herbs and genetic resources. It has the potential to meet its entire energy needs through clean hydropower; this will especially contribute to the upliftment of women from drudgery. By attracting foreign investment, opportunity also exists for large export to neighboring countries. The country's cultural richness is also a source of indigenous strength to the nation offering diversity of ideas, ways of thinking, and practices. By adequately targeting investment in education, the country has the potential to build additional strength of a skilled workforce, drawn from today's young demographic composition (nearly 40% of Nepal's population is within the age range 0-14).
Planning for sustainable development for Nepal also has to take into account the areas where Nepal has disadvantages. For example, without a sea port, Nepal will unlikely be able to compete on the world market with shipping-dependent heavy industry. Nepal's economy is heavily influenced by the economy of two large neighboring countries. The mountain landscapes that can be marketed to tourism also make infrastructure expensive, and in addition, increase travel distance and cost. The diversity of ecosystems and micro-habitats inherent in a mountainous landscape also makes resource management more challenging: rarely can a blanket national policy bring in desired effects nationwide.
Today, a nascent democracy in Nepal, which has had to mediate competing interests and legacies long rooted in a patriarchal, multi-lingual, and multi-ethnic setting, finds itself faced with difficult challenges, including random acts of violence and terror. Nepal's future growth hinges upon the challenging task of bringing every political and social force into the national mainstream adequately with meaningful political participation through decentralization.
Nepal is also vulnerable to natural influences. Its agricultural system is heavily dependent upon the timing and quantity of monsoon rains. During the dry season, drinking water, irrigation, and hydropower depend upon melt-water from glaciers. Climate change may affect the monsoon cycle, melt Himalayan glaciers, and threaten the survival of Nepal's biodiversity. Moreover, land slides, especially due to weak geological structure of Siwaliks and floods downstream have resulted in loss of fertile soil from Terai. Regarding air pollution, Nepal is currently vulnerable not just to domestic emissions (including indoor air pollution from biofuel combustion) but also to growing trans-boundary air pollution fromupwindurban and industrial areas.
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Sustainable Development
Environmental Policies
Standards and Norms
Acts and Rules
Publications
EIA - Approved List and EIA on Progress
Projects and Programs
Air Quality Monitoring Result
Weather Report
Officials
Organization Chart
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