Nepal is a country with abundant natural assets – beautiful scenery, especially the spectacular Himalayan mountains, extensive forests, Terai plains, rich biodiversity, fertile soils in the lowlands and water, and it has a very diverse ethnic and cultural heritage. Together these attributes provide a strong platform for sustainable development. They offer potential for income, livelihoods, health and security. Our rich resources underpin our economy. They have made Nepal a well-known tourism destination with a distinct image of its own and provide the platform for “Welcome Nepal – Tourism Year 2011” – a three year programme to promote the tourism sector...

Over the last few decades, most nations have made a string of commitments to address environmental concerns in development decision-making, through commitments made in international forums. But in practice, their efforts to integrate the environment policy into development planning and development initiatives have achieved limited success. It is evident across the world that environmental problems are getting worse, not better. Most, if not all, major international indicators continue to track negatively.

Nepal has also expressed its commitment to address environmental concerns and has already implemented a range of initiatives. These are evident in the country’s policies, laws and institutional arrangements,...

This section presents eleven short case studies that illustrate the varied ways in which different initiatives have attempted to link environment with development in Nepal. These cases are based on presentations made during the environmental mainstreaming workshop and material presented in the workshop background report.³⁰ They cover government and private sector initiatives; national initiatives to develop plans and strategies; conservation projects at more local and community levels; the promotion of environmental assessment and management systems; environmental education; and addressing challenging issues such as climate change, energy efficiency and cleaner production.

Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) has been one of the main...

Nepal’s economy is dependent on its natural resource base. Wise environmental management is therefore critical for its development and the well-being of its people. There are a number of factors, actors and initiatives that can be seen to drive the inclusion of environmental concerns in development activities. We explore these in the next section. Yet it is also clear that there are some stumbling blocks to overcome. These are discussed in section 3.3.

Following a definition adopted by IIED,⁴⁹ we apply the term ‘environmental mainstreaming’ to mean any positive attempt to include relevant environmental concerns into mainstream development policy, plans...

In common with experience in many other countries,⁵⁷ in Nepal we can identify several conditions that – if already in place – enable development objectives and environmental management objectives to be better integrated:

1. Legality: the legislative system supports both environmental protection and social justice, with no significant inconsistencies between the two.

2. Institutional home: all sectoral and decentralised institutions have mandates for tackling the environment as a crosscutting issue within their own work.

3. Public concern: public demands to tackle environmental degradation and to nurture environmental assets are significant and well-expressed.

4. Public and media advocacy: mass organisations and NGOs are able and...

In setting priorities for environmental mainstreaming in Nepal, it will be important to ensure that the views of the main groups of stakeholders are taken into account – gathered through workshops, surveys and other approaches. A special effort will be necessary, however, to ensure that the views and needs of the poor and the marginalised (who often lack a voice) are expressed and captured, especially:

The chronic rural poor, particularly in remote mountain areas, who need access to common property resources and the means to generate viable livelihoods from them. These include payment schemes and other incentives that will encourage...