Investment in rural road in Nepal, how sustainable is it?

Investment in rural road in Nepal, how sustainable is it?

Background

Road construction has been the only development agenda of local government in Nepal for many years. Significant kilometers of rural roads are constructed at the costs of natural resources. Moreover, major proportions of the roads do not support plying vehicles all year around. Considerable proportion of deforestation in Nepal is linked with infrastructure development activities specifically rural road construction. Landslide and flood are causing deaths of 100s of people, especially poor, women and dalit every year. If the present pattern of constructing unsustainable road is continued without paying adequate attention to environment, then further loss of environment is inevitable on the one hand and on the other it will jeopardize the life of many rural poor. To address the issue, efforts are being made from different quarters, though which are not at satisfactory level.

Road in forefront of development agenda

While reviewing Annual Progress Report from 2009 to 2011 of Local Governance and Community Development Program (LGCDP) in Central Development Region of Nepal, it was revealed that compare to other infrastructure development projects, road sub-project carry higher proportion of the budgets. During the period, the region implemented a total of 19,428 sub-projects under heading infrastructure development that includes activities such as road, irrigation, water and sanitation, education, socio-economic development, health, environment and rural electrification. Of the total, 27% sub-projects were road. To carry out the road sub-project the region has invested 42% of the total infrastructure development costs i.e. Rs. 2,317 million. However, it has benefited only 27% of the total 63, 32,000 beneficiary people of the entire infrastructure development sub-projects. Similarly, only about 2% budgets are being invested in environmental development activities such as plantation, bio-engineering and alternative energy resources. In summary, development has given priority to the road sub-projects without keeping environment into account.

Every year each Village Development Committee spends about one million rupees for road construction. They implement the road project even without proper planning and designing. Since the early 1990s, when resources and authority began to be channeled through local government bodies, the use of heavy equipment for road construction such as bulldozers and excavators started to increase. Furthermore, the desire to establish road connections quickly also resulted in the increased use of unsustainable road construction approaches and methods. Unsustainable roads are those that have: (i) no drainage arrangements; (ii) high gradient; (iii) no protection structures in critical places; (iv)no biological protection; (v) no operation and maintenance arrangements or fund; etc.

Now 50,944 km length of rural road networks have been constructed (DOLIDAR, 2012). Of the total 68% road length is earthen road which is pliable during fair weather of 8 months only. Many of these roads are not operational during fairs weather too, due to incompleteness. Therefore people are deprived of year around road access (Shrestha, 2013). Hence, the aforementioned information justifies the fact that the investment in road infrastructure activities is neither environment friendly nor contributing the livelihood improvement of rural poor in Nepal. Therefore, it warrants immediate attention of development planner for formulating and implementing long term infrastructure development plan that benefits both people as well as environment.

What are the practices and implications?

Legal Framework:

The Interim Constitution of Nepal stresses on the need of maintaining a clean environment for good health of people. The Local Self-Governance Act of 1999 empowers District Development Committees (DDCs), Municipalities and Village Development Committees (VDCs) to collect revenues from local resources, including from natural resources, and called on each local government unit to draw up a development plan of its own. The Act authorizes local bodies to plan and implement various development activities including road construction.

The Environment Protection Act 1996 and Environmental Protection Regulation 1997 aims to ensure sustainable development through the integration of environment and development, the sustainable use of natural resources, and the creation of a clean and healthy environment for all people in Nepal. The Act provisions environment assessment, prevention and control of pollution, establishment and operation of environment management special fund, among others. Moreover, it contains rules pertaining to Initial Environment Examination (IEE) and Environment Impact Assessment (EIA). The Sustainable Development Agenda for Nepal (SDAN) envisages integrating environment and development in the national policymaking and planning framework by stressing public participation in ecosystem conservation at the landscape.

The Thirteenth Three-year Plan Approach Paper acknowledges the need of quality roads. In this regards, the plan provisions some criteria to be taken into accounts while constructing roads. According to the criteria road construction priority should be on maintenance, upgrading, and track opening following long term plan and programs instead of constructing new trails and roads in an ad hoc basis. Further, road construction should be guided by District Transportation Master Plans. The Three-year plan stress on the need of preparing and implementing Transportation Master Plans for Municipality and Village Development Committees too (GoV Nepal, 2013)

Institutional Framework

Ministry of Federal Affairs and Local Development (MoFALD) is in the process of establishing Environment Energy and Climate Change Section in all District Development Committees (DEECCS). The Section will be managed by Environment Friendly Local Governance (EFLG) Coordination Committee. In this connection, Ministry of Federal Affairs and Local Development is preparing DEECCS Management Guideline. Environment desk has been established in all the District Development Committees (DDCs) and Municipality for overall management of environmental issues. Environmental Focal Persons have also been deputed with job descriptions. To strengthen the district based environmental institutions MoFALD conducted series of training programs to District Facilitators/Municipal Facilitators and District/Municipal Environmental Focal Persons on Social and Environmental Safeguards Framework. District Facilitators and Environmental Focal Persons of District Environmental Desk from 66 districts and Municipal Facilitators and Municipal Environmental Focal Persons from 27 municipalities have already been trained so far.

Programs

Ministry of Federal Affairs and Local Development with Poverty Environment Initiatives (PEI) Program's support have carried out a study on Economic Analysis of Investment in Rural Roads in 2011.The report stress on the need of adopting balancing approach i.e. labor based and equipment based technology while constructing roads. Towards improving the quality of rural roads, as per the Environment Protection Rule, the Ministry has enforced the mandatory provision of preparing and implementing Initial Environmental Examination for all district roads. The Ministry has approved a total of 163 IEE reports of rural roads since 2005. To ease the IEE report preparation process for district development committees and municipalities the Ministry has also prepared Environment Examination Resource Book in Nepali as well.

To ensure effective implementation of the IEE approved reports, academic institutions such as Central Department of Environment, Tribhuvan University as well as Kathmandu University students have been mobilized as third party monitoring to monitor implementation status of IEE reports of various districts since 2011.

Most of the projects implemented by local bodies fall under Category ‘C’ as per ADB Environmental Guidelines and they do not require IEE/EIA study as per legislations of GoN. Environmental implications of these projects should also be addressed through developing environmental management plan considering it as an integral part of the infrastructure projects. To facilitate the process of preparing EMP, the MoFALD has prepared environmental checklists for various types of infrastructure projects during pre-construction, construction and operation and maintenance stages. With the support of LGCDP, all DDCs have started preparing Environmental Management Plan (EMP) for the infrastructure development activities including road sub projects. In total, 14,498 infrastructure development projects were implemented by local bodies across the country in 2010. However, only a fraction of the entire projects have prepared Environment Management Plans in 2010 (Table 1).

Table 1 Social Environment Safeguard Framework Implementation Status – 2010

Region	Total Projects	Environment Projects	Environment Checklists	Environment Management Plan
Eastern Development Region	2,399	59	51	37
Central Development Region	3,642	154	NA	NA
Western Development Region	3,795	64	251	68
Mid Western Development Region	3,176	120	119	40
Far Western Development Region	1,486	74	74	NA

Source: Annual Progress Report of LGCDP, 2011

Challenges / Gaps

Despite putting concerted efforts from various levels, the road construction are appeared neither environment friendly nor economically viable. Policies and programs are yet to be implemented effectively. The mindset of the local government is that environment is not the part of roads. Referring the resources shortages, local bodies try to bypass the process of integrating environment into road construction. Moreover, the capacity, awareness and understanding towards environment is not adequate.

Recommendations

To ensure the sustainable road construction further efforts are necessary:

·         Enhance the capacity of local bodies to enforce and compliance with the provision of rules and regulations while planning and implementing rural roads

·         In addition to undertaking, IEE and EMP it is necessary to undertake strategic environment assessment

·         Roads must be planned in a participatory way and should be a part of the District Transport Master Plan (DTMP). No road should be financed by local bodies, unless it is included in the DTMP, VTMP and MTMP.

·         Discourage the use of heavy equipments specially bulldozers and rock-blasting materials. However, there are certain situations when equipment based technology can be efficient and less damaging. These situations are in (i) road widening; (ii) ridge alignments; and (iii) long alignments through unpopulated areas that require the establishment of labor camps under LB methodology.

·         LB technology should be encouraged and particularly emphasized in poverty-ridden areas. However, to harness some of the positive features of EB technology, the use of excavators and breaker attachments should be allowed in certain situations. Use of equipment should be complemented by water management structures (side and cross drains), other protection structures and bioengineering works in critical areas.

·         Local road maintenance skills should be developed through training and work during road construction.

·         All rural roads should have adequate operation and maintenance funds and such funds must be complemented by beneficiary contributions raised from the increased income resulting from the road. A system of reasonable taxing of vehicles and goods movement can also be developed for this purpose.

Reference

·         GoV, NPC 2013: Approach Paper, 13th Plan; 2013/14-2015/16

·         DoLIDAR 2069 (2012): "Gramin Sadak Abhilekh" DoLIDAR, Kathmandu.

·         Shrestha. H.R 2013: RURAL ROAD NETWORK IN NEPAL: A massive challenge ahead to improve and maintain. A Journal on Rural Infrastructure Development. Vol.4, Issues 4, Bhadra 2070.