Fruitful Partnership with Academic Institution

As per the Environment Protection Regulations, 1997 Ministry of Federal Affairs and Local Development (MoFALD) is responsible for approving Initial Environmental Examination (IEE) reports of various development sub-projects such as road, bridge, sand gravel & stones, landfill sites. Until January 2017, MoFALD has approved a total of 753 IEE reports and equal number of Terms of References (ToR) of different sub-projects such as bridge, bus terminal, landfill sites, refuses drive fuel, roads and sand, gravel and stones (SG&S). The first IEE report approved by the Ministry of Federal Affairs and Local Development was Bhojpur-Ghodetar, Bhojpur Road in April 2005.

To ensure effective implementation of the IEE reports, it was felt necessary to adopt third party monitoring mechanism. With this objective, the Ministry inked MoU with Central Department of Environmental Science, Tribhuvan University, (CDES-TU) on 18 April, 2011 and with Department of Environmental Science and Engineering, Kathmandu University (KU) in 2012. Accordingly, TU-CDES and KU monitored implementation status of over 100 IEE reports of selected districts of Nepal through mobilizing a total of 121 students and 21 faculties until 2014. As suggested by the monitoring reports, the MoFLAD has issued various policy directives to local bodies towards improving quality of IEE Reports. Further, with the aim of making local bodies more responsible and accountable to local communities, the MoFALD has decentralized the IEE approval authority of Sand Gravel & Stones (SG&S) to the local bodies in March 2016.

With this, MoFALD's role has been shifted more towards strengthening capacity of local bodies and ensuring quality of locally prepared IEE reports. To strengthen capacity of local bodies in preparing and implementing quality report, MoFALD made available Guidelines on preparing Initial Environmental Study Report of SG&S to local bodies on 26 October 2016. In this way, engagement of academic institutions had yielded three folds encouraging results; i) contributed to decentralize IEE approval authority from MoFALD to local government and improved effectiveness of MoFALD work, ii) made local bodies more responsible towards  preparing quality IEE reports,  and  iii) TU-KU students and faculties had exposure with real world situation and revised environmental science course accordingly.

Therefore, it is wise to establish and strengthen partnership with academic institutions while monitoring environment friendly development activities at local level.