1st Edition
Environmental Justice in Nepal Origins, Struggles, and Prospects
This edited volume provides a holistic compilation of the diverse range of emerging scholarship in critical environmental justice studies in Nepal.
This book brings together environmental justice scholarship set within a robust conceptual framework, focusing on a diversity of case studies from Nepal. Its locale-specific contextualisation provides a unique analysis of the natural resource-based livelihoods common in the region, together with health and well-being impacts of urban and industrial developments in its rapidly changing political, economic, social, and ecological environment. Centring contributions from Nepalese scholars and practitioners, the volume spans a wide range of topics including the origins of environmental justice in Nepal, land and agriculture, conservation, infrastructure and development, Indigenous peoples, climate justice, and health equity. It reflects on the rise and development of social movements and public policy, discusses the further evolution of environmental justice, and highlights how the work of scholars, activists, and practitioners in the Nepalese context can enrich global conversations about social and environmental issues.
The book will appeal to scholars, researchers, students, and activists in environmental justice, sustainable development, South Asian, and Himalayan studies.
Foreword
Narayan Belbase
Foreword
Leah Temper
Preface
Jonathan K London, Jagannath Adhikari, Tom Robertson
Chapter 1: Introduction: Framing Environmental Justice Studies and Movements in Nepal
Jonathan K London, Jagannath Adhikari, and Thomas Robertson
Part 1: Origins
Chapter 2: Towards a New Paradigm for Environmental Justice Studies in Nepal
Jonathan K London and Sudikshya Bhandari
Chapter 3: People’s Movements for Environmental Justice in Nepal: A Historical Perspective
Jagannath Adhikari
Chapter 4: Environmental justice and the role of Nepalese judiciary: A missed opportunity
Jony Mainali
Part 2: Land, Forests and Agriculture
Chapter 5: Environmental injustice in confronting gendered access to land in Nepal: Joint land ownership as a promising practice
Srijana Baral, Kalpana Karki, and Kanchan Lama
Chapter 6: Environmental Justice and Unfree Agricultural Labourers in the Eastern Tarai of Nepal
Suresh Kumar Dhakal
Chapter 7: Connecting Dalit Land Rights and Climate Justice
Madan Pariyar and Arjun Biswakama
Chapter 8: Environmental Justice and Pesticides
Kishor Atreya, Kanchan Kattel, Anisha Sapkota, and Hom Nath Gartaula
Chapter 9: From Red to Green to Grey Hills: Reflections on the Four-Decade-Long Journey of Community Forestry and Environmental Justice in Nepal
Sunita Chaudhary
Part 3: Conflicts over River and Lowland Conservation
Chapter 10: Protected Areas and Expendable Communities: Human-Animal Conflict Survivors and Unjust Compensation in the Koshi Tappu Wildlife Reserve
Dhirendra Nalbo
Chapter 11: The River People and the Parks: Political Ecology of Conservation and Indigenous Livelihoods in Nepal’s Terai
Naya Sharma Paudel, Sudeep Jana Thing, and Rahul Karki
Part 4: Infrastructure and Indigenous Peoples
Chapter 12: Disaster Is Social: Uneven Effect and Recovery from the 2015 Nepal Earthquake
Mukta S. Tamang
Chapter 13: Indigenous struggles for development justice in Nepal: Environmentalism on the ground
Prabindra Shakya
Part 5: Urban Development and Environmental Justice
Chapter 14: Ensuring Health, Hygiene and Dignity for Solid Waste Workers
Prashanna Pradhan and Bhawana Sharma
Chapter 15: Urban Environmental Justice: For Whom, From Whom?
Kirti Kusum Joshi
Chapter 16: Cycling for Livelihood in Nepal: Seeking Justice on Two Wheels
Tara Lal Shrestha and Bidhya Shrestha
Chapter 17: Through the Haze: Air Pollution and Environmental Justice
Arnico K. Panday and Arti Govinda Shrestha
Chapter 18: Driving Towards Environmental Justice on the Streets of Kathmandu
Bhushan Tuladhar
Chapter 19: Building political capabilities through participation for environmental justice in informal housing in Kathmandu
Sangeeta Singh and Bijay Singh
Part 6: Climate Justice
Chapter 20: Climate Change in Nepal through an Indigenous Environmental Justice Lens
Pasang Yangjee Sherpa
Chapter 21: Women, water and weather: Kavre villages adapt to the increasing impacts of the climate crisis
Sonia Awale
Chapter 22: Applying a climate justice framework to understand inequities in urban water governance amid climate change challenges in Nepal
Gyanu Maskey, Poshendra Satyal, Monica Giri, and Prajal Pradhan
Part 7: Health Equity
Chapter 23: The stress of poverty in tackling tuberculosis in Nepal
Marissa Taylor
Chapter 24: Impacts of Lead Contamination on Children’s Health in Nepal
Meghnath Dhimal, Mandira Lamichhane Dhimal, and Madhusudan Subedi,
Biography
Jonathan K London is Professor in the Department of Human Ecology/Community and Regional Planning at the University of California, Davis, USA.
Jagannath Adhikari works mainly as independent researcher and, occasionally, teaches in Nepal and Australia.
Thomas Robertson is a historian and the former director of Fulbright Nepal/USEF.
