Capturing the Role of Civil Society for Urban Sustainability in Nepal

Rapid urbanisation and urban population growth raise problems for sustainability. The unplanned and haphazard patterns of urbanisation, with a scarcity of resources for meeting the basic needs and services of a rapidly burgeoning urban population, are becoming an emerging challenge in the era of climate change—one of the biggest threats facing the communities, cities and nations of the world. Among the places encountering challenges of resource scarcity and urban sustainability are the cities of the Himalayan country Nepal. Its government has been unable to develop sustainably integrated urban development plans and implement them, for various reasons including paucity of data and of evidence-based policy-making, poor political culture and corruption among the political and bureaucratic leadership. In this context, the role of civil society, utilising the practices of local democracy, is invaluable for making cities and communities sustainable. This role, however, has not been given adequate attention in either theory or practice. Employing qualitative research design, this article aims to capture the role of civil society—in particular neighbourhood associations—for urban sustainability, and the challenges and the prospects they have encountered while doing so in Nepal.