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First of all, hello! fellow ambassadors and all the environment lovers. Sorry for being away as I had been giving exams and at the same time conducting research in a rural area with no internet access. I will be sharing a lot of my research work in time to come with learning from your stories hand on hand. In the meanwhile I would like to share this article with you.

Nepal has seen intense environmental actions both in terms of quantity and quality since the last decade. With the rise and fall in the national policies regarding the environmental issues, it would be no exaggeration to say that Nepal faced a flood of potential changes. Changes on the other hand seem to be reflected in very few areas. Some changes seem to have faded away with the project or program and some simply seem impossible to have given birth to. In a sentence, post analysis of such environmental projects needs to be looked upon and some assessments are really frustrating. I would like to share some of the projects that were executed in Nepal along with their impact assessment

1.      SUIRO (HOOK) PROJECT

Suiro or hook project was initiated in 1990s supported by the government of Nepal and various NGOs, INGos and private sector for solid waste management in the urban areas of Nepal. Suiro which means hook in English gave name to a great environment movement as this movement encouraged and enforced people to put any plastic bags or plastic made materials along with other wastes like paper to put it in the hook whenever one saw it. These wastes thus hooked would be collected by the municipality and dumped in a better way. This project had contributed a lot to cleaner environment. And on top of this, it seemed that people have finally developed a better attitude towards their environment. But as the project life came to an end, despairingly, the collection and also the attitude faded away. The motive of this project was sustainable environmental conservation both in the form of action and attitude and it is sad to see that people remember the name of the project but they have forgotten the real meaning of it.

2.      BIODIVERSITY CONSERVATION PROGRAMS

Biodiversity Conservation Programs were initiated by many local and international organizations including Li-Bird and many are still in the run. These programs are aimed at the protection of endangered or near to extinct species. In Nepal, you may not believe but we sell our herbs to other countries and buy medicines at high market margin at about 10 times the money we sell. So, it is a huge issue. Many programs educated the rural people of Nepal to register the record of local species in Community Biodiversity Register (CBR). This helped in weakening smuggling to a great extent but at present driven by the monetary motive, rural people are obliged to sell the local endangered herbs and other species.

3.      ANTI-PLASTIC CAMPAIGN

Anti-plastic campaign started in 2013 onwards in most parts of the country. This campaign reinforced the use of paper and cloth bags instead of plastic bags with penalties for users, buyers and sellers of the plastic bags. This campaign was brought in action by the government of Nepal. With the start of this campaign, many positive changes were seen like relatively less pollution, better management of the wastes etc. (I have shared about this campaign in previous articles) However, lack of proper publicity, lack of accessible alternatives and lack of long term planning led to failure of this campaign in most parts of the country.

CONCLUSION

Environmental projects are scope for improvement, implementation and initiation. For economically weak country like Nepal, it is more like a boon in every way possible. But we are not talking of a green, a clean environment for a month, a year or a short time span. We are talking and dreaming of a better place up to the farthest horizon we can see and even beyond. So, it is high time we had a sustainable solution coupled with sustainable attitude in the long run. For that, the best I see from my point of view is to integrate environmental project with socio-economic aspects of the region. Then, probably one day we may not even need a project to shake us and go for what we should inherently live and practice.

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