Category: Uncategorized

Another big earthquake on May 12 after 18 days from the first one made us rethink again. Most of our assumptions and our knowledge-based approaches are once again challenged. The management of shared open space and their utilization for providing housing related services became more critical in the overall provision of urban services during and after the disaster. People returned to open space once again after getting back to their houses for a day or two. More buildings collapsed leading to more housing shortage.

Our recent exposure to disasters shows that we have been providing housing at standards that our society as a whole cannot afford. Instead of making the rich contribute to create built public spaces to enhance the social good, the policy worked to allow them to appropriate resources for constructing their abode creating externalities on others. Ignoring this, efforts have been made to sustain what is basically unsustainable. This became clear after the earthquakes. Yet some are still seeking ways and means to sustain what has proved to be unsustainable by distorting facts. The resources from outside did not come up as expected since there is conflict between national pride and external dependence; instead of collaborative efforts, the issue of who should provide relief to the affected cropped up in a thorny way.

Although action on housing is being highly politicized we should not forget that Nepal should take this as an opportunity to sustain what needs to be made sustainable. We should try to improve our plight through the building of our resilience. We should learn from our own experiences such as basic housing needs, integrated action planning and land pooling. We should set our goals commensurate with our resources and integrate the external help into our plan in order to allow all to help us. We should learn to cut our coat according to our cloth and prepare plans to shape housing demand that satisfies our housing needs.

There is an ever increasing gap between our earnings and expenses on housing including taxes. Access to land is rapidly decreasing. The implication of rebuilding on sustainable land management needs to be considered.  It is necessary that we should try to avail some of our needs at neighborhood or community level. In Kathmandu, the low-income wage earners do not get any opportunity to save and invest in any housing related areas. Given the complexities and confusions that we have created, we should intensify response and action to pave the way for rebuilding with less resource while meeting more of our needs. Community-driven activities directed to meeting housing needs are reported to be minimal even at this time of emergency. There is lack of common shared space as well as the political access required to carry out such activities. We should enhance social cohesion as a part of rebuilding.

It is clear that individual families will not be able to meet their housing needs themselves with limited support from the government. Nor the government will be able to meet their housing needs. Some of the needs ought to be fulfilled at the neighborhood level by providing community space; this will reduce needs at the family level. It is necessary to form a group of perspective house builders and form a cluster. Without assessing the available resources and the possible impact of the anticipated housing expenditure on our economy, particularly the supply of building materials and labour, housing programs may not work. There may be more chaos and disorder apart from inequity. We should thus try to reduce housing needs at the private family level by sharing the available common space in the production of housing related services at affordable prices. We should integrate the re-development of heritage sites with the meeting of community level housing needs.Some of the common spaces in Kathmandu are already intensely utilized, we should invest more  to improve the environment there to enhance their sustainability and meet community needs.

Two things have become self-evident. First the production and sustainable use of common space, whether built or open and whether managed by public, private or community needs to be improved. If we could develop and implement strategies for the sustainable production and utilization of “common and shared spaces” for availing housing related needs, the cost of providing services can be drastically reduced. School premise or heritage sites that could have been easily used as spaces for risk mitigation services have become a huge liability now.

The process towards convergence of interest, we could clearly see, is still ongoing. It is taking longer time since we are primarily working on political rationality. We rely on political alliance and hierarchy and strength of party leaders. We know housing is a political process and the implementation will depend on the articulation of interests of different political players. They should realize that action will suffer if they ignore the power of knowledge and if they fail to transpire technical rationality in the process of rebuilding.

The concept of housing is not confined to just a house or a building. An expensive and beautiful house does not necessarily satisfy our housing needs. The resilience of buildings against earthquake along with the level of satisfaction of housing related needs during and after the disaster really matters. No doubt we need a roof over our heads and whenever it rained, this need was greatly felt. However, after the recent earthquake, most of us might have sensed and gathered a different perspective on our need for housing. To fulfill our needs, shelter is required to primarily protect us from unpleasant climatic conditions such as rain, wind, extreme heat or cold. At the time of the earthquake, our primary concern had been whether we were safe or not; wondering what was the chance of us being rescued if we were trapped. The chance naturally depends on the availability of willing fellow human beings and their organizations to help and rescue others and an easy access to the place of accident. The house we once considered our safe abode no longer provided us a sense of security; instead it became a subject of concern.
Most of our basic survival needs are related with, if not integral parts of, housing. We need open space, on-site physical infrastructure and services such as evacuation routes, water, sanitation and health, energy for lighting and cooking and so on. In terms of their relative availability, we must have learnt after going through the unique experience of living through many earthquakes within a week that some of the challenges that we face in meeting our needs are due to our sophisticated living standards that the society as a whole cannot afford. We seem to have been using modern approaches that are not easy for us to maintain at the time of crisis. Despite hard work it took several days to replace basic infrastructure like electricity, telecommunication and water.

We also realized that there are threats due to unethical activities such as artificial scarcity of essential goods and services, black marketing, crime and theft, dissemination of false predictions of earthquake with the purpose of creating chaos and disorder. This impaired our sense of security all the more.
We could clearly see that resources required for meeting such housing needs are not well taken care of. Our common public open spaces are mostly dirty, water-logged and inhabitable. Water sources are not well maintained and clean. Streets are crammed with improper garbage disposal and access for escape is not easy. The complete destruction of Dharahara with a large number of casualties clearly showed that we grossly neglected the safety of our heritage sites. Such sites instead of providing risk mitigation services turned into areas of fear and resentment. Some wider roads were used for shelter and private cars parked on roadsides provided shelter for some. However they are primarily meant for vehicular traffic and are not used as public space or for shelter. Most spaces owned and managed by government agencies were not easily accessible. These led us to realize the lack of habitable open spaces where we can take refuge by constructing temporary shelter to sleep and to plan for carrying out relief works and providing basic needs. We realized that we should have minimized built-up space, leaving behind more open space for community use. We thus failed to plan and create built-up space for public purpose to meet our needs at the time of disaster. Common spaces whether open or built, proved to be more useful than the private ones. Community space facilitates the provision of services associated with housing.
Our experiences and learning, to my mind, drives us to the point that it will be easier to meet housing needs if the process of rebuilding is based on a holistic view of our needs. Rebuilding should mean not just to rebuild the house but the whole process of fulfilling our housing needs. Somehow we have misinterpreted our housing needs during the last few decades. We seem to have failed to realize that the primary function of housing is not wealth accumulation, property ownership or social prestige that disrupts coherence and harmony in society. The process of rebuilding implies a comprehensive approach that takes care of all the aspects of sustainable development directed to the revival of community resilience. The limited public space that we have ought to be used for rebuilding social cohesiveness. Help and relief activities in such times can be sustained only if the resources required for rebuilding can be replenished. Extensive use of otherwise available resources will create scarcity leading to price escalation. It is necessary to sustain their supply and recognize the increasing cost of production. Some goods and resources need to be rationed although this is likely to be increasingly difficult and inequitable in our case. We need to understand that scarcity of resources will lead to rise in price and if we try to control prices, supply will decline causing more inflation and scarcity. This implies that we should not leave any room for creating scarcity. We should manage for the required resources right at the beginning. If we cannot supply enough, we ought to lower our standards in order to avoid the risk of scarcity. Sustained supply of necessary goods and building materials is an important aspect; otherwise spending will just raise prices and the lack of necessary inputs will affect rebuilding. Sustainable use of scarce resources will help minimize spending and check the price level to a certain extent. Instead of grants, interest-free loans will be more effective for mobilizing families and the community in the process of rebuilding.
All with good intention should have the right and access to serve the people in distress. However the resilience of the community itself needs to be respected for coordinating the relief works. This is the best strategy for the State to choose between alternative avenues of providing basic services required at the time of disaster as well as for rebuilding after the disaster. External help should and can reach the neighborhood level and people at distress will unite themselves to live together by helping each other. Relief received from outside may not be adequate for sustaining the process of rebuilding. People, families and neighborhoods in post traumatic distress need to maintain love and compassion among themselves for their steady recuperation. Moreover, any external help would work as a connecting thread linking different communities that are trying to rebuild their resilience themselves. People who are willing to help will come forward if their help is being integrated with institution-driven assistance. This is possible when we allow neighborhoods to express what they need most. The process of rebuilding should take this into account.
Loss of human lives and other assets will be less if we lower our standards of living while meeting our real housing needs. This is not something new for us. We applied the norms set in Basic Housing Plan 1986 for the 1988 Earthquake Rehabilitation Program and it worked well. We need to appreciate this and not forget our dire realities despite our sudden exposure to globalization and modern lifestyles.

Nepal first adopted regional planning during the Fourth Plan (1970-75) and subsequent periodic plans have emphasised regional balance as an important policy guideline. However, it remains the least understood concept. The confusion is apparent even in the proposition of leading economist-planners who presume regional growth models without assessment of local resources. It is, thus, not surprising that there has been misinterpretation and distortion in translating the policy into programmes.

The initial regional strategy formulated was the integration of mountain, hill and terai economies through four selected growth axes. It visualised concentration of devleopment activities along the designated growth axes to affect interregional economic specialisation and exchange. Periodic plans maintained this policy guidleine but the secotral plans were never location specific. Thus, during the Fourth Plan (1970 -75), the major north-south roads were labelled the spine of the growth axes but no intensive complementry programmes were devised along these growth axes. During the Fifth Plan (1975-80), regional efforts were diverted to Small Area Development Programme which was focused on disjunct pocket areas. By the Sixth Plan (1980-85), development of growth axis has superseded by various integrated rural development projects.The creation of four development regions in 1972 and emphasis on balance among these east-west regions led to haphazard disaggregation of projects and programmes without any organic linkage. Regional planning was interpreted as a wholesale dispersal of projects instead of judicious aggregation.With utter lack of research and analysis at the reginal level, it is obvious that impending Seventh Plan (1985-90) will be no different from its predecssors in its regional development. Regional strategy is partiularly suited to teh Nepalese space with pronounced natural and economic diversity and there is need for a clear exposition of the basic concept. It is where the merit of the present book lies.

The author provides ideas and theories that inspired regional planning, reviews the state of spatial planning in Nepal and presents an appropriate regional strategy for devlopment. This book will be most useful to practicing planners, particularyly economist planners, and polciy makers.

June 28, 1985 Harka Gurung

ABSTRACT
The main goal of the paper is to highlight Nepal’s experience in sustainable urbanization. It will give a brief background on Nepal; and present some planning approaches that have helped to deal with the problems of urbanization to make it more sustainable. It will show how policies evolved over time that
helped to resist undesirable changes. It will briefly describe sustainable approaches in the context of Nepal. Nepal has just become a republic; and is presently undergoing a major change. It is but natural that the interest of the government and business may not be in favor of environment during the transition. The need for high economic growth is realized. However, adjustments in the context of sustaining the growth are ignored. This is also reflected by the failure of the government to manage environmental services. The increased outside influence and the people’s increasing expectations
due to changes have implications on it. In this regard, the paper will assess these and the emerging threats to the traditional approaches, which are still viable. It will work on the trade-off between
economic growth and sustainability. It will try to show how sustainable ways of urban development are facing the increasing threats. It will finally raise issues to seek to learn from the Malaysian experiences to help sustain such approaches.

Dimaklumkan bahawa Institut Alam Sekitar dan Pembangunan (LESTARI), UKM akan menganjurkan Siri Seminar LESTARI seperti berikut:
Tarikh: 2 Disember 2008 (Selasa)
Masa: 10.30 pagi
Tempat: Bilik Sumber LESTARI, UKM
Tajuk: NEPAL’S EXPERIENCE IN SUSTAINABLE URBANIZATION: CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES
Penceramah: Dr. Jibgar Joshi, Advisor: National Planning Commission, Nepal
Sila klik untuk lihat Abstrak daripada Dr. Jibgar Joshi.
Keterangan lanjut sila hubungi Tel: 03-89214149/4158.
Semua yang berminat dijemput hadir.
(ewarga/bul/bil.21112008-87)