Deepening water crises

Addressing the impacts of temperature and precipitation changes isn’t within our institutions’ scope.

The closing of brick kilns, stone quarries, a cement factory, and river-sand mining in the Kathmandu Valley were the fruits of a successful environment movement that started in the mid-1980s. The movement also helped remove smoke-belching three-wheelers from the streets and made “pollution-free” certificates mandatory for vehicles to keep the city’s air clean. However, the drive to protect rivers and other water sources wasn’t as successful. Despite investments in treatment plants, along with over four decades of “raising awareness” and over five years of voluntary cleaning campaigns, Bagmati—the major river that flows through the valley, not only remains as polluted as ever but is as good as dead from a hydrological point of view.