Managing urban water security: challenges and prospects in Nepal

Achieving water security is one of the major global challenges in the age of climate change, urbanization, population increase and incapacitated institutions. Despite the proliferation of water institutions and policies at national, provincial and local levels in Nepal, the slow response to address water scarcity is a puzzle, which we studied through this current research. We used a mixed method approach, which included 479 household surveys, eight city water forums and 16 interviews with the city-level water stakeholders and users in the two case study cities. We found that impacts of climate change and haphazard urbanization in supply side and increased population, and changing lifestyle patterns and socioeconomic practices in demand side are constantly putting pressures on water resources and urban water security. We argue that the challenges of climate change, rapid growth of urban population and haphazard urbanizations are building significant stress on urban water security; however, institutional responses, and reforms by introducing climate adaptive new plans and their implementation to address the tripatriate challenges, are inadequate.