Governmental institutions

The government on several occasions have recognised the problem with the river pollution and that the waste management is the most critical problem around the area. A committee for Implementation and Monitoring of Environmental Improvement in Pashupati area was established by the Government of Nepal in April 1995 which was modified to High Powered Committee for Implementation and Monitoring of the Bagmati Area Sewerage Construction/Rehabilitation Project (BASP) in 1996. Later in May 2008, it was renamed as High Powered Committee for Integrated Development of the Bagmati Civilization (HPCIDBC). The main task of HPCIDBC is to revive the Bagmati River to its original state (Sharma, 2018). HPCIDBC collaborated with the National Trust for Nature Conservation (NTNC), an autonomous NGO and initiated the Bagmati Action Plan in 2009 with an intention to restore and conserve the river and its tributaries with a vision of a ‘Clean, green and healthy river system that is full of life and valued by all.’ The plan divided the whole river system within Kathmandu Valley into 5 zones based on the population density and the existing water quality: Natural Conservation Core Zone (Zone 1), Rural Zone (Zone 2), Peri-urban Zone (Zone 3), Urban Zone (Zone 4) and Downstream zone (Zone 5), and objectives and activities were defined specific to each zone.

The plan recognised how waste management is the most challenging part and proposed a new community managed DEWATS (Decentralized Water Treatment System) as one of the measures to manage waste. For the Peri- Urban and Urban zones, the objectives were to improve river water quality by proper waste water management, controlling and relocating squatter settlements from river banks and to conserve culture

Fig: Zoning of the river system (Source: Bagmati Action Plan 2009-2014)

and heritage related to the river. The government has also set out key objectives which include the construction of a 30 km sewerage line, 5 treatment plants, 30 km river training, 30 kms of roads and green belt along river banks along with organizing several public awareness programmes. The plan also laid down a monitoring plan for the proposed activities and identified HPCIDBC as the key organization for coordinating and leading the plan. Other projects that are run by HPCIDBC include watershed management, rain water harvesting and ground water recharge, solid waste management and social mobilization and Bagmati River beautification works.

There are other government bodies that are linked with the Bagmati River. Bagmati river basin improvement project (BRBIP) supports the development and implementation of flood forecasting and warning systems for the entire Bagmati Basin. BRBIP argues in their official website that the Bagmati River Cleaning Campaign is one part of the river cleaning process but it needs involvement of permanent institutions to deem the attempts sustainable. Moreover they suggest that the locals along the beautified stretches of the river must take ownership of the public space and stop the old practices of dumping household waste in the river. Integrated Development Society Nepal (IDS Nepal) along with BRBIP conducted a study on understanding Water and Sanitation Data of the Bagmati Watershed Area. The project analyzed available demographics, socio-ecological, water and sanitation and watershed related data of the Bagmati River Basin to enhance solid waste management, social mobilization and watershed management activities in the upper region of the basin.

Most aspects of the Bagmati Action Plan focus on long term development, which could be corresponded to the green agenda. The immediate situation in the informal settlements next to the river are widely ignored and their inhabitants are framed as a nuisance to the beautification of Bagmati, as stated as well by the the manager of the Bagmati Area Sewage Construction and Rehabilitation Project, describing the squatters as major obstacles for the development of Kathmandu, making “the challenge of securing international funding much more complex” (Rademacher, 2011, p. 113). This is mirrored by the activities as conducted in the last decades and stated in the Bagmati Action Plan (2009-2014) towards the squatters that only evolve around the eviction and destruction of the settlements, without elaborated plans of relocation or compensation (Sengupta, 2011).

Moreover, it is widely believed and discussed by government agents that the squatters originated in the river banks of Kathmandu Valley in the form of political puppets who could be summoned to participate in demonstrations and rallies of the parties protesting monarchy and eventually abolishing it in 2006 (Shrestha, Poudel and Khatri, 2020), or that most of them aren’t even real squatters, since they were owning land in other places or managed to establish themselves so well on the riverbanks, that their can’t credible seen as poor (Brooks, 2016).

While the river cleaning activists, as the major stakeholder group, are mostly regarded positively by the governmental administration, some agents of the HPCIDBC present the describe the Bagmati Clean-up Campaign as merely propaganda, with no tangible results (Sharma, 2018). So, while the government shares many perspectives of the cleaning activist regarding the problematization of river degradation, the practices are focused on the construction of green public space aiming to thereby enhance the city scape as a whole.