Environmental Justice in Nepal: Origins, Struggles, and Prospects

This edited volume provides a holistic compilation of the diverse range of emerging scholarship in critical environmental justice studies in Nepal.

This book brings together environmental justice scholarship set within a robust conceptual framework, focusing on a diversity of case studies from Nepal. Its locale-specific contextualisation provides a unique analysis of the natural resource-based livelihoods common in the region, together with health and well-being impacts of urban and industrial developments in its rapidly changing political, economic, social, and ecological environment. Centring contributions from Nepalese scholars and practitioners, the volume spans a wide range of topics including the origins of environmental justice in Nepal, land and agriculture, conservation, infrastructure and development, Indigenous peoples, climate justice, and health equity. It reflects on the rise and development of social movements and public policy, discusses the further evolution of environmental justice, and highlights how the work of scholars, activists, and practitioners in the Nepalese context can enrich global conversations about social and environmental issues.

The book will appeal to scholars, researchers, students, and activists in environmental justice, sustainable development, South Asian, and Himalayan studies.

Jonathan K London is Professor in the Department of Human Ecology/Community and Regional Planning at the University of California, Davis, USA.

Jagannath Adhikari works mainly as independent researcher and, occasionally, teaches in Nepal and Australia.

Thomas Robertson is a historian and the former director of Fulbright Nepal/USEF.