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The Rise of Non-Engineered Roads in Nepal
2008-06-03
Article by: Robin Workman
For the past ten years the Government of Nepal (GoN) has been collecting and formalising best practices on rural road construction and maintenance in Nepal. This has included some established international technical practices, as well as locally developed technologies such as bio-engineering. The result of this is the Labour-based, Environmentally friendly and Participatory (LEP) approach, where roads are planned through a participatory process at the local level and prioritised based on local criteria, then implemented by local people with a strong community involvement.
This approach works well and people are generally happy with it, even though it sometimes takes a little longer than they would like. This approach brings the benefits of road construction to the local community so that they can earn money through working on the road, whilst feeling some ownership of the road when it is complete. LEP roads are designed and implemented to government standards.
However, there is an increasing trend in rural Nepal for roads to be constructed using heavy machinery, particularly bulldozers and excavators. Such roads are usually constructed on an ad-hoc basis; they are not planned or designed and have little or no retaining structures or drainage, resulting in high gradients and indiscriminate land take (usually from the poorest people). This makes them vulnerable to heavy monsoon rains and susceptible to landslides that will sometimes close the road for months at a time.
The Rural Roads Forum (RRF) is an informal group of implementers from all of the donor-funded rural road projects in Nepal, who meet bi-monthly to coordinate efforts, share ideas and recommend best practices to GoN. The Forum members have for a long time been concerned over the number of un-planned and non-engineered roads that are being constructed in rural Nepal.
The country has over 20,000km of rural roads, with a demand for many thousands of kilometres more; necessary to bring connectivity to the remote and inaccessible areas of rural Nepal. However, at the last count less than half of these roads were actually motorable. In the experience of RRF members, most of these non-motorable roads were constructed using heavy machinery on an ad-hoc basis, with no design, planning or community involvement.
So: why are roads still being constructed in this way? Nepal is emerging from a 10-year conflict and the mood in the country is optimistic after recent successful elections. Development work can now continue largely un-hindered. Politicians and district administrations are seizing the opportunity to construct roads by any means available, and compared to the labour and administration intensive LEP approach, mechanised construction is a quick and easy fix! With a recent tendency for government employees and politicians to be in post for relatively short periods of time, this makes the bulldozer or excavator an attractive option to construct rural roads.
However, how long will such non-engineered roads last? One monsoon, two monsoons? How will they be maintained when the rains have made them impassable and the districts have minimal funds to spend on maintenance? These are some of the questions that the government need to be asking.
There is a need for awareness raising at all levels. Millions of rupees are being spent on constructing short-term solutions to acute access problems. If people can be persuaded to have a little more patience, their money can be spent more wisely and sustainably. The RRF is at present undertaking a review of non-engineered roads in order to get some concrete data on the subject. Hopefully, with this information at hand, the Forum can help to bring the facts to the people and initiate a change towards more sustainable rural roads in Nepal.
