Campaigns to green Kathmandu's Ring Road

With rapid urbanisation now reaching saturation and Kathmandu exceeding the limits of growth, the private sector and individuals are stepping in to do what they can to green the concrete jungle.

 

Some groups have taken to reviving neighbourhood parks, others have ‘adopted’ stretches of streets or the banks of the Bagmati or Vishnumati for tree planting, while still others believe in re-wilding green spaces.

 

One of the more visible examples of such public-private-partnerships has been the section of the Ring Road between Balkhu and Ekantakuna in Lalitpur.

 

Anyone who has driven across that stretch in recent months is pleasantly surprised by manicured grass on highway embankments, foliage and flowers that makes it a short, but pleasant drive.

 

This is an initiative of the telecom company Ncell in collaboration with the Department of Forest and Soil Conservation and the Lalitpur Municipality. 

 

The project has overcome lack of coordination between various government agencies, including the Department of Roads and others to ultimately landscape the 10km stretch of the ring Road from Kalanki to Koteswor. 

 

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Ncell has ensured the maintenance of the green belt with 90 full-time workers since it launched the project in July, and it will have more than 6,000 trees by the time it is completed in the next four years. The trees will more than compensate for the rows of jacaranda that were cut along Ekantakuna-Satdobato for the expansion of the ring Road.

 

“This greening initiative will contribute to a healthy environment for the community as a whole and support Ncell's climate action goals,” said Ncell CEO Andy Chong. “This is an excellent example of public-private partnership and how we can collectively realise projects like these.”

 

Ncell hopes that other corporate groups as well as communities in Kathmandu will replicate its PPP model to work with local municipalities to green the city.

 

The construction of the 8-lane Ring Road with support from the Chinese government had led to the felling of many trees. Ncell’s Corporate Social Responsibility initiative aims to not just make up for that loss, but plant even more trees.

 

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The much-delayed widening of the Kalanki-Bansbari section of the Ring Road will also need to make up for the loss of the poplar trees that had been cut, and the Ncell example could be replicated there. 

 

What projects like the Ncell ring road can do is create foundations for businesses to take up social causes. Such investments can also help companies transition from fossil fuels and other nonrenewable energies to beneficial renewable ones.

 

Earlier, Ncell had planted 50,000 trees in 33 hectares of degraded land in Dhanusha, following which the government declared the protected area an ‘Illicit Felling and Open Grazing Free Zone’.

 

There are already signs that the Ncell initiative is having a ripple effect in other parts of Kathmandu. Banks and other companies have been pitching in to green traffic islands and sidewalks to augment the efforts of municipalities. 

Over in Banepa, the built-up bus park area now has an avenue of flowering trees. This is part of an initiative by Rasil Palanchoki, who has been working on a campaign to bring back the greenery to Banepa.

 

The highway town 25km east of Kathmandu is surrounded by forests, but the town itself is overbuilt, dusty and congested. Palanchoki is trying to make the town more liveable by planting jacaranda, guava, lassi, avocado, and other indigenous trees.

 

He says, “I want to turn Banepa into the garden it once was. We aren’t just planting trees on Environment Day, this is an everyday multi-year campaign.”

 

Palanchoki’s tree-planting campaign in Banepa has been made possible with limited support from Laxmi bank and Love Green Japan. His main challenge is to garner community ownership for sections of the greenery so local people maintain the trees. 

Together with the trees, he has also launched community cleanup campaigns and a streamlined waste management system. 

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