Shashi Bahadur Thapa

This paper is based on the discussion “ Sustainable Building ” from the last two successive meetings of Asian Forum. My personnel insights gained through numerous years of national experience and in my own capacity and different references studies concerning Housing and Urban Development aspects in developing countries showed that sustainability on sustainable buildings can be achieved as long as some very basic issues are examined developed and implemented in proper way. Here, I tried my best to explain the tools (approaches), concepts (methods) and some views (request matters for Asian Forum) for the provision of housing in developing countries. The proposed theme is a subject of discussion which is a simple, in this, if we contribute or add more inputs with new vision, may help to have a part of sustainable housing development, which will act at end make housing for the well being citizen. This requires a good practices understanding of the present planning and also improvement of the professional planning practices and exchange of information on different planning systems, technologies and experiences. In fact, all countries have systems, which are designed to regulate the use of land in the public interest. Although the scope and method of operation differ greatly from one country to another. The Asian Forum Sustainable Buildings movement began to take place form 2002,now time has come for Asian Forum authority to start the pilot project for the poor people of the Asian Forum member countries in the line with “THINK ASIAN FORUMLLY, ACT LOCALLY”, this slogan which aims to improve health, housing need and well being of people living and working in this region.

This paper has three parts. Part-I is concerned with Nepal Land ownership system, Nepal’s housing policies and housing conditions. Part-II deals with housing delivery approaches, housing strategies, sustainable housing strategies, key factors on housing process, sustainable housing financing. Part-III is the concluding part of the paper where simple housing technologies, explanation on multi sector investment plan on housing, land pooling technique on housing development.

PART I
Nepal is a small landlocked country in South Asia sandwiched between china and India. Nepal is urbanizing very fast at an estimated annual growth of 7% and now its level with rise from 16 % to 32 % by the year 2025. Nepal National Housing survey 1991indicates that a majority of the families live in their own houses. In the country as whole 86% of the households live in their own houses, 6.7 % are in rental accommodation and about 7.21% are squatter’s .The corresponding figures for the urban areas of Nepal are 67%, 24.46% and 8.61% respectively. As majority of houses are privately owned, the right of access to and use of land and property is underwritten by a well-defined legal and administrative framework. The land and property holder through an ownership document can exercise the full right to possess or dispose the land and property as long as he pays the land revenue and property tax. But 25% of urban households live in a rental Accommodation; no specific law exists in the country dealing with landlord/tenant relations. The dual ownership of land, as stipulated by the Land Act in Nepal creates a problem. Both the owner and the tenant who tills the land have a legal right to the land. The constitution of Nepal of 1990 includes a provision for making arrangement and create favorable atmosphere in order to fulfill the need of dwelling units in the form of a basic need of the entire people. The national shelter Policy -1996 has the basic objectives are to facilitate the housing production, ensure self reliance, clarify the roles of various actors, facilitate the working of housing and land markets and reduce the adverse impact on environment. The stated policy is shown in the Box-2.

For any nation, housing construction is a key economic sector. In mixed economics, it helps the capitalist mode of production. The increased consumption of building materials helps to strengthen the capital. Now housing programmes provide an easy access to income, this is one way of thinking but it is quite different to basic needs approach. In the process of providing themselves with shelter, people want: a good location, land, building materials, finance, technology, amenities, security of tenure and good environment. Against what the people want, the government housing (mass housing) provides one type of housing out of several types, produced one way out of several ways. What can be learnt from the failure of mass housing in the most countries is that the government’s response should be directed towards the provision of what the people want...continue...

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Author: Shashi Bahadur Thapa, Chief Technical Advisor, M.R. ASSOCIATES, Kathmandu., Technical Advisor to Lalitpur Sub-Metropolitan City, Nepal,Technical Expert to Social Service Center (NGO), Nepal.; January 3,2004

Submitted to: Institute of International Harmonization for Building and Housing (iibh) Tokyo, Japan.