Urbanizing flows. Growing water insecurity in peri-urban Kathmandu Valley, Nepal

Summary

Kathmandu Valley, where Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal is located, is among the fastest-growing urban agglomerations in South-Asia. Rapid urbanization has resulted in rising competition for peri-urban water, and increased peri-urban water insecurity and related conflicts in this rapidly urbanizing valley. However, these issues of increasing peri-urban water insecurity, how diverse actors in the peri-urban context experience and deal with these changes, and how these changes affect social relations and the “resilience” of communities in the increasingly diverse and dynamic peri-urban spaces have received little attention, both in academic and policy-oriented studies. Taking a multi-sited ethnographic case study approach, this study contributes to a better understanding of processes of peri-urbanization, their differential impacts on water access, water rights, and water security of various actors, how these changes co-produce conflicts and cooperation, perpetuate insecurities, exclusion, and inequalities and what these processes of and responses to socio-environmental changes mean for “community resilience”.