Environmental Justice and Social Conflict Management in Rural Nepal (A Case Study of Budhabare VDC of Jhapa District)

Abstract

Environmental justice refers to the right of people to a safe healthy, productive and sustainable environment whose 'environment' is considered in its totality to include the ecological (biological), physical (natural and built), social, cultural, political, aesthetic and economic environments. It stand for the condition in which such a right can be freely exercised, where by individual group identities, needs, and dignities are preserved, fulfilled and respected in a way that provides for self actualization and personal and community empowerment. Thus, the study entitled "Environment Justice and Social Conflict Management in Rural Nepal" (A Case Study of Budhabare VDC of Jhapa District) has been conducted with the following objectives:  To assess the environmental injustice inherent in Nepalese society and the resultant conflicts.  To identify the degree and nature of environmental injustices on the matter of ownership benefit sharing.  To explore the cause of environmental injustices and to correlate them with social inequalities. With the completion of the study, it has been found that major causes of environmental injustices are inherent in the structure of society itself. To a great extent, the long existed political, social and cultural factors are the root causes of environmental injustices in Nepal. The state mechanism and the power holders diverted all state resources to meet their needs throughout the history. It is the ground reality of Nepalese society that natural resources are the sole sources of livelihood and prosperity. Particularly, land, forest and water are indispensable property of people of both urban and rural areas. They stand as the symbol of wealth and socio-political access of people since time immemorial. It is the bitter reality in Nepal where majority of people were denied from their inborn right over such natural resources. Due to the deprivation from the access to natural resources, economic condition of the people became miserable that further took them into the vicious circle of poverty and the vicious circle brought multiplier negative impacts in all aspects of life. The farmers could hardly fulfill their basic needs on one hand, they were exploited by the elite class on the other. Ultimately, the failure of political structure to address these issues gave birth to vast inequalities, absolute poverty, lack of access to resources and strong feelings of injustices among rural poor. The very situation finally made Nepali society extremely vulnerable to conflict and mass movement like Maoist's people's war. Since history, as peasant's sentiments are linked with communist movements in Nepal, Maoists finally successfully capitalized the highly excluded and frustrated peasant society in violent movement. So, the real problems are not the Maoist, the real problem lies in the disparities between rich and poor. Unless, these problems can be solved, some body else will take up the Maoist's role once they will have disappeared. The final conclusion of the study is that once the environmental rights of the rural people are secured, gradual upliftments take place in their all aspects of life viz.: economic, socio-cultural, and political life as ownership of NRs. is closely related to all these aspects of life in Nepal. That is why, all sorts of discriminations rooted in our society in the matter of environment related activities, are to be eliminated. Being the prime legitimate authority, the state should strongly take actions against such discriminations. Similarly, individuals and community must change their previous conservative attitude and believe in collective efforts both in cost and benefit sharing from such NRs.