Towards Reaching Sustainable Urban Development in the Kathmandu Valley of Nepal: An Economic Analysis of Solid Waste Management, Recycling, and the Health Impacts of Air Pollution.

The Kathmandu Valley is a rapidly growing and densely populated largest urban area, which includes the capital city, in Nepal, and it faces the challenge of protecting environment and safeguarding public health. This dissertation spans over three separate papers and addresses the two environmental issues of the Kathmandu valley i.e., management of solid waste and outdoor air pollution. Solid waste management related two papers talk about people’s preference and willingness to pay for improvement in the solid vi waste management service, and the determinants of people’s recycling behavior. Outdoor air pollution paper estimates health impact of exposure to outdoor air pollution. All the papers use primary data from a household survey conducted in 2012. Chapter 2 estimates the Kathmandu Valley residents’ preferred changes to the existing household solid waste management using a choice experiment survey. Included waste management attributes are waste collection time, community waste management program, waste segregation types, frequency of waste collection and the monthly user fee. According to the results, sub-urban and core-urban residents have distinctively different preference for their most preferred attribute and willingness to segregate waste. For example, people in the core urban area are willing to pay the most (i.e., 404 Rupees per month per household) for having a community waste management program and people in the sub-urban area are willing to pay the most for (480 Rupees per month per household) for scheduled waste collection. Sub-urban area residents are willing to segregate two type of waste, but core urban residents are not willing to segregate any. An average Kathmandu Valley resident prefers having a waste management program and scheduled and frequent waste collection service in his/her community. Kathmandu Valley residents, however, are willing to accept less frequent collection given the waste is collected in a scheduled time frame, which is an important policy implication for municipalities to optimally allocate their resources. People value walking shorter distances to dispose of their household waste. Based on the findings of this chapter, each municipality should create a unique set of waste management services that address the preferences of that municipality’s residents, which will help municipalities to optimally allocate resources. Improvement in existing household solid waste management is important to protect the environment, the quality of the groundwater (source of the valley’s drinking water), and reduce public health problems. Improved waste management also helps to maintain the aesthetic beauty of the city and overall, contributes to securing sustainable urban development. Previous studies on solid waste management in the Kathmandu Valley focus at solid waste management at the aggregate level by analyzing Kathmandu valley’s municipal waste management. About 70 percent of the total municipal waste, however, comes from household. In such scenario, this chapter contributes to provide important policy recommendations to improve