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The day often begins with simple routines. We drink tea in a plastic cup on the way to work, throw food waste into the small bin as plastics, accept another shopping bag from the market, or leave lights and tap running without much thought. These actions feel ordinary. Too small to matter. But what if these “small” habits, repeated by millions every single day, are slowly shaping a future we may no longer recognize?

A plastic bottle tossed beside a road today may eventually clog a drainage system during monsoon rains. The smoke rising from burning waste in one neighborhood may become the polluted air inhaled by children nearby. The plastic wrapper thrown carelessly into a river may travel for years, harming ecosystems far beyond where it was discarded. Environmental destruction rarely happens all at once. It grows quietly through the everyday choices people make and ignore.

As Nepal and the rest of the world observe World Environment Day on June 5, the message is becoming clearer than ever: protecting the environment is no longer someone else’s responsibility. It is not only the job of governments, environmental activists, or international organizations. It begins with each of us in our homes, schools, streets, offices, and communities.

Nepal is blessed with extraordinary natural beauty. Snow-covered mountains, flowing rivers, dense forests, fertile plains, and diverse wildlife make the country environmentally rich and globally unique. Nature is not only a part of Nepal’s identity; it is also the foundation of people’s livelihood and survival. Farmers depend on healthy soil and rainfall. Families rely on forest and water sources. Tourism depends on clean landscape and biodiversity. Entire communities survive because nature continues to provide.

Yet across the country, the signs of environmental damage are becoming impossible to ignore. Rivers that once flowed clean are increasingly polluted with plastic and sewage. Streets in urban areas overflow with unmanaged waste.  Open spaces are turning into dumping sites. During the monsoon, blocked drains and poorly managed garbage contribute to flooding in cities and towns. In many places, the smell of burning plastic has become a normal part of daily life.

Plastic pollution has emerged as one of Nepal’s most visible environmental challenges. Single-use plastics such as shopping bags. Snack wrappers, disposable bottles, straw, cups, and a packaging material are now deeply embedded in modern lifestyle. Convenient for a few minutes, they remain in the environment for hundreds of years.

Walk through marketplaces, riverbanks, bus parks, or even rural trails, and plastic waste can be seen almost everywhere. Cows search through piles of garbage for food, often consuming harmful plastics. Rivers carry waste downstream, polluting ecosystems and affecting aquatic life. Agricultural land is increasingly contaminated by non-biodegradable waste that damages soil quality and productivity.

What is even more alarming is how normalized this situation has become. Many people no longer react to seeing garbage scattered on roadside or smoke rising from burning waste. Pollution has quietly become part of everyday life. But the environmental crisis is not limited to waste alone.

Climate change is intensifying challenges across Nepal. Flood, landslides, droughts, forest fires and heatwaves are becoming more frequent and severe. Farmers struggle with unpredictable rain and declining agricultural productivity. Water shortages are increasing in several communities. Mountain regions are witnessing the effect of melting glaciers and changing ecosystems. Vulnerable communities continue to bear the greatest burden despite contributing the least to global environmental damage.

The impacts are deeply personal.

Children breathe polluted air on their way to school. Elderly people suffer from respirator illnesses worsened by smoke and dust. Waste workers sort through dangerous garbage without adequate protection. Families lose homes and crops to floods and landslides. These are no longer distant environmental stories. They are realities affecting lives across Nepal every day.

Yet amid these challenges, there is still hope.

Across the country, young people, community groups, schools, and local organizations are beginning to lead change. Youth-led clean-up campaigns are transforming public spaces. Schools are teaching children about waste- segregation and sustainable practices. Communities are experimenting with composting, recycling and reducing plastic use. Small businesses are introducing eco-friendly alternatives. These efforts may appear modest, but they demonstrate something powerful: change is possible when people take responsibility.

The truth is that environmental protection doesn’t always require massive budgets, advanced technology, or large international projects. Sometimes it begins with very ordinary actions.

Carrying a reusable bag instead of accepting plastic. Separating bio-degradable and non-biodegradable waste at home. Composting kitchen waste. Refusing unnecessary packaging. Conserving water and electricity. Planting trees. Supporting local recycling efforts. Teaching children to value nature. Speaking up when public spaces are polluted.

These actions may seem small individually, but collectively they create transformation.

The growing global discussion around the circular economy also reminds people that waste itself is not always useless. Materials can be reused, repaired, recycled, and repurposed rather than immediately discarded. Moving away from a “use and throw” culture is essential if societies want to reduce environmental damage and protect natural resources for future generations. 

Most importantly, environmental responsibility must become a shared culture rather than an occasional campaign. Too often, environmental awareness is discussed only during special events, clean-up drives, or international observances. But protecting the environment cannot be limited to one day of speeches and social media posts. It must become part of everyday behavior.

The future of Nepal’s environment will not be determined only in policies written in offices or discussions held in conferences. It will be shaped by what ordinary people choose to do every single day.

Will we continue treating rivers like dumping sites? Will we normalize polluted air and unmanaged waste? Or will we recognize that protecting the environment means protecting ourselves, our health, our livelihood, and the future of generations yet to come?

The answer lies not in distant promises but in our daily choices.

A cleaner river begins when one person chooses not to litter. A healthier community begins when families manage responsibly. A sustainable future begins when people understand that environmental protection is not a burden, it is an investment in life itself.

The environment we ignore today will ultimately define the world we leave behind tomorrow. And perhaps the most important realization is this: meaningful change does not begin with extraordinary actions. It begins with ordinary people deciding that small actions matter.

Dear Balen,

There is something genuinely rare about your rise to power. A young, educated, and energetic leader commanding nearly a two-thirds majority in parliament is not something Nepal sees often. The country’s battered democratic imagination had grown weary of recycled faces and predictable betrayals. So when you arrived, many people, not just your hardcore supporters, quietly hoped that this time might be different.

Two months in, the picture is more complicated than hope allows. The demolition drives, the arrests of high profile figures without what many consider adequate legal grounding, the controversy surrounding the appointment of the Chief Justice, the apparent sidelining of your parliamentary engagement, the silence on runaway price hikes, the mass removal of appointees through ordinances without any immediate plan to replace them, these have left universities and public institutions in a state of drift. Add to this a foreign policy posture that has made Nepal’s neighbors and other friendly countries uneasy, and you begin to understand why voices beyond the usual opposition, civil society, academics, and ordinary citizens have grown concerned.

Your supporters call it disruption. Your critics call it destruction without direction. Both are partly right, and that is precisely the problem.

This is not a piece written to join a chorus of condemnation. It is written out of genuine belief that you can still govern differently, peacefully, and in a healthy manner. Here is how.

Unite, rather than sort people into camps

The framing of Nepal as a battle between “reformists” and “forces favoring status quo” is politically convenient but socially corrosive. It gives supporters a simple story to tell, but it also licenses the government to treat every critic as an enemy of change. A nation with a fractured history does not need a new axis of polarization. It needs a leader willing to speak to people across the divide, not to win them over rhetorically, but to actually listen. The willingness to build consensus, even with those you disagree with, is not weakness. It is what separates a statesman from a politician.

Deal with the past, lead with the future

Accountability for past wrongs matters enormously. Nobody is asking you to forget or forgive what came before. But accountability delivered through spectacle, arrests that feel punitive before they are proven, demolitions that hit the vulnerable alongside the powerful, risks substituting theatre for justice. A futuristic leader holds the past accountable through institutions, not impulse. The goal should be a Nepal where the rule of law is rebuilt so methodically that it outlives any single government. That takes patience and discipline, not a hammer.

Put the people at the bottom at the centre

It is easy for any government, including a self-styled reformist one, to get caught up in the optics of action. Demolitions photograph well. Arrests make headlines. But the people living a vulnerable life for decades will not benefit from these actions both in the short run and long run unless government action produces tangible results. Thus, your government’s policies and programs should start from their reality, not from a preset vision imposed on it.

Lead with compassion, not just conviction

Conviction is essential in a leader. But conviction without compassion produces a government that is right in its own eyes while being indifferent to the human cost of its decisions. The use of security forces should be an exceptional response to exceptional circumstances, not a routine tool of governance. When the state deploys force as its first language, it communicates something about who it thinks the real threat is. In most cases in Nepal, it is not the urban poor whose homes are being torn down.

Stop relying heavily on info that comes your way

Every prime minister’s biggest vulnerability is the distance between themselves and the actual lives of citizens. Advisors filter. Officials manage impressions. Briefing notes flatten complexity. You, who built your original credibility on the ground in Kathmandu as a mayor, should know this better than most. The answer is not to stop listening to experts. It is to make sure those experts are not the only voices in the room. Regular, unmediated interaction with ordinary people, not in staged events, but in genuine conversation, produces the kind of understanding that no report can replicate.

Be dynamic, not just decisive

There is a difference between having a vision and having a playlist. A playlist assumes you already know the right order of things. A vision is willing to update itself when reality pushes back. Nepal is a country of extraordinary internal complexity, geographic, ethnic, economic, and political. A government that follows a predetermined script, however well intentioned, will eventually find that the script does not fit the scene it is trying to play out in. Real leadership reads the room constantly.

Make decisions on evidence, not ideology

This one is simple but it matters more than anything else on this list. The reforms Nepal needs most are not ideologically controversial. Better service delivery, functional public institutions, transparent procurement, a judiciary that works, these are not left wing or right wing ambitions. They are just competent in governance. Decisions grounded in evidence and implemented with accountability build the kind of legitimacy that survives beyond a single electoral cycle. Decisions made on instinct or preconceived conviction, however popular in the short run, tend to unravel.

The majority is an opportunity, not a permission slip

You have something almost no Nepali leader before you has had in the same measure, a genuine democratic mandate and the parliamentary numbers to act on it. That is a gift that comes with a profound responsibility. It means you do not need to govern through fear, force, or polarisation. You can afford to be generous, inclusive, and patient. You can afford to be the leader who restores some trust in the idea that the government can actually work for people rather than against them.

Nepal did not just elect a builder. It elected someone it believed could repair the broken faith in leadership itself. That faith is still alive, just barely, and it is yours to either honour or squander. History will not remember you for the walls you tore down. It will remember you for what you chose to build in their place, and whether the most forgotten Nepali people felt it in their own life. The country is watching you, Balen. More importantly, it is still hoping.

Nepal is an ancient country known for its rivers and streams. There are more than 6,000 rivers and rivulets in the Himalayan nation, which have nourished this land and human civilization for centuries. It is believed that human civilization developed along riverbanks. Almost every village, town and city in Nepal has access to rivers.

Like Nepal, civilizations across the world have long been connected with rivers. Some rivers are globally famous, such as Asia’s Yangtze, Europe’s Volga, Africa’s Nile, North America’s Mississippi, South America’s Amazon and Australia’s Darling and Murray rivers.

However, human society has not been serious enough about keeping rivers clean. Population growth and increasing pollution have weakened the protection and rights of rivers. The government’s celebration of Asar 14 as National Tree Plantation Day reflects the state’s concern for environmental protection.

Even in our Vedic tradition, nature is regarded as a sacred force and bathing in rivers and other water bodies is considered a means of purification. So, it would be unjust to say that society is completely unconcerned about river conservation. Nevertheless, water and river pollution have now become major global threats, including in Nepal.

Development and environmental protection should move together. Unfortunately, while development is progressing rapidly, environmental conservation is often ignored. This prevents the country from achieving sustainable development. Pollution caused by development activities affects not only human life but also rivers, forests, and wildlife. Rivers are increasingly being polluted and disappearing. In some cases, even protecting their existence has become an uphill task.

Legal rights of rivers

Contemporary environmental jurists argue that natural resources should be recognized as “legal entities.” When laws are clear, they define rights and responsibilities. When the law remains silent, public expectations seek recognition.

Like living beings, rivers should also enjoy certain fundamental rights, such as: the right to flow freely, right to protect aquatic biodiversity, the right to a pollution-free environment, and the right to legal protection. Despite this, rivers in Nepal with immense religious significance—such as the Koshi, Doodhmati, Gandaki and Bagmati—have become heavily polluted. During the rainy season, sewage and solid garbage are often directly discharged into rivers. As a result, polluted water spreads diseases among people and harms aquatic life.

This situation has led to the growing idea of granting legal rights to rivers. Austrian jurist Hans Kelsen believed that law is a normative system—a system of rules that determines what should happen if a certain act occurs. In this respect, special laws should recognize rivers as legal persons and create legal mechanisms to reduce pollution and protect river ecosystems.

The public trust doctrine places responsibility on the state to properly manage natural resources. The state also has a duty to adopt preventive and precautionary measures against environmental harm caused by misuse of natural resources. So, rivers should be recognized as living legal entities, with the state acting as their guardian through law.

International practice

Several countries around the world have adopted laws concerning rivers and environmental protection. In 1972, Professor Christopher Stone of the University of Southern California argued that rivers, lakes, forests and other natural resources should have legal standing. His ideas significantly influenced the development of environmental law in the United States.

In the 1972 case of Sierra Club v. Morton, US Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas stated in his dissenting opinion that rivers, forests, lakes and natural resources should possess legal rights. He supported Stone’s theory that anyone could act as a guardian for the protection of nature.

In 2018, the Supreme Court of Colombia recognized the Amazon River as possessing legal rights. New Zealand went even further by recognizing Whanganui as an independent legal entity in 2017.

Likewise, Canada recognized the Magpie River as a legal person in 2021. In India, the Uttarakhand High Court in 2017 declared the Ganga and Yamuna rivers to be “living legal persons” and directed the government to ensure that rivers remain pollution-free.

In England, in 2026, the entire catchment area of the River Wye was officially recognized as a “Living Ecosystem” with natural rights through a Charter. Earlier, in 2025, River Ouse had also received similar rights at the local level. In 2025, Peru recognized Lake Titicaca and its tributary rivers as legal entities with rights.

Constitutional provisions

The Constitution of Nepal contains environmental provisions that support the country’s “green democracy.” Article 30 guarantees every citizen the right to live in a clean and healthy environment. Article 35 guarantees the right to clean drinking water and sanitation. Similarly, Article 36 ensures food sovereignty, while Article 25 empowers the state to formulate land reform laws for agricultural and environmental improvement. Moreover, Article 44 establishes consumers’ rights to quality goods and services.

Article 51 directs the state to adopt principles of sustainable environmental development, including precautionary measures. The Constitution grants High Courts and the Supreme Court authority to issue directives, orders and writs for environmental protection and conservation.

In a writ petition filed by Thaneshwar Acharya against Bhrikuti Paper Factory, it was argued that industrial waste discharged into the Narayani had polluted surrounding areas and endangered aquatic life. The Supreme Court ordered the installation of treatment plants for pollution control. There are many court rulings in Nepal against water pollution.

Way forward

Excessive use of chemicals, destruction of natural resources and poor waste management are causing serious environmental damage. Rivers flow across national boundaries, meaning pollution caused in one country affects people in the other. That's why, all nations must work together to prevent transboundary river pollution.

Even small efforts can help protect rivers. Organic household waste can be converted into compost. Waste generated from homes and businesses can be separated at the source, while non-biodegradable materials such as metal, plastic, paper and glass can be managed separately. Cloth bags can replace plastic bags while shopping. Governments and citizens should work together to prevent contamination of waters. After all, rivers also carry religious and spiritual significance.

At the same time, pollution is threatening the existence of rivers and aquatic life. A collective anti-pollution movement is now necessary—from government institutions to ordinary citizens.

Legal reform is equally important. Rivers should be recognized as “living legal persons” and granted enforceable legal rights. Doing so would allow polluters to be brought within the legal framework while strengthening the principles of sustainable development. While celebrating World Environment Day this year, Nepal should seriously consider enacting a law declaring rivers as living legal persons.

Shuffling through the realities of Nepal’s Adult Entertainment Sector (AES) meant spending days absorbing stories of survival, economic displacement, wage theft and a quiet, systemic cruelty. It is a recurring pattern. Once these issues are translated into writing, the other, more important, question remains: how do we fix it? 

For a long time, AES like cabin restaurants, dance bars, and dohori sanjhs have been viewed as a societal taboo that needs policing. This completely deters us from the fact that it is an informal economy where workers are systematically stripped from their basic legal rights. This is not merely an accident but a result of policy vacuum that gives employers leeway to operate outside the boundaries of law, essentially profiting through labour exploitation. The law exists on paper, but the implementation is bleak. 

The majority of AES workers are denied written contracts, forcing them to maintain an informal relationship with the employer. This goes against Section 11 of Nepal’s Labour Act (2074), which prohibits employing anyone without a written agreement. Ideally, these workers are supposed to receive a written contract with wage that matches or exceeds the government’s minimum wage standards, independent of tips and commission. 

This lack of paper trails not only takes away their labour rights; it ripples into something worse. It enables rampant wage theft, arbitrary transmission and employers have a terrifying leverage against workers when they force them toward unsafe situations with the clients like coerced alcohol consumption.

To tackle this, the next step is to make use of the already existing law that has failed to protect this community. The state is responsible for ensuring that there are mandatory, industry-specific standardized contracts that ensure workers’ fair pay. Additionally, to make this work, local governments must make the annual renewal of an establishment’s commercial license dependent upon digital payroll records. If salaries are paid electronically into a bank account, employers can no longer retroactively claim a worker was never employed there when a dispute arises.

However, the risk of working in AES does not stay confined within the four walls of their workplace. Kathmandu does not have operational public transportation after 11 pm. These workers have no choice but to walk home, which is often rendered unsafe as their work ends at 2 am. Most often, they face inappropriate interactions and abuse on the street. 

Under Section 132 of the Labour Act, employers are required to ensure that a workplace is free from sexual harassment and abuse. This law hasn’t been implemented within the workplace as many experience abuses camouflaged as client engagement. In a work that involves late-night economy, commuting home is a direct extension of that workplace. To address this issue, the most practical solution would be to amend local municipal byelaws to make it legally mandatory for any commercial establishment operating at night after certain hours to provide verified, door-to-door drop-off transportation for their staff. 

Finding a place to live is another big issue. Housing insecurity is a major problem among these workers. As working in AES is considered more of a taboo than a job in Nepali society, most landlords are unwilling to allow these workers to rent a place. Even if they do, workers are exposed to humiliation for doing a job that isn’t socially approved. 

Facing intense social stigma and sudden evictions, many women are pushed into unsafe live-in relationships just for physical protection. Local governments need to use municipal funds to partner with specialized civil society groups to fund subsidized, safe-haven hostels where workers can find secure, stigma-free housing and immediate mental health support to cope with deep occupational burnout.

What’s more heartbreaking is that the trauma is passed down through bureaucratic violence to the next generation. As mentioned in the previous article in AES, there are workers left by their partners to raise children on their own. This is often the result of live-in relationships, again, a temporary solution workers comply with to ensure a roof over their head. Despite needing the state’s support, these workers hit a brick wall at local ward offices. 

Officials are known to refuse birth registration or to process citizenship applications, frequently demanding the physical presence or identification of the father. This administrative gatekeeping is a direct violation of Article 38 of the Constitution of Nepal which guarantees the rights to women and Article 39 that protects a child’s right to identity. 

More importantly, it violates landmark Supreme Court precedents like the Sabina Damai case, which explicitly ruled that a mother has the independent legal right to register her child’s birth and give citizenship matrilineally if the father cannot be found or is uncooperative. To solve this problem, the Ministry of Federal Affairs should issue clear directives to local levels regarding the refusal to register a child in a single mother’s name. Municipalities should also establish permanent free legal aid desks in wards so that these women have immediate representation to fight through the bureaucracy.

Finally, the pipeline to the entertainment industry must be recognized for what it is: a web of duplicitous recruiting and trafficking. Brokers exploit regional economic desperation and prey on vulnerable groups. Once these women are caught in the city, their financial independence is demolished through unpaid wages. Under Nepal’s Human Trafficking and Transportation (Control) Act, 2064, it is a serious crime to keep someone in forced labour or exploit them by using deception, coercion or withholding of financial support. 

It’s something legal advocates have long pointed to as a perfect example of internal trafficking, since an employer who withholds months of a worker’s salary as an arbitrary “finder’s fee” fits the statutory definition. The Ministry of Home Affairs needs to stop treating these wage disputes as petty civil disagreements and instead should prosecute predatory employers under the Act of 2064. The Department of Foreign Employment also needs to focus on cracking down on rogue recruitment agencies when this exploitation spills overseas, for instance, through manipulation of visit visas. It should also invest in emergency repatriation resources at Nepali embassies abroad. While talks with the authorities suggest interventions are underway, the result is barely visible. 

However, there is the single biggest bureaucratic bottleneck in Nepal that needs to be overcome to implement any of these solutions. It is the total lack of institutional ownership. Right now, if an entertainment worker seeks help, they get caught in a cycle of administrative buck-passing. 

If they complain about a withheld paycheck, they are told to go to the Ministry Of Labour, Employment and Social Security. If they report abuse at work or internal trafficking, they are referred to the Ministry of Home Affairs. If they want protection as a single mother or a vulnerable woman, then the responsibility is on the Ministry of Women, Children and Senior Citizens. 

There is no single entity that takes accountability for the sector because their issues cut across labour, criminal justice, and social welfare, leaving workers to bounce helplessly between different government corridors. The government cannot continue to let these women fall through the structural cracks of its own fragmented bureaucracy. 

Rather than creating a new centralized bureaucracy that risks being driven mainly from the capital, the state must emphasize strengthening and mobilizing existing frameworks at the grassroots level. The real enforcement mechanism is local governments. This decentralization allows municipalities to craft rules, response mechanisms and dedicated budgets suited to their context, letting local authorities manage first-level labor grievances and provide direct oversight.

Real, lasting change for Nepal’s entertainment sector will never come from heavy-handed police raids, moral surveillance or paternalistic bans that only push the industry further underground and empower corrupt actors to exploit vulnerable workers. True justice is removing these workers from the legal shadows and putting them under the full protection of the state’s labour laws. 

The state can begin to dismantle this exploitation by enforcing the existing Labour Act, operationalizing the Supreme Court’s rulings on single mothers and treating predatory wage detention as a serious trafficking offense. The solutions are already written in the country’s laws. All the state needs are the political will to enforce them for the women working in the late-night shadows of its cities.