The Nepal Weekly 
September 2, 2025
(Published in The Nepal Weekly on 2017 January 31)
A recently published World Health Organisation report says that 9943 person die annually due to smoke pollution in Nepal. The World Bank projection is rather pitiful. The World Bank and IHME data dip to claim that more than 22 thousand human might had lost lives due to air pollution in 2016.
In house air pollution is one major cause in most of the rural households. The traditional smoky cooking systems is still is in use there while smoke produced by vehicles, factories and unmanaged construction works are responsible in urban areas.
The government institutions are saying that smokeless improved cook stoves have been installed in 1.2 million households so far. The aim was to install such cook stoves in each household in the country where wood is the only fuel within 2017. However, it looks like the target has been shifted to some longer period.
The clean cooking solution to all has been a big campaign in Nepal but the authorities say that there are around 3 million households are left to install smokeless improved cook stoves. That means most of the households will be using firewood for many years to come in the country. That will not replace by electricity or other technologies soon to come. This is to recall that said already installed 1.2 million improved cook stoves might have saved a lot of human lives.
Air pollution in the urban areas is rapidly increasing. Fossil fuel driven vehicles are responsible to pollute the environment. The unmanaged construction works are adding too much dust in the air which has been already polluted by toxic smoke produced by vehicles.
The estimated death rate as stated above is if not wrong the government and stakeholders must not pay only lip service. They now need to be much serious. The environment experts and activists are putting their voice on such issues continuously from a long time. But result does not look like responsible institutions are doing anything concrete to check the effect of air pollution.
The depth of the pollution scenario actually demands multiple interventions to minimise the risk. All possible means and measures should now be put together to awaken the state mechanism which has been deaf to such crucial issues. As such, the human right activists now need to be much serious as efforts of environment activists have been proved to be ‘not enough’. Concerned experts and activists have been stressing a number of measures to address the pollution relate issues. Despite intensified approaches the imminent mechanism has not been ready to implement the already committed work plans. Instead of the plans to give shape and size rapidly, the authorities are just ignoring the duties to fulfil. In such a grave situation human right activists better join hands together with environment activists for the cause of such a big human loss every year need to be checked.
This is to recall that more than 2 million annual deaths and billions of cases of diseases are attributed to pollution in the worldwide scenario. People experience the negative effects of environmental degradation ecosystems decline, including water shortage, fisheries depletion, natural disasters due to deforestation and unsafe management and disposal of toxic and dangerous wastes and products all over the world. Indigenous peoples suffer directly from the degradation of the ecosystems that they rely upon for their livelihoods. Climate change is exacerbating many of these negative effects of environmental degradation on human health and wellbeing and is also causing new ones, including an increase in extreme weather events and an increase in spread of malaria and other vector born diseases. These facts clearly show the close linkages between the environment and the features of human rights, and justify an integrated approach to environment and human rights.
UNEP describes that there are three main dimensions of the interrelationship between human rights and environmental protection to be noted. (1) The environment as a pre-requisite for the enjoyment of human rights (implying that human rights obligations of states should include the duty to ensure the level of environmental protection necessary to allow the full exercise of protected rights); (2) Certain human rights, especially access to information, participation in decision-making, and access to justice in environmental matters, as essential to good environmental decision-making (implying that human rights must be implemented in order to ensure environmental protection); and (3) The right to a safe, healthy and ecologically-balanced environment as a human right in itself.
Thus, the human right activists in Nepal who are actually staying a little aside from environment issues need to be extending their support by human rights point of view. This will be forging of strength for efforts to restore ‘good air to breath’ for all walks of life.
