This open access volume is the first comprehensive assessment of the Hindu Kush Himalaya (HKH) region. It comprises important scientific research on the social, economic, and environmental pillars of sustainable mountain development and will serve as a basis for evidence-based decision-making to safeguard the environment and advance people’s well-being. The compiled content is based on the collective knowledge of over 300 leading researchers, experts and policymakers, brought together by the Hindu Kush Himalayan Monitoring and Assessment Programme (HIMAP) under the coordination of the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD). This assessment was conducted between 2013 and 2017 as the first of a series of monitoring and assessment reports, under the guidance of the HIMAP Steering Committee: Eklabya Sharma (ICIMOD), Atiq Raman (Bangladesh), Yuba Raj Khatiwada (Nepal), Linxiu Zhang (China), Surendra Pratap Singh (India), Tandong Yao (China) and David Molden (ICIMOD and Chair of the HIMAP SC). This First HKH Assessment Report consists of 16 chapters, which comprehensively assess the current state of knowledge of the HKH region, increase the understanding of various drivers of change and their impacts, address critical data gaps and develop a set of evidence-based and actionable policy solutions and recommendations. These are linked to nine mountain priorities for the mountains and people of the HKH consistent with the Sustainable Development Goals. This book is a must-read for policy makers, academics and students interested in this important region and an essentially important resource for contributors to global assessments such as the IPCC reports.

The goals of this book are to update information on the effects of rural road development, both in Nepal and globally, explain the environmental, socioeconomic, and sociocultural impacts of expanding rural road networks in the Nepalese Himalaya, and to promote further studies on rural road development throughout the world based on studies and investigations performed in Nepal. Readers will learn about the history of rural road development, as well as the challenges to effectively design and construct rural roads and how these obstacles may be overcome. Chapter one offers a global review of road development, and both the positive and negative impacts of rural road implementation. Chapter two defines mobilities within the context of coupled social and ecological systems, specifically in the Nepalese Himalaya. Chapters three through five detail the environmental, socioeconomic, and sociocultural impacts expanding rural road networks through several case studies. The concluding chapter summarizes the findings of the book, discussing the need for interdisciplinary cooperation and collaboration to avoid negative consequences. This book will be of interest to teachers, researchers, policy makers, and development organizations.

`This is an important book that deserves to be read by everyone concerned with presenting major environmental issues.' Geography ` ... an essential text for policy makers and aid professionals, as well as for students of environmental studies and international development ... It is indeed, a book appropriate to the urgent and critical issues which it addresses.' - Journal of Environmental Management

This book provides a detailed description of sustainable tourism development in the Uttarakhand Himalaya. Though the Uttarakhand Himalaya is bestowed with numerous locales of tourists/pilgrims’ interests, tourism has not yet been developed substantially. This book describes geographical and cultural components of tourism, major types of tourism and tourist places, tourist/pilgrim circuits, case studies of the important tourists/pilgrims’ routes, trends of tourism, development of homestay tourism, development of infrastructural facilities for tourism development, major constrains and prospects of sustainable tourism development, and conclusions. SWOC analysis of tourism activities has been carried out. The book is based on the author’s observation of tourism development in the Uttarakhand Himalaya. Further, large tourism data was gathered and analyzed, using a qualitative and a quantitative method, and a sustainable tourism model was developed. This book is very useful for students, research scholars, academicians, and policymakers.

Engaging with a range of public health issues, this book charts important social and political transitions in Nepal through the lens of medicine and health development. It focuses on mission health care institutions, tuberculosis control programmes as a site of medical intervention, the "pharmaceuticalization" of mental health and public health, and in relation to development ideologies the attempted creation of modern subjects and citizens to advance the health of the nation. Based on two decades of experience, both as a physician and public health professional and an anthropologist, the author presents these issues through four case studies of health programme intervention in a district in central Nepal to show the inter-related aspects of the processes. The book explains how local realities align with, resist, and are complicated by globalized narratives and practices of health and development. It pays careful attention to traditional healers, infectious disease, micronutrient initiatives, mental health and the historical, ideological, and political-economic context of mission-based development work. Offering an ethnographic picture of the challenges and possibilities for action that exist in Nepal , this book is of interest to academics in the field of medical and development anthropology and those working directly in the fields of health and development.

The book presents a comprehensive picture of the rural development programmes in chronological order since first five year plan to the eighth five year plan. Attempt has been made to present the temporal dimensions of policies and objectives being adopted, extended and/or modified after reviewing the needs of identified target area and/or target groups. Also analyses the trend of rural development programmes being implemented in the region with their changing philosophy and composition from Community Development Programme (CDP), Small Farmers Development Agencies (SFDA) to Integrated Rural Development Programme (IRDP). The third part gives first hand information on the basis of village and household questionnaires especially developed for the purpose, not only have helped in evaluating the impact of various rural development programmes but also in assessing the participation of beneficiaries and that of the implementing agencies.

A rich, original study of the social and bureaucratic life of organic quality that challenges assumptions of what organic means Tracing the social and bureaucratic life of organic quality, this book yields new understandings of this fraught concept. Shaila Seshia Galvin examines certified organic agriculture in India's central Himalayas, revealing how organic is less a material property of land or its produce than a quality produced in discursive, regulatory, and affective registers. Becoming Organic is a nuanced account of development practice in rural India, as it has unfolded through complex relationships forged among state authorities, private corporations, and new agrarian intermediaries.