The Paani Program—also known in Nepali as the “USAID Water Project”, युएसएड पानी परियोजना—is a 5-year USAID funded initiative to enhance Nepal’s ability to manage water resources for multiple uses through climate change adaptation, and the conservation of freshwater biodiversity. Its overall goal was to reduce threats to freshwater biodiversity, and strengthen the resilience of targeted communities in the Karnali, Mahakali and Rapti river basins. The desired outcome was to reduce watershed degradation resulting from sedimentation and landslides by reducing negative impacts of district and village roads.

The Paani Program had assigned SW Nepal to advocate green road construction activities in local governments of three watersheds — West Seti, Middle Karnali and Jhimruk.

The specific objectives of this assignment were:

• To advocate user groups, road contractors, road maintenance groups, engineers and local government for Environment Friendly (EF)  rural road construction
• To assist and advocate local governments to prioritize funds for environmental friendly (EF) road designs
• To ensure priority local governments adopt and implement of EF rural road standards

SWN carried out the following activities to meet stated objectives:

• Identify early adopters and champions of EF rural roads construction in Paani intervention areas.
• Prepare procurement criteria and contract clauses on implementation of EF rural roads
• Prepare and disseminate IEC materials
• Conduct 6 workshops (two in each watershed) on EFLG framework and link with rural road standard in design and construction.
• Conduct 20 events of awareness campaigns
• Exchange visits between project sites to view EF demonstration roads
• Assist local governments in developing criteria to prioritize fund for EF rural road construction,
• Technical monitoring on adoption and implementation of EF rural road standards

The assignment envisaged to achieve the following outputs at the end of the assignment period:

• At least one local government in each watershed will allocate fund for EF rural road design, construction and maintenance.
• At least one local government will implement EF road standards.