70
Urban Growth, Planning, and Infrastructure
Figure 3.1 Household Access to Electricity, 2003–10 100
93
96
Share of households (%)
87 80
70 63 56
60
49 37
40 27 20
Rural
Urban
20 10
20 08
20 03
20 10
20 08
20 03
20 10
20 08
20 03
0
All areas
Sources: CBS 2004, 2009, 2011.
track to reach the Millennium Development Goal of near universal access to drinking water by 2015 (WHO and UNICEF 2012).6 However, the quality of service remains inadequate, and access to drinking water does not necessarily imply access to “safe” or “sufficient” drinking water. Access to piped water supply in urban areas decreased from 68 to 58 percent from 2003 to 2010 (see figure 3.2). Much of the decrease is driven by the high growth in urban population, combined with a lack of expansion of the piped network. Nepal’s piped drinking water is unsafe in most locations and throughout most of the year, and several cities are facing a chronic shortage of water owing to unplanned urban growth. Many urban households receive barely enough water for subsistence at less than 50 liters per capita per day. As urban populations continue to increase, improving urban infrastructure and service delivery in the water sector will become essential for Nepal. The Kathmandu Valley, the largest urban agglomeration in Nepal, has the worst water supply system. Although urbanization has contributed to intensifying infrastructure bottlenecks in the valley, one of the most prominent problems is the shortage of domestic water supply. The daily demand for water in the valley is around 220 million liters, but the supply is less than half that—approximately 100 million liters a day (Federation of Canadian Municipalities 2002; Bhushal 2011). The rapid increase in the valley’s population during the last decade and a lack of investment in water supply provision and system maintenance have resulted in less than 20 percent of the population receiving a reliable supply of piped drinking water (ADB 2010b). Most traditional supplies (for example, communal water tanks) have ceased to function, and households and businesses have responded to the shortfall by investing in individual local supplies and in-house Urban Growth and Spatial Transition in Nepal • http://dx.doi.org/10.1596/978-0-8213-9659-9