A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science. School of Environment, Resources and Development

Thesis (M.Sc.) - Asian Institute of Technology, 1999

Most often local governments are held responsible for providing daily services like solid waste management and are blamed for any kind of failures and inadequacies that prevail. Due to lack of resources and commitment from their part solid waste most often emanates as a major environmental problem in urban areas. Kathmandu Metropolitan City (KMC) and Lalitpur Sub Metropolitan (LSM) too have been victims of solid waste management problem in recent years, with a trend of generating more volume and complicated waste stream in the coming years. Acknowledging the inadequacies of the local government, informal sector, private sector and NGOs have emerged to supplement their activities. The focus of this study is to analyze the relevance of NGOs in urban solid waste management in the present scenario, with an objective to envisage their role and functions in providing supplementary service to the metropolitan/sub metropolitan. The further focus of this study is on women NGOs, to assess how they operate and are perceived by the community as well as the local government. Out of three roles of women, productive, reproductive and community managing, the latter role is not acknowledged adequately and most often thought as an extension of the reproductive role. Thus, this study aims to find out the scope of this role being acknowledged in filling up the voids that the local government has in providing its services. Assessing one Women NGO externally and internally has explored the possibilities of its replication in other areas. Based on this result, strategies have been formulated on how their roles should be highlighted and what functions are they expected to play in addressing the issue of solid waste management in the future. Moreover, based on the critique of gender analysis this study has analyzed the additional role that Women NGOs are expected to play in attaining gender equity in relation to men and women, further in relation to cultural and social structure within the periphery of 'waste management'.