the role of civil society and citizen seience in water governance in the Mahakali basin, Nepal Khadija, Zara creator Thi, Phuoc Lai Nguyen Chairperson Banerjee, Paula Examination Committee Vilas Nitivattananon Examination Committee PMU-KPCIP Scholarship Donor text series technical report th Pathum Thani Asian Institute of Technology 2026 continuing eng

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143 leaves : ill.+ 1 online resource Water access inequality in the Mahakali River Basin of far-western Nepal is not a problem of scarcity. It is a problem of governance and it is a gendered one. Grounded in Feminist Political Ecology and adaptive governance frameworks, this mixed methods study draws on a household survey of 315 respondents across four districts, 13 Key Informant Interviews, and 2 Focus Group Discussions to examine how water access conditions, civil society engagement, and gender institutions together shape women's experience of water governance and their capacity to transform it. Kruskal Wallis analysis confirms significant district-level variation across all five water access dimensions (p < 0.001). Time burden, the dimension most directly shaped by infrastructure decisions, records the largest effect size (H=253.19, f²=0.81) and the only statistically significant gender difference (p=0.001). Women carry the heaviest collection burden in the districts least represented in the governance decisions that produce it. Civil society organisations and FEDWASUN create the conditions for women's governance entry and in specific cases produce durable institutional change but only where engagement is sustained and formally embedded. Where it is not, participation collapses after project closure. Nepal's constitutional gender quota is being fulfilled in form and violated in substance: women attend governance meetings without shaping their outcomes. Yet women are not passive in this arrangement. They name exclusion mechanisms precisely, organise collectively, produce monitoring evidence, and change decisions. The transformation documented in this study was produced by women acting against institutional constraints, not because those constraints were finally relaxed. A thesis submitted in patial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Development Planning Management and Innovation Thesis (M. Sc.) - Asian Institute of Technology, 2026 Women and the environment Nepal Water-supply Nepal Management Asian Institute of Technology. http://203.159.5.9/ait-thesis/detail.php?q=B24527 http://203.159.5.9/ait-thesis/detail.php?q=B24527 260619 20260818114527.0