Role of Human Settlement Development in National and Local Economy of Nepal

The Goals and Objectives of Human Settlement Development are the basics to understand the social development which are described as follows. The goals are defines on the basis of world needs and its time frame along with the needs of the people in present context and scenario. Objectives are set for the remedy of the present problems along with the kind consideration of future as well. This academic answer tries to elaborate the question on the basis of Sustainable Development Goals (SDG’s) as per the best of knowledge of the student.

“Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable”, this is the main slogan to the Sustainable Development Goal as presented by United Nations for the New Urban Agenda.

Where the slogan in itself defines the following characteristics of the human settlement development,

The inclusiveness of the human settlement development is leads to the better local economy and plays vital role to the national economy.

The safer cities is the state of being physically as well as mentally being aware and fearless from any kind of externalities into the one’s life.

The resilience is the capacity of the settlement where it tries and become able to fight against any disasters and problems initially to mitigate it or to minimize it’s effects making a city with high resistive power against externality.

Sustainability is the key issue of the present world where the actions are not taken place only for the present but the considerations for the future is also taken care of equally. Following are the main objectives of the human settlements development:

• Providing adequate shelter for all;
• Improving human settlements management;
• Promoting sustainable land-use planning and management;
• Promoting the integrated provision of environmental infrastructure: water, sanitation, drainage and solid waste management;
• Promoting sustainable energy and transport systems in human settlements;
• Promoting human settlements planning and management in disaster-prone areas;
• promoting sustainable construction industry activities; and

• Mass Poverty and Inequality Reduction: The human settlements help in the microeconomics and the macroeconomics of the society. Reducing the percentage of people below absolute poverty line, narrowing the ever widening poverty gap between rich and poor with implementation of the poverty reduction measures, at present, is one of the major development issues in Nepal.

•  Lack of Physical Infrastructure: Inadequate and disproportionate development of the physical infrastructure like transportation, communication, electricity is also a major development issue which has retarded the overall development of the nation. Majority of the rural areas in Nepal have not been integrated into the mainstream of the economy because basic infrastructure including road, electricity, communication have not yet reached out to these areas.

• Widespread Unemployment: The basic economic source for the Nepal has become remittance, which is the direct indicator of unemployment in the country and as the remittance is high means there are a lot of people compelled to go abroad for employment. Issue of unemployment, disguised unemployment, and underemployment is very serious one. The human settlements tries to decrease the unemployment rate.Promoting human resource development and capacity-building for human settlements development.By ensuring the provisions of effective and efficient administration, the effective and efficient research, policy development, planning, monitoring and evaluation is always assumed to get achieved in the development process.Basically, the overall human settlement objective is to improve the social, economic and environmental quality of human settlements and the living and working environments of all people, in particular the urban and rural poor. Such improvement should be based on technical cooperation activities, partnerships among the public, private and community sectors and participation in the decision making process from community groups and special interest groups such as women, indigenous people, the elderly and the disabled. These approaches should form the core principles of national settlement strategies. In developing these strategies, countries will need to set priorities among the eight programme areas in this document in accordance with their national plans and objectives taking fully into account their social and cultural capabilities. Furthermore, countries should make appropriate provision to monitor the impact of their strategies on marginalized and disenfranchised groups with particular reference to the needs of women.Contribution and challenges of Human Settlements Development on Local and National Level can be described as:

• Stagnation of Agriculture: One of the major identified causes of underdevelopment and poverty is stagnation of agriculture. Despite agriculture sector being a source of employment for large percent of manpower, its contribution to GDP is in very small percent. Poverty is widespread among the people engaged in agriculture since the per capita output is low in agriculture. Since majority of the Nepalese people are engaged in agriculture, poverty alleviation is possible only when we are able to increase agricultural productivity and shift the excess manpower from agriculture to other sectors of the economy by way of creating opportunities of gainful employment. Agricultural production still remains capricious due to high dependency on monsoon owing to weak irrigation facility. Nepalese agricultural sector has low competitiveness in the international arena because of the dearth of fertilizer, seeds, irrigation and other facilities necessary for raising productivity. Therefore, one of the prime development challenge to Nepal is to push up the agricultural growth alongside the increased agricultural productivity through various policy measures( like commercialization of the agriculture, expanding irrigation facilities, road networks, storage, fertilizers and inputs etc) and to sustain its competitiveness by giving continuity to emphasis on investment and subsidy facilities being provided to this sector.

•   Economic Dependency: Growing economic dependency of Nepal on foreign nation is one of the grave issue entailing solutions as far as possible. The trade deficit has been growing annually at an astronomical scale. We are importing not only capital goods but also the basic goods of daily necessities at large scale. In the face of economic dependency and time of transition, it a major challenge for Nepal to reduce such economic dependency and build nationally self-reliant economy.

•  Political Stability and Good Governance: It is observed that corruption is rampant, in various forms and from the lower to the upper level of the government machinery. Problem of governance includes weak institutions and procedures, lack of ownership of development projects and programs, lack of accountability and mismanagement of the resources, deteriorating law and order, absence of well functioning judicial system etc.

• Natural Resources Utilization: One of the key development issues in Nepal is how to harness the natural resources available in the economy. We can harness water resources through hydroelectricity generation and exporting it to India, and expanding irrigation and drinking water facilities. Nepal has been a tourists’ paradise for many years because of incredible natural beauty and man-made to some extent. Nepal can create tourists magnetic atmosphere and can earn huge amount of foreign exchange if the government and private sector both take initiative in constructing tourism infrastructure development. It is also a challenge of developing a country as a tourist destination by conserving and expanding the existing tourists’ locations with adequate publicity; and exploration, identification and expansion of the new tourist’s sites. Thus, a major challenge to the economy is to harness available natural resources in optimum manner and preserve the renewable as well as non-renewable resources for future generation.

• In addition to the above mentioned issues and challenges, there are so many development challenges we are facing continuously in the path of building a well-advanced, egalitarian and discrimination-free society. In the financial sector, we are facing a problem of weak institutional governance of the financial institutions. Therefore, one of the challenges is to build financial sector strong and stable alongside making institutional governance and self-regulatory system of the banks and financial institutions effective. Addressing the issue of financial inclusiveness is also prominent one because of the difficulty in increasing access to banking and financial services of the ultra-poor, remote and rural areas. One additional challenge is of simultaneously sustaining both monetary and demand management for avoiding the undesired pressure on the price level. As a least developing country, Nepal has several development changes in its way of economic development, which needs immediate policy consideration and implementation from all Nepalese.

Utilization and Management of Different types of resources can be carried as follows to meet the goals and objectives of human settlement development:

The main purpose of resource management is to accomplish the goal and objective. Therefore, the resources are mobilized to achieve such goals. Some importance and objectives of resource management are as follows:

• Effective Utilization Of Resources

Resource management ensures the effective utilization of resources.

• Development Of Human Resources

Human resource management provides favorable environment for employees so that people working in organization can work creatively.

• Respect For Human Beings

Another importance of human resource management is to provide a respectful environment for each employee.

• Goal Harmony

Human resource management bridges the gap between individual goal and organizational goal-thereby resulting into a good harmony.

• Organizational Productivity

Resource management focuses on achieving higher production and most effective utilization of available resources. This leads to an enhancement in organizational goals and objectives.

Hence the different goals and objectives of human settlements development? What are the economic problems of their development are briefly discussed. The discussion on the contributions of human settlement development to national and local economy is carried out. Different types of resources should be managed and mobilized for achieving the goals and objectives are also clearly explained.

Bibliography:

http://www.nwpg.gov.za/HumanSettlements/site/goals.html

http://www.unep.org/Documents.Multilingual/Default.Print.asp?DocumentID=52&ArticleID=55

http://birendrabudha.blogspot.com/2012/09/development-issues-and-challenges-in.html

http://accountlearning.blogspot.com/2013/01/importance-and-objectives-of-human.html