Governance on provision of ecosystem and its services in Nepal: Lessons from appraisal of policy, legislation, and institution

• Ecosystems provide essential goods and services for human well-being. • Governance is a combined outcome of policies, legislation, and institutions. • Effective implementation of policies and legislation is weak. • Overarching framework is imperative for sustained provision of ecosystem services. Ecosystem degradation and services loss have multiple causes and thus must be addressed through coordinated and diverse policies, legislation, and institutional responses. An understanding of the policies, legislation, and institutions governing ecosystem services can enhance the sustained management and provision of ecosystem services. Therefore, this work appraises the policies, legislation and institutional provisions made by the government of Nepal. In addition, this work analyzes policy implications and identifies gaps in and barriers to future improvements in the management of ecosystem services. Altogether, 63 documents comprising 45 policies and 18 legislations promulgated by the government of Nepal have been assessed for content analysis. Twenty Key Informant Interviews (KIIs) have also been conducted to obtain expert insights about the gaps in policy formulation and implementation. The results indicate that though several sectoral policies and legislations have made provision on management of ecosystem and its services implicitly or explicitly, still there is lacking of overarching framework to deal with ecosystem services. Overlapping roles and responsibilities provisioned by the constitution, policies, and legislation; weak enforcement and lack of multisectoral coordination mechanism are the major hurdles in policy implementation. Therefore, there is a need to develop an overarching national framework backed up by legislation with a strong multisectoral coordination mechanism that will adopt a holistic and multidisciplinary approach to the sustained management and provision of the ecosystem and its services.