Literature on material flow accounting has increasingly emphasized the need for an equitable resource allocation for least developed countries (LDCs) considering their future growth and the social outcomes (e.g., poverty alleviation) they intend to deliver. This paper aims to project Nepal's domestic material consumption (DMC)-scale and structure for different economic growth scenarios. We also investigate the causal impact of exogenous factors: (1) external financial inflows, such as the remittance and official development assistance (ODA); (2) services value-added; (3) population; and (4) economic growth on DMC by material types (e.g. biomass, fossil fuels, non-metallic minerals, and metal ores). We use the R tools, ridge regression and its machine learning algorithms, the autoregressive-distributed lag approach, and the abovementioned variables' timeseries data between 1993 and 2017 as methodological and data tools. While Nepal's absolute DMC will increase even in the low-growth scenario, we found that the biomass-based DMC prevalent in many LDCs, including Nepal, will be non-metallic minerals-based-a material consumption trait of existing middle-income and emerging economies. Despite this, the United Nations' LDC graduation growth pathway, often assumed to deliver sustainable development objectives by policymakers in LDCs, including Nepal, is material intensive. The increase in the gross domestic product per capita, remittance, and ODA cause a rise in DMC because of their strong correlation and causal relationship. In these circumstances, we suggest policy measures that can leverage present consumption-oriented remittances as a source of investment in up-scaling small-scale modern renewable energy technologies across the residential sector, particularly in rural areas. We suggest this policy measure considering the future rise in non-metallic minerals and the challenges to reduce it because of the rising urbanization.
Many low-income countries (LICs), including Nepal, endeavour to deliver climate mitigation by reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and achieving more sustainable resource consumption. However, their prospects of delivering on such goals alongside the rapid structural changes in the economy prevalent in the LICs are not clear. This research aims to better understand the underlying complexity in the linkage between the framing of climate mitigation actions into government policies and the prospects for their delivery. We use critical discourse analysis, post-structural discourse analysis, and thematic analysis of textual data corpus generated from government policies (n = 12) and semi-structured interviews (n = 12) with policy actors, such as government policymakers and private sector and non-government organisations’ representatives. We also develop energy and material consumption and GHG emissions models to predict their values up to 2050 via the R tools and machine learning algorithms that validate the accuracy of models. Our findings suggest that the social context of policymaking creates a knowledge structure on climate mitigation which is reflected in government policies. The policy actors and their institutions exchange their ideas and interests in a deliberative and collaborative environment to prioritise policies for the energy, forest, and transport sectors to deliver climate mitigation actions in Nepal. However, the energy sector, together with the agriculture sector, has insufficient climate mitigation actions. Reflecting on the high proportion of biomass in the energy mix and the rapid rise in fossil fuel and energy consumption per capita—both of which are driven by the remittance inflows—this research suggests measures to reduce these in an absolute sense.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.