Nepal's diverse landscape, ranging from the low-altitude Terai plains to the high Himalayas, presents unique challenges and opportunities for rural road construction. These roads are crucial for enhancing mobility, improving access to services, and fostering sustainable livelihoods in rural areas. However, the construction process poses significant environmental and social risks, including deforestation, soil erosion, loss of biodiversity, and community displacement. Nepal's fragile mountainous terrain amplifies these challenges, requiring careful planning and sustainable practices to ensure that rural roads contribute positively to social and economic development. The study highlights the representation of environmental and social risk assessments in infrastructure projects, particularly rural roads in Nepal. It emphasizes the need for such assessments on the impacts of rural road construction, including resettlement, biodiversity loss, and pollution. Despite existing challenges like poor risk management and socio-economic disparities, the study aims to provide insights into managing environmental and social risks, ensuring sustainable rural road development in Nepal. The main objectives of this study involves assessing environmental and social risks, major challenges and propose the possible mitigation measures to overcome the challenges during up-gradation of rural roads in SNRTP. Risks matrix, PCA using SPSS (v 25) were used for qualitative and quantitative data analysis whereas Delphi interview were done for quantitative and qualitative analysis. Mainly soil erosion, occurrence of landslide belongs to red zone and change in water flow pattern, pollution, loss of public/private land are in yellow zone as environmental risks. Similarly, risk of child/forced labour belongs to red zone and risk of household displacement and issue of relocation and impact on single women and other indigenous/vulnerable people falls under yellow zone as social risks. By PCA analysis, 8 major components of the challenges were identified. Poor assessment report, coordination among stakeholders, ineffective implementation, geographical difficulties, fair compensation and land acquisition, Management of rural infrastructure, budgetary shortfall and vulnerability assessment and management are major components which occupied 66.61% of total variance. The top 5 major mitigation measures for vii managing environmental and social risks are focus on water management structure, Earthwork in cutting as per standard slope, sufficient road side structure, strict monitoring and proper slope protection. Also, during rural road construction, the complication occurs during deed transfer. The identified problems are lack of adequate staffs in land revenue and land survey offices, issue of absentees, lack of proper cooperation form respective land owners, ownership disputes in joint family cases and delay/inadequate payment by the project. The study underscores the importance of stakeholder engagement, clear policies, and adequate training for government staff to mitigate these risks effectively. The findings are valuable for future rural roads project particularly improving during pre-feasibility studies and ease in their implementation.

Keywords

Environmental Risks, Social Risks, Rural Road Construction, Strengthening the National Rural Transport Program, Delphi Interview, Principal Component Analysis.

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