In recent years, growing water insecurity in the Himalayan region has attracted new scientific research and fresh attention on policy. In this paper, we synthesize field research evidence from a sample of five Himalayan cities—three in Nepal and two in the western Indian Himalayas—on various forms of water insecurity and cities’ responses to such challenges. We gathered evidence from a field research conducted in these cities between 2014 and 2018. We show how different types of Himalayan towns (mainly hilltop, foot hill, river side, touristic, and regional trading hub) are struggling to secure water for their residents and tourists, as well as for the wider urban economy. We found that even though the region receives significant amounts of precipitation in the form of snow and rainfall, it is facing increasing levels of water insecurity. Four of the five towns we studied are struggling to develop well-performing local institutions to manage water supply. Worse still, none of the cities have a robust system of water planning and governance to tackle the water challenges emerging from rapid urbanization and climate change. In the absence of a coordinated water planning agency, a complex mix of government, community, and private systems of water supply has emerged in the Himalayan towns across both Nepal and India. There is clearly a need for strengthening local governance capacity as well as down-scaling climate science to inform water planning at the city level.

Studies of sustainability transitions and transformational change are common in energy and transport sectors. However, there is limited research on how these transformational change processes play out in the natural resources sector, particularly in developing economies. This paper seeks to address this gap, with a case study of the community forestry system in Nepal that has, over the last four decades, reversed Himalayan land degradation and contributed to community livelihoods. The case illustrates comprehensive changes in forest management practices and governance over four decades. Central to this was a ‘thinking movement’ of development agencies, activists and researchers that opened up learning spaces and engage conflicting stakeholders in action-oriented dialogues. While transformation can never be pre-engineered, this study suggests that investment in strengthening locally engaged research capability could be a key way of catalyzing sustainability transitions, both as a continuous process of evolution and transformative shifts during the crisis and political opportunity.

The governance of environmental resources holds the key to the future of sustainable development in the Hindu Kush Himalaya (HKH). 1. Institutional innovation—for landscape level governance, upstream-downstream linkages, and for translating policy goals into action; 2. Upscaling and institutionalizing decentralized and community based resource management practices; 3. Transboundary cooperation for managing connected landscapes; and 4. Science–policy–practice interface for decision making, learning and effective implementation of policies and programs.

Confronting hegemonic power in the policy process remains a formidable challenge. Critical inquiry and civic resistance have been seen as two possible solutions to address this challenge. However, how and to what extent critical inquiry tackles this challenge is rarely explored. This article outlines a Critical Action Research (CAR) approach and then discusses how this approach was put into practice in Nepal’s forest policy processes during 2000–11. It demonstrates the potential and limitations of a civil-society-based critical inquiry in the context of a centralized system of forest governance facing pressures for participatory reform. This use of a CAR approach aimed to tackle three forms of power – that exercised by the state forest authority; that of the international development agencies; and that of the national political decision-makers – in Nepal’s forest policy processes. Finally, the article identifies theoretical and methodological issues that were demonstrated in this engagement with the policy process.

Over the past decade, widespread concern has emerged over how environmental governance can be transformed to avoid impending catastrophes such as climate change, biodiversity loss, and livelihood insecurity. A variety of approaches have emerged, focusing on either politics, technological breakthrough, social movements, or macro-economic processes as the main drivers of change. In contrast, this paper presents theoretical insights about how systemic change in environmental governance can be triggered by critical and intellectually grounded social actors in specific contexts of environment and development. Conceptualising such actors as critical action intellectuals (CAI), we analyze how CAI emerge in specific socio-environmental contexts and contribute to systemic change in governance. CAI trigger transformative change by shifting policy discourse, generating alternative evidence, and challenging dominant policy assumptions, whilst aiming to empower marginalized groups. While CAI do not work in a vacuum, nor are the sole force in transformation, we nevertheless show that the praxis of CAI within fields of environmental governance has the potential to trigger transformation. We illustrate this through three cases of natural resource governance in Nepal, Nicaragua and Guatemala, and Kenya, where the authors themselves have engaged as CAI. We contribute to theorising the ‘how’ of transformation by showing the ways CAI praxis reshape fields of governance and catalyze transformation, distinct from, and at times complementary to, other dominant drivers such as social movements, macroeconomic processes or technological breakthroughs.