Environmental Camps for Conservation Awareness (ECCA) and Namsaling Community Development Center (NCDC), Ilam jointly organized a one day interaction programme on “River conservation, Today’s Necessity” on 26 July in Lalitpur. The programme had been held to establish co-ordination among different organizations working in river conservation, increase networking regarding river monitoring and replication of river monitoring models in different districts and municipalities.

Speaking at the programme, Yogendra Chitrakar, Director of ECCA introduced the participants to the River Monitoring system adopted by Kathmandu Participatory River Monitoring (KAPRIMO) Project. He also highlighted the success of KAPRIMO project and discussed about the roles of other organizations in materializing the project objectives. He during his presentation urged the stakeholders to exchange the information and data so as to make river conservation effective, and also briefed about the possibilities of replication of river monitoring models by different other organizations.
Agricultural expert at NCDC, Ilam Yogendra Man Shrestha briefed about the initiatives taken by NCDC in Eastern Nepal. He also explained about river monitoring concept adopted by NCDC in Participatory Mai River Reclamation (PMRR) project in Ilam. According to him, a water testing lab has been established recently in Ilam as a step towards river conservation.
At the programme, the representatives from different governmental and non-governmental organizations including Department of Hydrology and Meteorology (DHM), Nepal Bureau of Standards and Metrology (NBSM), Lalitpur Sub-Metropolitan City, Kathmandu Metropolitan City, IUCN-Nepal, ENPHO, Central Department of Environmental Science, TU, CEMAT, DOLIDAR, NETIF and INLOGOS were present. They also shared their experiences and knowledge about the planning process of river conservation. The discussion has been focused on river sources, and its pollution, causes and protection measures.