Kathmandu Rooftop Farming Programme (KMC / ENPHO / RUAF)
Kathmandu, Nepal · Operator: ENPHO (Environment and Public Health Organisation) with Kathmandu Metropolitan City (KMC); technical support from RUAF Foundation and UN-Habitat
Overview
A citizen-focused rooftop farming program led by ENPHO and Kathmandu Metropolitan City (with RUAF and UN-Habitat technical support), launched in 2013. Households are trained to grow vegetables on their roofs using vermicompost, waste segregation, nursery management and rainwater harvesting, framed as a climate-adaptation and urban food-security strategy. Its demonstration gardens and training manual helped spread rooftop farming across the Kathmandu Valley.
Citizen participation
City Environment Management experts train households in cohorts, and participants maintain their own rooftop gardens. The training integrates solid-waste and wastewater management with rooftop vegetable gardening.
Operating model
Funded by municipal budget plus NGO and UN program support (KMC budget plus UN-Habitat/RUAF). Training and inputs are provided free to households and the program is non-commercial.
Impact
Trained hundreds of households and built demonstration rooftop gardens. It integrated urban agriculture into the city's climate plans and is widely credited with seeding the Valley's later surge in rooftop farming, while reducing organic waste via vermicomposting and improving household vegetable access.
Crops
- vegetables
- leafy greens
- herbs
Scale
150 households trained in the 2013 cohort; KMC trained 500+ households over 2013–14; household-rooftop scale
In the media(1)
Web articles and features that cover this case.
Sources(1)
This entry is compiled from the public sources, official sites and research below.
Related cases
Green Rooftop Farming – Water For Life (Madhyapur Thimi, Nepal)
NPMadhyapur Thimi, Nepal
A project in Madhyapur Thimi Municipality, Kathmandu Valley, that used rooftop farming to address food security, waste, water conservation and climate change at once. Its distinctive feature is treating urban agriculture less as a source of produce than as a way to cycle water and organic matter within the household.
unhabitat.org.np
Urban Farmers Club (Shibuya)
JPTokyo, Japan
An urban-farming NPO that began on a Shibuya rooftop, building farms and rice paddies on rooftops and urban gaps around Harajuku, Shibuya and Ebisu so that citizens can cultivate together and turn Tokyo into an 'edible forest'.
urbanfarmers.club+1
Rooftop Republic
HKHong Kong, Hong Kong
Founded in 2015, this Hong Kong social enterprise turns underused spaces such as rooftops into organic farms, having built 50+ urban farms across the city, and links food-loss reduction with education by composting building food waste back into the farms.
rooftoprepublic.com+1
Taito Ward x Daimaru Matsuzakaya Rooftop-Garden Compost Cycle (Ueno)
JPTokyo, Japan
A public-private food cycle in central Tokyo where Taito Ward, the Daimaru Matsuzakaya department store, and Local Food Cycling partner to compost household food scraps and grow vegetables at the Matsuzakaya Ueno rooftop garden.
matsuzakaya.co.jp+2