- Nepal’s Supreme Court has completed hearings on a petition challenging changes to conservation laws and permitting infrastructure development in protected areas. A ruling is expected on Dec. 20.
- The law being challenged allows the government to designate areas within national parks as falling outside “highly sensitive zones” and thus opening them up to development projects like roads and hydropower.
- Conservationists argue this new definition threatens habitats and undermines decades of conservation progress.
- Conservationists fear that the law could exploit natural resources, displace local communities, and shrink critical habitats, jeopardizing Nepal’s protected area system and wildlife.
KATHMANDU — Nepal’s Supreme Court has concluded hearings in a petition filed against controversial measures to open up protected areas to development.
A ruling in the case, dubbed as one of the most important in Nepal’s conservation history, is expected on Dec. 20, according to the website of the Supreme Court of Nepal.
“The court has ordered lawyers from the petitioner as well as the government side to present written arguments as the bench prepares the verdict in the case,” lawyer Dil Raj Khanal, one of the petitioners in the case, told Mongabay. The court is expected to come up with a brief statement on the day of the ruling before issuing a full text of the judgment later on.
Khanal and his team filed the petition with Nepal’s highest court on July 28, days after parliament approved new legislation authorizing the government to declare an area within a protected area as falling outside of “highly sensitive” zones — a new and seemingly arbitrary definition. This would allow the construction of different types of infrastructure outside these highly sensitive areas. The Supreme Court issued an interim stay on the new law until its Constitutional Bench passes a ruling on the matter.
Earlier this year, in April, the Nepali government introduced an ordinance to amend a host of laws, including the National Parks and Wildlife Conservation Act, to “improve the investment climate” in the country ahead of an international investment summit later that month. The ordinance was then replaced by the legislation approved by parliament in July.
Nepal’s Constitution provides for the formation of a Constitutional Bench on the Supreme Court, chaired by the court’s chief justice and comprising four other justices, to look into writ petitions questioning the constitutionality of any law. The new law, petitioners argue, impedes the people’s right to the environment as enshrined in the Constitution.
Despite the massive changes rolled out through the new law, experts say they were caught off-guard by its potential ramifications. A former head of the Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation told Mongabay he was unaware of such big changes, as they were packaged within an ordinance with the ostensibly innocuous objective of improving conditions for foreign investment.
Nepal has a dozen national parks, one wildlife reserve, one hunting reserve, six conservation areas and 13 buffer zones. These are spread across the breadth of the country, from the lowland Terai Arc (the home of Bengal tigers, Panthera tigris) to the high Himalayas (home to snow leopards, Panther uncia), and cover nearly a quarter of the country’s total land area. Although local people were relocated to establish national parks in the lowlands, people continue to live inside some national parks and conservation areas higher up, such as Sagarmatha (Everest), Langtang and Annapurna. However, certain restrictions remain in place regarding felling of trees, use of natural resources, and building of infrastructure.
Nepal’s biodiversity and forest conservation efforts, including nearly tripling its tiger population and increasing forest cover from 26% to 45% in 25 years, have earned global acclaim.
The new legislation introduced the controversial concept of “very sensitive area” into Nepal’s protected area management system, which conservationists say could shrink critical habitats for various protected species.
“National parks and reserves are inherently sensitive areas,” said Ravi Sharma Aryal, the local lead for the World Commission on Environmental Law. “The recent amendments would effectively shrink the protected areas, allowing destructive development projects under the guise of progress, thereby undermining conservation efforts and posing a significant threat to the environment.”
“If the Supreme Court approves the new law, then that could trigger the end of the protected area system in Nepal as we know it,” said Padam Shrestha, another lawyer and co-petitioner.
The Nepal national committee for the IUCN, the global conservation authority, previously raised concerns that the law, which allows the government to approve infrastructure projects inside protected areas, may serve vested interests at the cost of the country’s hard-earned conservation achievements.
“If desired, the government can [use the legislation to] allow projects such as hydropower plants, cable cars, hotels, roads, and railways within these [protected] areas, overriding conservation priorities,” the committee, representing 27 organizations that worked in conservation for decades, said in a statement. “This raises concerns that natural resources and wildlife may be exploited, while local communities dependent on these resources for their livelihoods may suffer.”
In January, a few months before issuing the ordinance, the government introduced a set of procedures on the “Construction of Physical Infrastructure Inside Protected Areas,” opening up conservation areas to hydropower development. Rivers inside protected areas that had been no-go zones for hydropower were opened up for power generation. Before the changes, there was a ban on the development of any commercial power project occupying an area entirely within a national park or protected area.
Nepal’s Supreme Court has a record of consistently siding with conservation and human rights, activists note, adding they hope it will now quash the new law. Even if it’s not possible to do so, it will issue important directives to the government to ensure a balance between conservation and development, they say.
“As the verdict will determine the future course of conservation in Nepal, we hope that the respected judges will weigh all aspects of the case before issuing a verdict,” said conservation activist Babu Krishna Karki.
Banner Image: Juvenile one-horned rhinos at a rescue center in Chitwan. Image by Abhaya Raj Joshi
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