KATHMANDU — Nepal’s government has bypassed the country’s parliament to issue a controversial ordinance facilitating foreign investment in different sectors of the country, including protected areas, in a move that could have long-term consequences for the country’s hard-won conservation gains, experts say. Although the details of the ordinance, signed into law by President Ram Chandra Poudel on April 28, are still under wraps, a government spokesperson told reporters that it amends several prevailing laws, including the National Parks and Wildlife Conservation Act, which governs protected areas in Nepal. “The government is yet to publish the ordinance in the [official] gazette, so we don’t know the details yet,” Padam Shrestha, a lawyer who specializes in natural resource litigation, told Mongabay. “However, we can say that it is part of the government’s wider effort to open up protected areas to infrastructure development.” A local man walks along a stream in Annapurna Conservation Area. Image by Andrew Miller via Flickr (CC BY-NC 2.0). According to independent media reports citing different sources, the ordinance authorizes the government to declare an area as falling outside of “highly sensitive” zones (such as national parks), and allows the construction of different types of infrastructure. Infrastructure developments classified as “projects of national pride” include those projects of national priority and big-ticket foreign investment projects. “The ordinance yet again talks about sensitive areas within national parks. But in the past, the whole protected area itself was considered a sensitive area,” said lawyer Dil Raj Khanal. “Now they are classifying…This article was originally published on Mongabay
The post Nepal govt bypasses parliament to allow commercial projects in protected areas first appeared on EnviroLink Network.