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Conservation ‘setback’ looms as Nepal opens protected areas to hydropower projects

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KATHMANDU — The Nepali government has approved a controversial proposal allowing the construction of large-scale hydropower plants inside the country’s protected areas, in a move conservationists have slammed as a “huge setback.” The policy on “Construction of Physical Infrastructure Inside Protected Areas” was published in the national gazette on Jan. 4. It allows hydropower developers to build projects entirely inside protected areas, release only a fraction of the water in the river during the peak dry season compared with previous requirements, and acquire land for developing power projects inside protected areas more easily. “This is a huge setback for the conservation campaign in Nepal. It puts at risk the hard-achieved successes in the past decades,” Dilraj Khanal, a natural resources lawyer, told Mongabay. A rhino in a river in Chitwan National Park. Image by Aardwolf6886 via Flickr (CC BY-ND 2.0). The move comes amid concerns from leading conservationists, lawyers and Indigenous communities that the new policy will unleash a torrent of hydropower development in what are still well-preserved conservation areas. They say the changes aren’t just legally flawed, but also risk undermining the conservation gains made in Nepal in recent decades, even as the country faces the impacts of climate change. More than two dozen conservationists have reportedly submitted feedback to the Ministry of Forest and Environment to not go ahead with the proposal, which was made available for public discussion in September last year. However, officials didn’t make any significant changes to the document to reflect the comments, a…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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