Hotels likely to return to Nepal’s national parks

Nepal’s Ministry of Forest and Environment is preparing fresh regulations to allow hotels to return to national parks such as Chitwan, a decade after they were shut down based on environmental concerns.

Although rumors were doing the rounds in the corridors of the ministry and the Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation in Kathmandu for a long time, with officials neither confirming nor denying the preparation, Ministry Secretary Deepak Kumar Kharal and department chief Sindhu Dhungana spilled the beans at a program organised by the World Bank in Kathmandu recently.

Kharal, addressing the program, said the government is working on a new regulation that will “open up an avenue” for private sector investment in Nepal conservation. Dhungana went a step further to say the new regulation will address policy barriers to allow the private sector, which has so far “shied away” from investing in projects inside protected areas, to do so.

A draft of the regulation seen by Mongabay states that each hotel establishment can occupy up to a maximum of 2,000 square meters (21,527 square ft). Similarly, hotels have been classified into “temporary structure” or “permanent structure”.

While those under the first category will only be allowed to operate camp sites with up to 40...

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