"To promote, conserve and manage nature in all its diversity balancing human needs with the environment on a sustainable basis for posterity - ensuring maximum community participation with due cognizance of the linkages between economics, environment and ethics through a process in which people are both the principal actors and beneficiaries."
Driven for Conservation
Nepal recognized its susceptibility to ecological risks as early as the 1960s. By the mid 1970s, His Majesty's Government took the first initiative to establish national parks and reserves in areas of biological and natural significance. Within three decades, Nepal has set aside more than 18% of the total land area as protected areas under various categories.
However, the earlier efforts in conservation were identical to the western system where protected areas or national parks and reserves were considered as islands of wilderness amidst the sea of people. Once demarcated, the people were forfeited from their traditional rights to use the resources inside parks and reserves.
In other words, the concerns of people living in the park periphery were ignored. This had raised intense park-people conflicts negating the achievements made in terms of conservation.
These realities pointed to the need for Nepal to come up with alternative approaches for effective conservation measures to address the needs of the local people. The underlying objectives of such a plan were to be able to fulfill the basic requirements of the local people while maintaining a balance between nature conservation and sustainable development. This also called for involvement of Non-Governmental Organizations such as the King Mahendra Trust for Nature Conservation (KMTNC) to supplement and complement the government's efforts in nature conservation and sustainable development.
