Nepal pushes for hydropower in protected areas through legal grey area

Nepal's Supreme Court ruled in January 2025 that a 2024 amendment opening protected areas to commercial development was invalid, citing constitutional environmental protections and intergenerational equity. More than a year later, the court still has not published the full text of that ruling, and in the gap the government has issued permits for ten private hydropower projects covering roughly 85 hectares of forest inside the Kanchanjangha, Gaurishankar and Annapurna protected areas and the buffer zones of Makalu Barun and Langtang national parks.

Officials, including the head of the Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation, say the permits rely on pre-amendment guidelines from 2023 — the same guidelines the original petitioners challenged, and which the brief 2025 verdict never actually addressed. An unnamed department official told Mongabay the agency is stuck between corporate lobbying and legal ambiguity, unable to make real decisions on protected areas until the court explains itself.

The Independent Power Producers' Association of Nepal has been lobbying hard, warning that annulling the amendment threatens 242 hydropower projects worth about 17,000 MW. Permitting has accelerated since Balendra Shah became prime minister in March 2026, with officials describing their approach as following cabinet decisions 'word for word' — cabinet decisions that themselves don't clearly define whether buffer zones count as protected areas at all.

The full dispatch is available from the source below.