Latest Strategy of Nepal – Promotion of Environmental Education

The Nepal represents the highest terrestrial ecosystem on earth. Its share of the world’s terrestrial area is just over 0.1%, but it can claim over 2.2% of the global wealth of flowering plants, 4.2% of mammals, 8.5% of birds, 1.4% of reptiles and amphibians, and 2.2% of fresh water fish species, which is a proof for richness in biodiversity.

Nepal first developed its National Conservation Strategy in 1987 and endorsed as policy in 1988. Not only that, Nepal is a member country of International Union of Conservation of Nature (ICUN) since 1960. It is also one of the highly supported countries by IUCN in the world. It has then taken many steps towards the challenge of climate change and environment protection actions based on the policy. Moreover, National Planning Commission (NPC) is a Nepal initiated collaboration with different ministries, departments and the CBOs of Nepal to work on the concerned environmental issues.

Astonishingly, formal environmental education is implemented in only a small part of Nepalese schools of around 49,000. But, Nepal does not seem to have any sustainable environmental protection measures yet. Threatening Environmental loss is one of the very big problems in Nepal which is causing human health hazard particularly due to the creation or disposal of pollution, sound, heat or wastes. Increasing number of vehicles, garbage and dust particles are the main factors of pollution particularly in city areas and in major tourist areas of Nepal.

To the concerns, Government of Nepal has prioritized strategic work plan to develop on the environmental education to address the issues of climate change and environmental loss in a large scale. The ultimate aim of environment education is to ensure that effective actions are taken to conserve and enhance the environment. Therefore, the Environmental Education Programme planned by atmosfair would be one of the highly recognized and valuable project in Nepal contributing in one of the priority and urgent issue of the country.