Balancing conservation and development in Nepal’s protected area buffer zones

Abstract

The question of how to balance conservation and development for communities living adjacent to protected areas is difficult. Win-win solutions that meet the needs of people and the needs of conservation seem difficult to find. Nepal is one of the poorest countries in the world and yet it is also a model for successful biodiversity conservation. A large percentage of its land is protected and populations of endangered species such as tiger and rhinoceros have been increasing for the past five decades. It has achieved this conservation success to some extent because of its globally renowned community forestry and protected area buffer zone policies. The objective of this paper is to explore how Nepal's national protected area policies address conservation and development issues and how those policies translate into conservation and development activities in protected area buffer zones. We find that one of the strengths of Nepal's approach, in policy and practice, is that it allows for a mix of activities to address both conservation and development without defining outcomes or framing conservation and development as polarized goals. Comparison of four protected areas highlights the need to balance conservation and development in terms of the larger context and opportunities and constraints on people's livelihoods and opportunities.

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PARKS VOL 22.2 NOVEMBER 2016
PARKS VOL 22.2 NOVEMBER 2016
BALANCING CONSERVATION AND
DEVELOPMENT IN NEPAL’S PROTECTED AREA
BUFFER ZONES
Teri D. Allendorf1,* and Bhim Gurung2
*Corresponding author: Teri D. Allendorf, allendorf@wisc.edu
1 Department of Forest and Wildlife Ecology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1630 Linden Dr.,
Madison, WI 53706, USA
2 Nepal Tiger Trust, Meghauly-8, Chitwan, Nepal
PARKS 2016 Vol 22.2
10.2305/IUCN.CH.2016.PARKS-22-2TDA.en
ABSTRACT
The question of how to balance conservation and development for communities living adjacent to protected areas is
difficult. Win-win solutions that meet the needs of people and the needs of conservation seem difficult to find. Nepal
is one of the poorest countries in the world and yet it is also a model for successful biodiversity conservation. A large
percentage of its land is protected and populations of endangered species such as tiger and rhinoceros have been
increasing for the past five decades. It has achieved this conservation success to some extent because of its globally
renowned community forestry and protected area buffer zone policies. The objective of this paper is to explore how
Nepal’s national protected area policies address conservation and development issues and how those policies translate
into conservation and development activities in protected area buffer zones. We find that one of the strengths of
Nepal’s approach, in policy and practice, is that it allows for a mix of activities to address both conservation and
development without defining outcomes or framing conservation and development as polarized goals. Comparison of
four protected areas highlights the need to balance conservation and development in terms of the larger context and
opportunities and constraints on people’s livelihoods and opportunities.
Key words: protected areas; budget; Bardia National Park; Chitwan National Park; Rara National Park; Shey
Phoksundo National Park
INTRODUCTION
The question of how to balance conservation and
development for communities living adjacent to
protected areas is difficult. Win-win solutions appear
difficult to find and many critiques have been made
concerning the various approaches, such as integrated
conservation and development projects (ICDPs).
Numerous studies have concluded that there are very few
examples of protected area projects that meet the needs
of people and the needs of conservation (Tallis et al.,
2009; Wells & McShane, 2004).
Nepal is a country with success in balancing conservation
and development on a national scale. Forty years ago,
Nepal was used as an example of the environmental
crisis that people believed was caused by poverty,
increasing population, and resource degradation
(Guthman, 1997). Worst case scenarios predicted that
Nepal would lose all of its forests and topsoil by 2000
(Ives, 1987). Large mammal populations such as tiger,
elephants and rhinoceros were declining. Rhinoceros
populations had plummeted from 800 in the 1950s to
120 by the early 1970s and it was predicted they would
disappear in only a few years (Blower, 1973).
Although Nepal remains one of the poorest countries in
the world (Malik, 2013), it is now a model for successful
biodiversity conservation (Heinen & Kattel, 1992; Heinen
& Shrestha, 2006; Heinen & Yonzon, 1994). Over 20 per
cent of its land is protected and some endangered
species, such as tigers and rhinos, have increased since
conservation programmes began in the 1970s
(Seidensticker et al., 2010). These species have increased
despite the fact that the protected areas they live in are
surrounded by areas with high human population
densities.
Nepal’s success is attributed to an approach that
combines community support with strong government
policies (Dinerstein et al., 1999). Since the 1970s, Nepal
has experimented with policies and practices to provide

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benefits to communities, such as allowing limited
resource extraction from protected areas in the lowlands
and co-management in the mountain areas. While
Nepal’s policies have had their limitations and are not
without flaws, they have provided a vision for the way
that communities can participate in and benefit from
protected areas (Budhathoki, 2004; Heinen & Kattel,
1992; Heinen & Mehta, 2000). One indicator of Nepal’s
success is that while there continue to be conflict issues
around protected areas in Nepal, people are generally
supportive of conservation and of neighbouring
protected areas (Allendorf, 2007; Allendorf & Allendorf,
2012; Mehta & Heinen, 2001; Nepal & Spiteri, 2011;
Nepal & Weber, 1995; Sah & Heinen, 2001).
One of Nepal’s key conservation policies is its buffer zone
legislation, which was created in 1994 (Paudel et al.,
2007; Wells & Sharma, 1998). This legislation was based
on Nepal’s experience developing ways to link
conservation and community development (Keiter,
1993). The legislation’s key components are community
forests within buffer zones and the re-distribution of
funds back to communities in the buffer zones through a
participatory process for deciding how to allocate the
funds within set guidelines. Under these policies, large
investments have been made in buffer zone
communities. Since 1998, more than US$4.6 million has
been distributed to buffer zones of protected areas in
Nepal, benefiting more than 700,000 people (Khatri,
2010).
Given Nepal’s relatively successful protected area
policies, the objective of this paper is to understand how
Nepal has balanced development and conservation. In
order to do this, we address the following questions: 1)
How do Nepal’s protected area policies address and
balance conservation and development?; and 2) How do
these policies translate into activities in protected area
buffer zones?
METHODS
Within the past few years, management plans have been
developed for some of Nepal’s protected areas with
others in the process of being developed (Paudel et al.,
2007). These plans are based on the requirements
outlined in the Buffer Zone Management Regulations
(1996) and the Guidelines (1999) and they include
detailed budgets that delineate the buffer zone plans,
including the specific activities and budget assigned to
them. These plans provide a window to understand how
conservation and development are being taken into
consideration and balanced in protected areas. This
study has taken the most current available management
plans for four protected areas: Chitwan National Park
(2006-11), Bardia National Park (2007-11), Rara
National Park (2010-14) and Shey Phoksundo National
Park (2006-11).
These four protected areas were chosen because they are
located in districts that cover the spectrum of
development, from some of the most developed to the
Figure 1. Protected areas in Nepal with four study areas.

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PARKS VOL 22.2 NOVEMBER 2016
least (see development rankings in Table 1). Two of the
national parks are in the lowlands, Chitwan National
Park (NP) and Bardia NP, and two are in the mountains,
Rara NP and Shey Phoksundo NP (Figure 1). Rara and
Chitwan are two of the oldest national parks in Nepal,
having been established in the 1970s. Shey Phoksundo
NP and Bardia NP were established in the 1980s.
Chitwan NP and Bardia NP are two of the premier parks
in Nepal and they are the largest parks in the terai
lowlands. They protect some of the most charismatic
megafauna, such as rhinoceros, tigers, crocodiles and
sloth bears. Rara National Park is in northwestern Nepal
in the districts of Mugu and Jumla. It is the smallest park
in Nepal. It contains the country’s biggest lake, Rara
Lake, which is 10.8 square kilometres. The lake is an
important staging point for migratory birds and has
endemic species of snowtrout (Schizothorax hodgsoni
and S. progastus). Shey Phoksundo NP is the largest
national park in Nepal and the second largest protected
area (after Annapurna Conservation Area) in Nepal. It is
in Dolpa district in the mid-western development region
of Nepal. Its habitat protects snow leopard, Tibetan wolf,
musk deer, blue sheep and several other endangered
wildlife species. It also contains Nepal’s deepest and the
second largest Phoksundo Lake. It is a very remote area
and has one of the lowest population densities in Nepal
(Ministry of Health and Population, 2011).
To answer the first question about how protected area
policies address and balance conservation and
development, there follows a review of the Buffer Zone
Management Regulations (1996) and the Guidelines
(1999). We describe the policy guidelines that are specific
to the types of activities that the buffer zone funds are
intended to support and how local communities
participate in making decisions concerning the activities.
For the second question, concerning how these policies
translate into activities in protected area buffer zones,
the five-year management plans and budgets of the four
protected areas are reviewed to answer three questions:
1) For each protected area, how much money is budgeted
to communities through buffer zone projects relative to
the overall protected area budget?; 2) Within the buffer
zones of each area, do the budgets follow the policy
guidelines for buffer zone projects? If not, how are they
different?; and 3) What activities are planned with buffer
zone funds?
To answer the first question, it is necessary to determine
how much money is budgeted to communities within a
protected area through buffer zone projects, relative to
the overall protected area budget, and to compare the
total budgets for the protected areas and the buffer
zones. We then compare the size of the budget relative to
protected area size and buffer zone population size. For
Terai
Mountain
Chitwan
Bardia
Shey
Rara
Year protected area established
1973
1989
1984
1976
Year buffer zone established
1996
1996
1998
2006
Protected area size (sq. km)
932
968
3,555
106
Buffer zone size (sq. km)
766
327
1,349
198
Population in buffer zone1
223,260
103,806
11,598
11,685
No. of households1
36,193
15,290
2,263
1,898
No. of buffer zone user
committees
22
15
17
10
Development rank of
surrounding districts2
Chitwan 2
Makawanpur 26
Nawalparasi 37
Parsa 52
Surkhet 28
Banke 30
Bardia 34
Kailali 40
Salyan 45
Dolpa 67
Mugu 75
Jumla 69
Mugu 75
Table 1. Description of protected areas
1Department of National Parks and Wildlife Annual Report 2009/10.
2CBS and ICIMOD (2003): Ranks for the 75 districts of Nepal are based on 29 indicators divided into three groups: poverty and
deprivation; socio-economic and infrastructural development; and women’s empowerment.

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the second question, to determine if the budgets follow
the policy guidelines for buffer zone projects, the budgets
in the plans are compared to the provisions in the
legislation. For Rara NP and Shey Phoksundo NP, the
budget summaries provided in the management plans for
each activity category are used. For Bardia NP and
Chitwan NP, the management plans did not provide
summaries by budget categories, so we estimated total
budgets for each activity category by compiling activity
lists from the detailed budgets for each buffer zone. To
answer the third question, we describe the activities in
each management plan.
RESULTS
How does policy address and balance
conservation and development?
The Buffer Zone Management Regulation of 1996
established buffer zones around protected areas. The
Buffer Zone Management Guidelines of 1999 provided
further clarification on the 1996 regulations. For a
summary of these pieces of legislation, please see Heinen
and Mehta (2000). This study focuses specifically on
parts of the legislation that address conservation and
development activities within the buffer zones.
In these two pieces of legislation, buffer zone activities
are described four different times: once in the
regulations and three times in the guidelines (Table 2).
However, the descriptions are different each time. The
1996 regulations state that the activities should meet the
needs of local people and conserve natural resources and
they list three types of activities: community
development, environmental conservation and forest
resource use (Table 2, column 1).
the 1999 guidelines, three sections of text provide
additional categories of activities that should be
supported. The first section outlines the percentage of
funding that should be given to each of five categories of
activities: conservation, conservation education,
development, income generation and skill development,
and administration (Table 2, column 2). In terms of
budget priorities, development appears to be
emphasized, but only slightly, relative to conservation as
the guidelines recommend a total of 50 per cent of the
budget should be apportioned to development and
income generation and skill development and 40 per cent
is recommended for conservation and conservation
education activities. It is not clear where forest use from
the 1996 regulations is placed in these guidelines.
The second section that mentions activities in the 1999
guidelines outlines five categories of activities that
should be prioritized and also provides specific examples
within each category (Table 2, column 2). While these
five types have some overlap with the previous five
categories, they also include one entirely new category,
Chitwan National Park grassland maintenance © Bhim Gurung

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alternative energy development. The first two categories
are conservation-related but, surprisingly, include not
only natural resources but also cultural heritage
conservation. The appearance of cultural heritage is
surprising because it is not referenced elsewhere and it is
not clear why it is linked with natural resource
conservation. It is also not clear how the two
conservation categories are different from each other
except that the second, “(b) Conservation of other natural
resources and cultural heritage,” appears to be a catch-all
category. Development is one category that includes
development programmes, income generating
programmes and also the catch-all “other”. Conservation
education lists a broad range of educational activities,
including promotion of cultural conservation.
The third section occurs in the appendix to the
guidelines, which provides a format for detailed work
plans (Table 2, column 3). The activity categories do not
exactly correspond to the previously mentioned
categories of activities and add yet one more type of
activity, institutional development. In this section, the
development category is called “Community and
Economic Development Program” and conservation is
called “Natural resource conservation and management
activities”. Forest use from the 1996 Regulations
reappears here as a category called “Management of
forest products collection and their sale”. It is interesting
that listed as examples within the conservation category
are activities that might seem more appropriate in the
development category and vice versa. For example,
1996 Regulations
1999 Guidelines
1999 Guidelines Appendix*:
Preparation of
Management Work
Plan: (1) The
warden shall
prepare and submit
buffer zone
management work
plan to the
Department for
community
development,
environmental
conservation and
the balance [sic]
utilization of forest
resources of the
buffer zones. (From
Part 3
Management of
Buffer Zones, point
5)
While selecting
projects, the users’
committee shall
have to give
priority to those
projects that meet
the requirement of
local people and
conserve natural
resources. (From
Part 7 Community
Development,
point/rule 29)
While preparing the work plan by the user
group for their respective area on
conservation of natural resources,
community development and utilization of
forest products, the Work Plan should be
prepared to have separate programs and
budget as follows:
 Conservation Program 30 per cent
 Community Development Program 30
per cent
 Income generating and Skill
Development Program 20 per cent
 Conservation Education Program 10
per cent
 Administrative Expenses 10 per cent
“in accordance [with] Rule 29, the
following should be given a priority:
(a) Conservation and management of
forest, wildlife and cultural heritage.
(b) Conservation of other natural resources
and cultural heritage.
(c) Alternate energy development.
(d) Community development
(1) Small-scale and productive
development programs at village level
(2) Income generating programs
(3) Others
(e) Conservation Education
(1) Audio-visual
(2) Poster, pamphlets and newspapers
(3) Training, Symposium and study
tours
(4) Non-formal education
(5) Programs on promotion for local
culture conservation
Activities designed for institutional development
- Training for capacity growth and development
- Community saving and its mobilization
- Group’s record keeping and report
- Registration of the group
- Co-ordination between group/committees
- Relationship with other government and non-
governmental organizations
- Auditing
Natural resource conservation and management activities
- Wildlife conservation
- Natural forestry management
- Buffer zone community forest program
- Community and privately undertaken afforestation
- Agriculture, agro-crop/ diversification of crops
- Multipurpose nursery
- Water and soil conservation
- Pasture management
- Alternative energy program
- Others
Management of forest products collection and its sale
Community and Economic Development Program
- Physical infrastructures that are productive which promote
conservation
-Programs that mitigate crop damage by wildlife
- Skill development training and appropriate technologies
- Women development programs
- Enterprising oriented programs
Conservation Education Programs
- Community Conservation Education Program
- School Conservation Education Program
- Development and distribution of awareness oriented
conservation education materials
- Study tours
- Cultural and conservation activities
- Non-formal education
*From Appendix 1 relating to section 5(7) of the Buffer Zone Management Guidelines 1999: template for user group/
committee work plan, sections 8-12.
Table 2. Summary of conservation and development activity categories mentioned in regulations and guidelines.

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agriculture and alternative energy are in the conservation
category while wildlife damage mitigation is listed in
development.
In terms of the process to choose activities, the
guidelines include a description of the roles of the user
committee and groups and requirements for the work
plans that they develop. These guidelines are important
because it is from these groups and their work plans that
the overall buffer zone management plan is developed.
Budgets are created in a bottom-up process whereby
community committees representing separate men’s and
women’s buffer zone user groups (BZUGs) at the ward
level propose projects to their buffer zone user
committee (BZUC). The BZUCs choose projects from
those suggested to forward to the buffer zone
management council (BZMC). The BZMC, chaired by the
warden of the park, then allocates the budget
accordingly. A detailed description of this process can be
found in Budhathoki (2004).
The guidelines describe this process in terms of collecting
“opinions and suggestions” from the user groups and
selecting activities to the extent possible based on
unanimous decisions within the group (p.3): “5. Users’
Group Work Plan: (2) While preparing the work plan by
the users’ group in accordance with sub-section (1), the
group should prepare the work plan by calling a meeting
of the members of the groups on matters relating to
community development and conservation oriented
programmes to be conducted in their area, and collecting
opinions and suggestions so as the programs and
projects be selected and prepared on the basis of
unanimous decision as far as possible.”
The guidelines describe the role of the user committee,
which is to mediate between the user groups and the
management council, in terms of the three areas laid out
initially in the 1996 regulations: conservation,
development, forest use (p. 5): “8. Arrangement Related
to the Users’ Committee. (1) The users’ committee will
function as a mediator between the users’ group and the
council to conduct programs through the users’ groups
formed in their respective areas for natural resources
conservation, community development along with
utilization of forest products in accordance with the
Regulation and this Guideline.”
The next piece of text emphasizes that development and
conservation should be included in the BZUC work plans
and that the work plans should reflect the work plans
developed by the community forest user groups (CFUGs)
(p. 6): “9. Users’ Committee Work Plan. (1) While
developing the work plan, it should clearly reflect
community development and conservation programs of
the respective area with a five-year plan. They should be
prepared with separate programs for each fiscal year to
be implemented on an annual basis. The work plan of the
committee shall be integrated with the work plan of the
groups.”
Homestay in buffer zone of Chitwan National Park © Teri Allendorf.

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How much money is going to communities
through buffer zone projects relative to the
overall protected area budget?
The budgets were quite different for these four protected
areas. Chitwan NP and Bardia NP, two of Nepal’s
premier parks, had budgets that were substantially larger
than the other two areas (Table 3). Shey Phoksundo NP,
although it is the largest protected area, had by far the
smallest budget. In contrast, Rara NP, the smallest
protected area of the four, had a relatively large budget.
To understand the relative amounts budgeted for
management of the protected area versus buffer zone
programmes, we compared the size of the protected area
budgets to the buffer zone budgets (Table 3). Chitwan NP
had the smallest percentage of its total budget designated
for the buffer zone at 21 per cent. The other PAs
designated between two and four times as much of their
budget, as a percentage of the total, to buffer zone
management. Rara NP allocated almost four times as
much for buffer zone activities as for park management.
Shey Phoksundo NP and Bardia NP allocated almost an
equal amount for both park management and the buffer
zone.
Next, a comparison was made of the budgets per unit for
each area by comparing the amount allocated for
protected area management per square kilometre and the
amount allocated for the buffer zone per person (Table
3). These units were adopted because the protected area
budget is intended to manage a landscape (the unit of
which is sq. km), while the buffer zone budget is intended
to benefit people (the unit of which is individual people).
For the amount spent per square kilometre for protected
area management, Rara NP, which is relatively small in
size but had a relatively large budget, allocated more per
square kilometre on protected area management than
the other areas. At the other extreme, Shey Phoksundo
NP, which is quite large, allocated relatively little.
Chitwan NP and Bardia NP lie in the middle.
For the amount spent per person in the buffer zones,
Rara NP’s budget was disproportionately large, spending
nine times as much as Shey Phoksundo NP and Bardia
NP. Chitwan NP allocated the least, about one quarter as
much as Shey NP and Bardia NP.
Do the buffer zone budgets follow the policy
guidelines for BZ projects? If not, how are they
different?
We compared the budgets in the plans to the guidance
provided in the legislation for each category of activity:
community development, conservation, income
generation and skill development, conservation
education, and administration (Table 4). For Rara NP
and Shey NP, we used the budget summaries provided in
the management plans for each activity category. For
Bardia NP and Chitwan NP, the management plans did
not provide summaries by budget categories, so it was
necessary to estimate total budgets for each activity
category by compiling activity lists from the detailed
budgets given for each buffer zone user committee in the
protected areas.
Bardia NP followed the guidelines most closely while
Rara NP was most different. Rara NP spent nearly twice
as much as recommended on community development
Region
Terai
Mountain
Protected area
Chitwan (2006-11)
Bardia (2007-11)
Shey (2010-14)
Rara (2006-11)
US$
%
US$
%
US$
%
US$
%
Total budget
7,610,887
961
5,640,360
100
931,893
100
3,876,293
982
PA budget
5,697,667
75
2,780,640
49
537,533
58
863,866
22
BZ budget
1,631,780
21
2,859,720
51
394,360
42
2,954,427
76
PA budget/PA size
(US$/sq. km)
6,113
2,873
151
8,150
Total budget/PA size
(US$/sq. km)
8,166
5,827
262
36,569
BZ budget/population
(US$/person)
7.31
27.55
34.00
252.84
Table 3. Summary of budget information from five-year management plans for protected area management and buffer zone
management in four protected areas in Nepal (in US$ using approximate exchange rate from that time period of 75 Nepali
rupees per dollar)
1Does not equal 100% because 4% of the budget was committed to the Barandabhar Forest Corridor Management Plan, a forest
corridor connected to Chitwan National Park that is managed by the park authorities; 2Does not equal 100% because a small
amount (0.01%) was in a separate tourism fund. The rest is unexplained as numbers provided in management plan do not equal
100%.

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PARKS VOL 22.2 NOVEMBER 2016
programmes and half as much on conservation and
conservation education programmes. Shey Phoksundo
NP and Chitwan NP were slightly over on community
development and conservation programmes, and were
under on both income generation and conservation
education. Rara NP and Chitwan NP allocated much less
than the suggested 10 per cent on administration.
What activities are planned with buffer zone
funds?
Looking across all four protected areas, the categories of
conservation and development included relatively
diverse sets of activities, while the categories of
conservation education and income generation and skill
development included more limited sets of activities.
Conservation activities
For Rara NP, conservation activities included only
community forestry activities, such as building nurseries,
hiring forest guards, making plantations and fire lines,
putting up fencing, demarcating forest boundaries, and
buying non-timber forest product (NTFP) seeds. All the
other areas had a mix of types of activities in the
conservation category, including community forestry,
mitigation of wildlife conflict, alternative energy and
capacity-building. Shey Phoksundo NP was the only area
to include information and research activities in its
conservation activities, including identification of
biodiversity hotspots and land use classification. It also
included what might be considered a development
activity: low-cost latrines. Bardia NP, unlike the other
areas, included activities called “conservation of
indigenous cultures” in this category, but did not
describe specific activities.
Community development
The vast majority of community development activities
in the buffer zone areas were infrastructure. They
included the construction of buildings, roads,
communication (telephone installation), irrigation and
water infrastructure, and toilets. Buildings included
schools, health posts, temples, community meeting
places, birthing houses and some tourism infrastructure.
Roads included roads, foot trails and bridges. In Bardia
NP and Chitwan NP, all activities were infrastructure
except for one “river training” in Chitwan NP. In Shey
Phoksundo NP and Rara NP, in addition to
infrastructure activities, community development
activities included energy, health and capacity-building
activities. Rara NP also included trainings in sewing and
literacy in this category, which we might expect to be in
the income generation category.
Income generation and skill development
Most activities in this category were trainings that
develop skills, such as vegetable farming or motorcycle
repair, which might generate income. Shey Phoksundo’s
activities in this category also included pasture
identification and rotational grazing plan preparation
and agricultural nursery establishment as well as some
capacity-building of the user groups. Two areas, Rara NP
and Chitwan NP, also had water-related infrastructure
activities.
Conservation education
Conservation education activities were very general
awareness-raising activities, such as study tours, school
programmes and educational materials. Some activities
were literacy classes. Shey Phoksundo NP had two
specific activities focused on conservation: an
agroforestry demonstration plot and preparation of a
wildlife checklist. Bardia NP included an anti-poaching
programme.
Primary activities in Shey Phoksundo NP and
Rara NP
In Shey Phoksundo NP and Rara NP, it was possible to
figure out specific activities across all BZUCs and how the
budget is distributed across specific activities, rather
than just broad categories. The Shey Phoksundo NP
management plan included a summary across all of the
buffer zone user committee activities that listed the
amounts allocated to each activity. For Rara NP,
activities were listed by buffer user committees and used
Terai
Mountain
Chitwan
Bardia
Shey
Rara
%
%
%
%
Community development programme (30%)
37
30
37
56
Conservation programme (30%)
36
30
34
17
Income generation and skill development (20%)
15
21
10
21
Conservation education (10%)
7
10
9
5
Administration (10%)
4
9
10
2
Table 4. Comparison of percentage of buffer zone budget allotted for each category of activity.

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similar activity titles, which made it possible to sum the
amount spent on specific activities across all of the
committees to find total amounts allocated to each type
of activity.
Shey Phoksundo NP’s activities focused primarily on
energy issues. Out of its total buffer zone budget, 45 per
cent was allocated for alternative energy activities. Of the
45 per cent, 20 per cent was allocated for micro
hydropower systems, which was categorized as
conservation, and 13 per cent was allocated for solar set
distribution and 12 per cent was for improved cook
stoves, both of which were categorized as development.
These percentages were relatively large amounts of the
buffer zone budget overall, as the next largest specific
activity in the budget was nursery/plantation work at 4
per cent.
Rara NP’s activities were more evenly distributed across
different types of activities. Drinking water activities
received the largest amount at 14 per cent. The next
largest amount of the budget was for solar energy at 6
per cent. Both of these activities were categorized as
community development. They were followed closely by
goat and vegetable farming in the income generation
category, each at a little more than 5 per cent.
It was not possible to summarize activities for Bardia NP
and Chitwan NP because the management plans did not
include activity descriptions that were similar enough
across the user committees to understand what the
activity entailed. A more detailed understanding of each
activity would be needed in order to summarize into
broader categories of activities.
DISCUSSION
How do protected area policies of Nepal address
and balance conservation and development?
Nepal’s policies emphasize the importance of
implementing a process that allows communities to
choose activities according to their priorities rather than
defining outcomes. While the policy recognizes different
types of activities and allocates a certain percentage of
the budget to them, the more important aspect of the
policy is probably its participatory nature (Paudel et al.,
2007), which is a critical component of positive park-
people relationships (Andrade & Rhodes, 2012) and also
builds trust between protected area management and
local communities (Stern, 2010). For example, in
Chitwan NP, people’s attitudes toward park management
are generally positive, with the majority feeling that park
management treats them as partners and supports their
participation in conservation and development
programmes (Nepal & Spiteri, 2011).
Another advantage to Nepal’s approach is that the buffer
zone policies are clearly the government’s, rather than
sponsored by non-governmental organizations (NGOs).
People know that buffer zone programmes are part of
government policy and they link the benefits of the
programme to the protected areas (Nepal & Spiteri,
2011). When programmes are not government-sponsored
and implemented, and instead are implemented by
NGOs, then people can be less likely to see the link
between the programme and the protected area
(Allendorf et al., 2007). Nepal’s policies also allow for a
mix of activities to address both conservation and
development without framing conservation and
Community forest guards near Chitwan National Park © Teri
Allendorf.
Shey Phoksundo National Park © Laurie Vasily

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development as polarized goals. They have avoided the
difficult, if not impossible, task of categorizing activities
into discrete categories that reflect some set of perceived
conceptual relationships between conservation and
development (Kepe et al., 2004; Walpole & Wilder,
2008). These relationships are often conceptualized as
categories that reflect some permutation of conservation
as helping or hindering development and development as
helping or hindering conservation (Salafsky, 2011;
Adams et al., 2004). At the national level, the
inconsistency of categories and activities in the
regulations and guidelines reflects, at least to some
extent, the difficulty of clearly differentiating distinct
categories. At the protected area level, the inconsistency
of activities within the different categories is also
probably an indication of the difficulty in practice of
defining activities in terms of conservation versus
development.
Three very different examples demonstrate the difficulty
of categorizing activities: community forestry, alternative
energy and latrines. All of these activities can contribute
to conservation and development. Community forests
contribute to both in many ways. For example,
community forests buffer protected areas against human
activities, provide more habitat for wildlife and provide
communities with forest resources. Alternative energy
decreases extraction from protected areas and
community forests, which helps to conserve forest, and
also decreases the odds that people come into contact
with wildlife because they enter the protected areas and
forests less frequently to extract. Latrine construction,
which is clearly a development activity, can also
contribute to conservation by decreasing the odds that
people come into contact with wildlife when they go to
the forest or fields to urinate and defecate.
A more complicated example is infrastructure. In Nepal,
buffer zone management has been criticized for investing
too much in infrastructure and not contributing enough
to conservation or livelihoods (Paudel et al., 2007).
However, while there are many issues associated with
infrastructure that can have negative impacts on
protected areas, infrastructure projects can bring
benefits to both people and protected areas. Many
livelihood activities depend on infrastructure for success:
roads facilitate the sale of local products and increasing
tourism in protected areas. Water infrastructure can help
Bardia National Park © Sue Stolton

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people and protected areas and wildlife. For drinking or
irrigation, it can help provide water for wildlife (pond-
building for wildlife is increasingly common in Nepal)
and, for flood control, it can help protect people’s
agricultural fields and maintain boundaries between
protected areas and settlements. Building schools
increases people’s access to education, which has direct
impacts on livelihoods and can increase support for
conservation. The impacts of infrastructure can also be
indirect and quite subtle. For example, if a woman lives
near a school as a child, even if she does not attend it, she
is more likely to send her own children to school, which,
in turn, is correlated to her having fewer children (Axinn
& Barber, 2001).
How do these policies translate into activities in
protected area buffer zones?
These four protected areas highlight the importance for
conservation and development of the larger context and
the opportunities and constraints on people’s livelihoods
and opportunities in that context (Naughton-Treves et
al., 2005). When we compare across the four protected
areas in this study, we see that different proportions of
protected area funding are being allocated to protected
area management versus the communities and that,
within the buffer zones, communities are emphasizing
different types of activities. These differences seem to be
linked to the different socio-economic contexts of the
protected areas.
In Nepal, most residents living adjacent to protected
areas in the terai have much greater access to a range of
livelihood, health and educational opportunities, such as
markets, roads, hospitals and schools. Protected areas in
the hill and mountain regions have much less access to
infrastructure and government support. These broader
socio-economic contexts are reflected in each protected
area’s management plan. For example, Chitwan NP is
located in one of the most developed districts in Nepal,
so people are not as poor and a range of economic
opportunities, as well as health and educational facilities,
are more available than in the other areas. Chitwan NP
also generates more tourism revenue than any other
national park in Nepal, but spends much less relative to
the other areas on the buffer zone. It makes sense that
Chitwan NP would spend less on buffer zone
development activities because they are already more
developed relative to other areas. In line with this
hypothesis is the fact that Rara NP, which is located in
one of the poorest areas in Nepal, spends
disproportionally more on development in its buffer
zone. This finding suggests that the appropriate balance
of conservation and development activities for a
protected area will differ for different protected areas,
highlighting that the socio-economic context
surrounding protected areas matters.
An important, and related, aspect to the idea that
different activities are appropriate in different places is
that they can also be appropriate at different points in
time. The appropriate balance of conservation and
development activities may change over time as
community needs change and as their understanding of
and experience with conservation and development
increases. One important aspect of balancing
conservation and development may be to recognize the
need to give people time to meet their immediate needs
and grow into the process of balancing conservation and
development. For example, in the Annapurna
Conservation Area in the mountain region of Nepal, over
the period of a decade, communities decreased the
development activities they chose to do and increased
conservation activities (Baral et al., 2007).
Next generation issues: prioritize and evaluate
activities
While innovative and progressive, Nepal’s buffer zone
programme also has plenty of room for improvement. It
has been criticized for being too top-down because the
protected area warden holds ultimate authority over all
activities in the buffer zone (Budhathoki, 2004; Heinen
& Mehta, 2000). It is also criticized for failing to
adequately address empowerment and equity in benefit
sharing and gender issues (Budhathoki, 2004). Often
these shortcomings are referred to as second generation
issues that have arisen as policies have become
established on the ground and initial obstacles have been
resolved (Kanel & Dahal, 2008).
Our review of the management plans of these four
protected areas highlights an additional second
generation issue: how can activities be prioritized to best
meet the needs of people and the protected areas? While
the flexibility of the categories allows communities and
protected areas managers to have flexibility in
developing buffer zone management plans, it also means
there is no clear process for prioritizing activities that
“meet the requirement of local people and conserve
natural resources” as described in the original 1996
regulations. Thus, while Nepal has avoided talking about
trade-offs, their approach is also not necessarily
maximizing the benefits to either protected areas or
people. Explicit strategizing with communities about how
to maximize benefits is the next step in improving park-
people relationships.
In the course of our own work with communities in
Nepal, we have had people articulate that they would like

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better prioritization and support of certain activities,
especially those that directly mitigate conflicts with
wildlife. For example, in Chitwan NP, people felt
mitigation of these problems was one of the most urgent
community needs (Spiteri & Nepal, 2008). People
wonder why, for example, the construction and
maintenance of electric fences and other mitigation
measures are not prioritized. While the construction of
electric and non-electric fences has been funded over the
past few decades, through both buffer zone funds and
NGO projects, construction has been piecemeal with no
plan for funding of renovation or maintenance.
In addition to prioritizing activities that better integrate
and address the needs of the people and protected areas,
there is also a need to reflect on what works and what
does not. At this point in Nepal, there is no evaluation
component for the buffer zone activities. Evaluation of
activities would help communities to improve the quality
of activities and provide a basis for sharing activity ideas
and outcomes with each other within and among
protected areas. For example, the specific activities as
they are listed in the budget are very broad and generic
and fairly consistent across protected areas. This lack of
specificity might be a reflection of the need to simplify
for the budgeting process, but based on our experiences
in the field, we think it also indicates a limited set of
interventions that are being considered as options. For
example, livelihood and income generation are limited
mainly to skills training and livestock rearing, and the
impacts of these activities have not been evaluated. For
example, in one village in Chitwan, people questioned the
usefulness of noodle-making training in which some
residents had participated. Conservation education
activities are also very broad and appear to have the goal
of creating the conditions for conservation rather than
targeting any particular behaviour changes. A more
systematic approach to choosing and evaluating across
protected areas would be a logical next step to the
development of positive park-people relationships in
Nepal.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We thank the Nepal Department of National Parks and
Wildlife Conservation for providing the protected area
management plans. We also thank Birendra Mahato and
Sanjay Chaudhari for their translation assistance.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Teri Allendorf is a scientist in the Department of
Forest and Wildlife Ecology and an Honorary Fellow in
the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies and the
Land Tenure Center at the University of Wisconsin-
Madison. She is also a research associate with the
Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute. She has
worked in Nepal and Asia for more than twenty years
exploring local communities’ attitudes and perceptions of
protected areas and how those can be used to manage
protected areas more sustainably.
Bhim Gurung is a director and founder of Nepal Tiger
Trust, Nepal. His interests are participatory
conservation, meta-population structure and human-
tiger conflicts. He has nearly three decades of tiger
monitoring experiences throughout Nepal. Dr Gurung is
a member of the Cat Specialist Group – IUCN / Species
Survival Commission.
Rara Lake © Mina Rana

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RESUMEN
La búsqueda del equilibrio entre la conservación y el desarrollo de las comunidades adyacentes a las áreas
protegidas no es tarea fácil. La posibilidad de encontrar soluciones que satisfagan las necesidades de las
personas y de la conservación parece difícil. Nepal es uno de los países más pobres del mundo y, sin
embargo, también es un modelo de éxito en términos de conservación de la biodiversidad. Un gran
porcentaje de su territorio está protegido y las poblaciones de especies en peligro de extinción como el tigre
y el rinoceronte han ido en aumento durante las últimas cinco décadas. Este éxito de conservación se debe
en buena medida a sus políticas mundialmente reconocidas en materia de manejo forestal comunitario y
zonas de amortiguamiento de áreas protegidas. El objetivo del artículo es explorar cómo abordan las
políticas nacionales sobre áreas protegidas de Nepal lo relativo a la conservación y el desarrollo, y cómo se
traducen dichas políticas en actividades de conservación y desarrollo en las zonas de amortiguamiento de
las áreas protegidas. Descubrimos que uno de los puntos fuertes del enfoque de Nepal, tanto en lo que
respecta a la política como a la práctica, es que permite una amalgama de actividades que apoyan la
conservación y el desarrollo sin definir resultados ni enmarcar la conservación y el desarrollo como metas
polarizadas. La comparación de cuatro áreas protegidas pone de relieve la necesidad de equilibrar la
conservación y el desarrollo en función de un contexto más amplio, incluyendo las oportunidades y
restricciones impuestas a los medios de vida y las oportunidades de las personas.
RÉSUMÉ
La question de comment concilier conservation environnementale et développement économique pour les
communautés vivant à proximité des zones protégées s`avère compliquée. Des solutions répondant
simultanément aux deux objectifs semblent difficiles à trouver. Le Népal est l`un des pays les plus pauvres
du monde et pourtant il est aussi un modèle de réussite pour la conservation de la biodiversité. Une large
proportion du territoire est protégée et des populations d'espèces menacées comme le tigre et le rhinocéros
ont augmenté au cours des cinq dernières décennies. Ce bilan positif a été atteint en partie grâce à son
programme mondialement réputé de foresterie communautaire et à sa politique de zones tampon entourant
les aires protégées. L'objectif de cet article est d'explorer comment les politiques de gestion des aires
protégées au Népal abordent les enjeux de la conservation et du développement, et la façon dont ces
politiques se traduisent par des activités de conservation et de développement dans les zones tampons.
Nous constatons que l'un des points forts de l'approche du Népal, tant dans les directives que dans leur
application, est la présence d'activités adressant tant la conservation que le développement sans tenter de
les mettre en opposition. La comparaison de quatre aires protégées met en évidence la nécessité d’une
approche équilibrée entre la conservation et le développement, prenant en compte les opportunités et
impacts sur les moyens de subsistance des populations.