Regional Decision Support System for National Park Management in the Hindu Kush Himalayan Region

Consultative Meeting on Decision Support Systems for Sagarmatha National Park (SNP) conservation and management was organized in ICIMOD on 3 May in the framework of the “Regional GIS/DSS Partnership Initiative in the HKKH Region”. This initiative is a part of a regional programme by ICIMOD, IUCN, Ev-K2-CNR (Italian scientific organisation) and CESVI (Italian NGO) with the support from Italian Government development co-operation. As a part of this initiative in the first phase, two national parks have been identified; Sagarmatha National Park in Nepal and Central Karakoram National Park (CKNP) in Pakistan as pilot sites in the Hindu Kush-Himalayan region and these parks contain the two highest mountains in the world, and both celebrated the 50 year anniversary of the first ascent. The partnership initiative will particularly focus on systematic development of bio-physical and socio-economic databases, capacity building and training of national partners in providing GIS and decision support system tools. It will also emphasize effective networking of partners in promoting data exchange and sharing in order to support the management of SNP in Nepal and CKNP in Pakistan.

The meeting held in ICIMOD focused particularly on the SNP in Nepal and the coordination of different ongoing projects and initiatives in the park. This project aims at developing a Decision Support System for the sustainable management of natural resources in the parks and it is hoped that the DSS can complement the management plan being developed by the Tourism for Rural Poverty Alleviation Programme (TRPAP) under the Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation (DNPWC).

Nepal Country Environmental Analysis Report