Evaluating the Effectiveness and Resilience of Area-Based ConservationStrategies in Nepal in the Face of Climate Change and Socio-economic Challenges

Nepal’s national parks and wildlife reserves are shrinking in the face of a changing climate, and this study will map exactly which protected areas and threatened species are most at risk. The problem is that Nepal has committed to protecting 30% of its land by 2030, but no one knows which existing parks will remain viable as temperatures and rainfall patterns shift. Current conservation plans assume the landscape will stay the same, which it will not. This research fills that gap by modelling how the “climate space” inside each protected area will change under future scenarios, and by identifying which of Nepal’s threatened species are most vulnerable to those shifts. If the research succeeds, it will give Nepal’s government and conservation agencies a ranked list of priority parks and species needing urgent adaptation effort. It will also pinpoint where to expand the protected area network to meet the 30% target—ensuring new parks are placed in locations that will still support biodiversity decades from now, rather than locking in protection for land that will become unsuitable. This directly affects how the country spends limited conservation budgets and how it meets its international biodiversity commitments.