Tourism is one of the important sectors in Nepali economy and gains high priority from the government sector as well owing to its contribution in the economic, social and environmental front. Despite these benefits, the tourism sector comes with negative externalities, providing rationality for shift towards a more sustainable approach. Despite this, the circular economy is yet to gain recognition, both at the academic and industrial level in Nepal. Thus, this article aims to fulfill that gap by introducing the concept of circular economy, application of circular economy to the tourism industry and barriers for their implementation in Nepal. In different parts of the world, transition towards circular economy, which integrates the concepts of restorative economy, sharing economy and service economy, from the linear one have been identified as an approach for sustainable economic development. Innovation and application of the 4R principles have been identified as the key to the shift towards the circular economy. Innovation implies the use of new, innovative and more durable products, innovation in the production process and innovative organizational process. Innovation of business models, reduction of the resources used, reuse of the old products thereby reducing the demand for the new ones and recycling of waste products generated are some of the strategies of the circular economy that are applicable to the tourism industry. As Nepali tourism sectors are largely based on take-use-dispose form, they are unsustainable. Circular economy can address the problem associated with the tourism sector there by making the sector sustainable. But, adaptation of circular tourism is hindered mainly by financial and knowledge constraints. The study is expected to introduce and initiate academic discourse about circular tourism in Nepal.

Ecotourism is a form of nature-based tourism. It is recognized as the sustainable alternative to the mass tourism and is executed to contribute to the protection and enhancement of various component of the environment. As environmental and cultural diversity are considered as the greatest assets to ecotourism, Nepal with high cultural and environmental diversity is prime destinations for ecotourism and other forms of nature-based tourism. Ecotourism contributes to the conservation of biodiversity as a primary source of internal funding in the protected areas. Researches on the aspects of ecotourism in Nepal were focused towards potentiality evaluation, impact assessment and the impact of climate change including others. Despite the significance of ecotourism in the Nepalese economy, research on governance aspects of ecotourism is limited. This article aims to analyze the role of government in ecotourism development in Nepal through policy-based approach. Beside this, data of visitation in the protected areas was evaluated. Tourist number in the protected area was observed to increase in a gradual fashion in response to the growing number of tourists visiting Nepal. Tourism policies of government primarily focus to increase the number of tourists in the country and fail to recognize tourism carrying capacity and environmental implication. Different tourism and other sectoral policies attempt to cover the issues of ecotourism, but, ecotourism specific policy is yet to be drafted. In addition to this, the tourism aspect is addressed by the species conservation action plan for species-level conservation within the country. In all, nine action plans reviewed, the provisions relating to tourism were found to be too general, most of them acknowledging ecotourism as a source of conservation funding but failed to define species-specific policy. A similar trend can be observed in the protected area management plan excluding the Chitwan and Banke National Park. Further study on the implementation status and formulation of new policy to address the holistic issues of ecotourism is an urgent requirement.

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Local people are the major stakeholders of biodiversity conservation. Human-wildlife conflict (HWC) could result in a negative attitude of the general public towards wildlife adding challenges for conservation. This is more applicable in the landscapes which are outside the protected area (PA) coverage. But, the majority of HWC related studies in Nepal have centered on PAs and their peripheries. This study documents the prevailing situation of HWC in Sundarpur of Udayapur district that shelters some HWC prone wildlife species, while situating outside PA. Data about conflict and people's perception of wildlife conservation was collected using household surveys supplemented by key informant interviews and direct observation. Monkeys (93%, n=93) and elephants (86%, n=86) were found to be the major animals involved in the conflict, mostly resulting in crop raiding, the major form of conflict as reported by (95%, n=95) of respondents. Livestock depredation cases were mostly by common leopard (84%, n=21) and sloth bear was involved in the majority of human attack cases (90%, n=9). The results showed increasing trend of conflicts for elephants (63%, n=63) and monkeys (73%, n=73), while declining trend for sloth bear (64%, n=64), wild boar (85%, n=85), and leopard (46%, n=46). People believed the natural attraction of wildlife towards crops and livestock to be the major driving factor of conflict. Majority of respondents had a positive attitude towards wildlife conservation. However, implementation of community based conflict management strategies, robust compensation schemes along with conservation education programs are highly essential to achieve desired conservation success.

Urban forest ecosystems, the structure and functions therein, are subjected to anthropogenic disturbances. Native and sensitive species from those forests might be lost due to such disturbances. At the same time, supplemented anthropogenic resources might create opportunities for exotic and invasive species. Although, invasive species are considered as one of the major threats to the urban biodiversity and ecosystems, the researches on invasion dynamics in the Himalayas have mostly focused on the impacts of invasion on forest structure and productivity. This study aims to understand the influence of forest structure and anthropogenic factors in invasion success that are poorly covered in the existing literature. We selected 11 urban forest patches for the study considering the presence-absence of selected invasive species and structural attributes. We used Principal Component Analysis (PCA) to reduce co-linearity in the covariates and generalized linear mixed effects model (GLMM) to identify the factors affecting the invasion success. We found that the structural attributes of the forests and anthropogenic disturbances regulated invasion success in urban forests. This implies that maintaining urban forest structural attributes, especially maintaining the stands with large-sized trees, are essential to regulate and control invasion in the context of urbanization.