Protection of Himalayan Biodiversity

Ananda Mohan Bhattarai is a judge in the Court of Appeal in Nepal. He was associated with the National Judicial Academy, Nepal since its establishment in 2004, where he worked first as a core faculty and later as an extended faculty. He has worked in the Nepal judiciary for more than 27 years.He holds an L.L.M. and J.S.D. from the National Law School of India, Bangalore. He was a SPURS/Hubert Humphrey Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA (2002–03) and Georg Forster Fellow at Max Planck Institute of International Law and Comparative Public Law, Heidelberg, Germany (2005–06 and 2008). Apart from numerous research articles, he has published two books: Displacement and Rehabilitation in Nepal (2001) and Communities, Forests and Laws of Nepal (2005, co-authored with Dilraj Khanal).

• Foreword - Surya P Subedi PrefaceIntroducing the Himalayan Region: Bio and Livelihood ChallengesMountains: Convention on Biological Diversity and Subsequent DevelopmentsAccess to Genetic Resources and Benefit SharingProtection of Traditional KnowledgeBiological Resources, Traditional Knowledge and Intellectual Property RightsFramework of Regional Cooperation in the Himalaya, and Strategies for NegotiationConcluding ObservationsBibliographyIndex

The Himalayas are home to millions of people and a rich and unmatched biodiversity that controls the climate pattern of the whole region. It is this richness that Dr Bhattarai…tries to portray…. [The book] argues for a regional approach to protecting the Himalaya…. The author…tries to create awareness, establish a coalition of governmental and non-governmental actors, civil societies and researchers for the protection of Himalaya and its people…. The heavy citations with footnotes and the elaborate bibliography hint at the depth of the research. Development policymakers in the Himalayan region must read at least Chapters One and Six to understand the issues and to craft long-term, viable solutions to pressing biodiversity concerns.