KATHMANDU — Whenever Chandra Prakash Pathak visits neighboring farms in his hometown of Lumbini, in southwestern Nepal, he sees a thick blanket of black smog. The problem is more severe in winter, when the country doesn’t receive much rainfall. “The farmland is also covered in dust from the manufacturing plants and industries in the area,” Pathak told Mongabay by phone. It’s not just people who are affected, he added: birds, rivers and farms are also impacted by the industrial pollution from factories churning out everything from cement and steel to liquor. “The farmers can’t grow rice, wheat, mustard, canola, potatoes or lentils, and have to feed their livestock contaminated water from the Tinau River,” he said. There’s also a spiritual dimension to the problem: Lumbini is famed as the birthplace of the Buddha, and is also home to a population of sarus cranes (Grus antigone) a threatened species closely associated with the Buddhist faith. Relief on all those fronts could soon arrive as Nepal’s Supreme Court has ordered the government to strictly implement a decade-old guideline to halt industrial development around Lumbini to protect its heritage and biodiversity — a move welcomed by local communities and conservationists, but one that has also raised concerns over jobs, investment and the impact on the local economy. Winter smog in Lumbini. ACS Earth Space Chem. 2021, 5, 2, 226-238. CC BY ND 4.0 Responding to a public interest litigation petition, Justices Kumar Regmi and Sunil Kumar Pokharel also imposed restrictions on heavy truck…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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