Government Approves Five-Year Action Plan to Keep Mountains Clean, Ensure Safe Climbing

The government has approved a five-year action plan aimed at keeping Nepal’s mountains clean and promoting safe mountaineering amid growing concerns over waste management and safety during climbing expeditions.

The Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation has endorsed the Mountain Cleanliness Action Plan (Fiscal Year 2025/26–2029/30) to systematically manage the Clean Mountains and Safe Mountaineering Campaign. The decision was taken at the ministerial level on December 14.

The action plan comes at a time when waste generated by climbers has been increasing, posing environmental and safety challenges to Nepal’s high-altitude regions, a key attraction for adventure tourism. The government has opened more than 400 mountains and peaks for domestic and foreign climbers.

Although various mountain-cleaning initiatives have been carried out in the past, the ministry noted gaps, weaknesses and negligence in implementation. A single climbing expedition requires coordination among multiple agencies, departments, institutions and individuals at different stages, from ascent to descent. To address these challenges, the ministry has prepared an integrated and coordinated waste management strategy involving all relevant stakeholders to manage climbers’ waste, reduce environmental risks in mountainous areas and ensure the effective implementation of mountaineering procedures.

The action plan outlines a long-term vision of clean mountains and a healthy environment. Its objectives include ensuring sustainable waste management, guiding the management of waste and human remains generated during mountaineering and related activities, reducing environmental pollution and public health risks, promoting multi-stakeholder collaboration in waste management, and using modern technology to make the mountain-cleaning campaign more effective.

Efforts to keep the mountains clean have been underway for decades. Japanese climbers, led by Ken Noguchi, launched a mountain-cleaning campaign in 2000, collecting around 9,000 kilograms of waste from the Everest region through five campaigns by 2007. In 2008, Asian Trekking began the Eco Everest Expedition, which collected about 20,000 kilograms of waste over 11 years.

Similarly, the Everest Cleanup Campaign 2019 was launched under the leadership of Khumbu Pasang Lhamu Rural Municipality, in coordination with the Sagarmatha Pollution Control Committee (SPCC). The Nepali Army jointly cleaned Mount Everest and Lhotse during the campaign, collecting 10,800 kilograms of biodegradable and non-biodegradable waste and four human bodies.

Since 2019, the Nepali Army has been running the Clean Mountain Campaign, under which a total of 119,056 kilograms of waste, 12 human bodies and four sets of human remains have been collected so far.

The Department of Tourism has also enforced a rule since the spring season of 2011 requiring climbers returning from Everest to bring back at least eight kilograms of waste. Under the mountain-cleaning drive, the Ministry of Culture, Tourism and Civil Aviation, Department of Tourism, Nepal Tourism Board, Ministry of Forests and Environment, Koshi provincial government, Sagarmatha National Park, the Nepali Army, Nepal Mountaineering Association, Khumbu Pasang Lhamu Rural Municipality, SPCC, local organisations and communities have been conducting waste collection campaigns at different times.