NEPAL
Nepal, officially the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal, is a small landlocked country in the heart of the Himalayas, bordered by China (Tibet Autonomous Region) to the north and India on the rest of its borders.
It has a wide variety of landscapes, stretching from the humid tropical Terai in the south to the highest mountains in the world in the north.
There are eight mountains among the ten highest in the world, including Everest to the east (Sagarmatha in Nepali) which marks the border with part of the Tibetan region of China.
Kathmandu is Nepal’s political and religious capital and also its largest city. The official language is Nepali and the currency is the Nepalese rupee. The Nepalese flag is the only national flag not rectangular or square. Despite accounting for only 0.025% of greenhouse gas emissions, Nepal is one of the most vulnerable and affected countries by climate change. With global warming, the glaciers melting (Nepal lost a quarter of its glaciers between 1997 and 2010) has led to the formation of proglacial lakes. These water reservoirs represent a potentially devastating threat. If the banks fail, tens of thousands of people could be displaced.
Climat
This enormous difference in altitude leads to a great diversity of climates and terrains: Subtropical in the Terai plains which border India to the south, crossed by a system of three major rivers (Kosi, Narayani, and Karnali) which belong to the northern border of the plains Indo Gangetics; Temperate in the central region of low mountains and hills; Cold and dry in the high Himalayan mountain region.
Geography
Nepal is approximately shaped like a trapezoid. As a small country 800 km long and around 200 km wide, it covers an area of 147,181 km2. It is landlocked between India and China, sharing 2,810 km of land borders. Only 20% of the country’s total surface area is cultivable. The population’s growing need for firewood and rice led to significant deforestation. From a physical point of view, Nepal can be divided into three zones (belts) roughly oriented east-west: the mountain zone, the hill zone, and the Terai region. The country’s major rivers cross these three areas. The altitude varies from 60 meters in the Terai to 8,849 meters in Everest.
Politics and Population
Since the Nepalese constitution was established in 2015, Nepal has become a federal state composed of seven provinces.
The country is populated by around 60 ethnic groups and castes. Nepal is one of the poorest countries in the world. A quarter of the population lives below the poverty line. The majority of the population makes its living from subsistence agriculture, tourism, and foreign transfers. It provides the country with urgently needed foreign exchange. According to current projections, Nepal’s population is expected to reach its peak of 35.32 million by 2049. After 2050, the population is expected to decline to 24.04 million by the end of the century. Life expectancy for both sexes is 70 years for men and 72 years for women in Nepal. The literacy rate is constantly increasing.
