"Nepal and China take step towards one of ‘world’s toughest railways’" 7 September 2022

On 10 August, China announced that within a year it will start a feasibility study for the ambitious Tibet-Nepal Railway project. The announcement, which came during Nepal foreign minister Narayan Khadka’s visit to China, also revealed that China will pay for the study. [...]

The estimated cost of the feasibility study has not been made public, but China has announced that it will provide RMB 800 million (USD 118 million) to Nepal in 2022. [...]

Experts say this could be a defining move for the Tibet-Nepal Railway, which has been on hold for years with Nepal reluctant to fund the study and China reticent about funding it. “Technically this will be one of the world’s toughest railways to construct as it needs to cross the lofty and fragile Himalayan range, but with China’s technological prowess it is possible as they have already built railways in higher altitudes in Tibet than the proposed Nepal-China railway,” said Aman Chitrakar, spokesperson for Nepal’s Department of Railways. [...]

The ecological impacts of the proposed rail line are not being discussed in Nepal – and nothing has been said about what China’s 2021 green development guidelines might mean for the project. Some experts say this is due to the Nepali government’s inability to work with the Chinese team.

“Any trans-Himalayan project of this scale will have serious environmental impacts and there should be more concern around the fragile geology of the region. This railway will pass through the main central thrust – a geologically weak zone in the Himalayas – and it’s important to use technical knowledge of geologists and other experts to minimise its environmental impacts. But it’s sad that no efforts towards this have been made,” Basanta Raj Adhikari, deputy director of the Centre for Disaster Studies at the Institute of Engineering, Tribhuvan University in Kathmandu, told The Third Pole. [...]