EV1-308, ext. 41239
snepal@uwaterloo.ca
Dr. Nepal is the current President of the Canadian Association of Geographers (CAG), and has been a Visiting Fellow (University of Otago, New Zealand, 2017), and Visiting Professor and Senior International Scientist (Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 2012). He is the recipient of the Roy Wolfe Award for outstanding contributions to tourism and recreation studies (Association of American Geographers, 2012). He has consulted for the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF, Gland) and has lent his expertise to local governments in Nepal, India, China, South Korea, Austria and Canada. He has taught previously at Texas A&M University (2004-2010) and University of Northern British Columbia (2000-2004). He has a PhD from University of Bern (Switzerland), and MSc. from Asian Institute of Technology (Thailand).
Key Areas of Graduate Supervision
Tourism, wildlife conservation/local communities interface, mountain environments.
Recent Courses Taught
GEOG 233: Geography of Tourism
GEOG 323: Tourism Impacts
GEOG 423: Sustainable Tourism
Research Interests
Professor Nepal’s current research is focused on sustainable tourism, and wildlife-human conflicts in protected areas. His research is international in scope, based on fieldwork conducted in Nepal, Canada, Thailand, USA and Switzerland. He has supervised graduate student research in Nepal, Bhutan, Taiwan, Thailand, China, India, Jordan, the Bahamas, Trinidad and Tobago, Canada, and the USA. He is the author of four books, 132 scientific papers, and has given more than 100 conference papers and several keynote addresses. His research papers have been published in prestigious international journals including Ambio, Journal of Environmental Management, Environmental Conservation, Environmental Management, Annals of Tourism Research, and Tourism Management, among others. He has co-edited a widely acclaimed book on Political Ecology and Tourism (Routledge, 2016).
Recent Publications
- Nepal, R. & Nepal, S.K. (2019). Managing overtourism through economic taxation: Policy lessons from five countries. Tourism Geographies. DOI: 10.1080/14616688.2019.1669070.
- Verkoeyen, S. & Nepal, S.K. (2019). Threat and coping appraisal as mediators of adaptation intentions in place attached and activity involved scuba divers. Leisure Sciences. DOI: 10.1080/01490400.2019.162529
- Karst, H. & Nepal, S.K. (2019). Conservation, Development, and Stakeholder Relations in Bhutanese Protected Area Management. International Journal of Sustainable Development and World Ecology 26(4): 290-301.
- Mu, Y., S. K. Nepal & Lai, P. (2019). Tourism and sacred landscape in Sagarmatha (Mt. Everest) National Park, Nepal. Tourism Geographies 21(3): 442-459.
- Verkoeyen, S. & Nepal, S.K. (2019). Understanding scuba divers' response to coral bleaching: An application of Protection Motivation Theory. J. of Environmental Management 231: 869-877.
- Nepal, R., Irsyad, M.I. & Nepal, S.K. (2019). Tourist Arrivals, Energy Consumption and Pollutant Emissions in a Developing Economy-Implications for Sustainable Tourism. Tourism Management 72: 145-154.
- S.K. Nepal & Devkota, B. (2019). Post-disaster recovery, tourism and heritage conservation – Insights from the impacts of Nepal’s 2015 earthquake in Kathmandu Valley. In J. Saarinen & Gill, A (eds). Resilient Destinations: Governance Strategies of Tourism in the Transition towards Sustainability. London: Routledge, pp. 106-120.
- Nepal, S.K., Mu, Y. & Lai. P. (in press). The Beyul: Sherpa perspectives on landscapes characteristics and tourism development in Khumbu (Everest), Nepal. In Shinde, K.A. & Olsen, D.H. (eds) Religious Tourism and the Environment. CABI.