Nepal

Location of CIPEC research sites in Nepal and India

Nepal has taken a lead in initiating innovative policies of community forestry in recent years (Agrawal and Ostrom 2001). An intense debate has focused on the extent and causes of forest loss, and the implementation and effectiveness of these alternative approaches of co-management and community management. Thus the relatively small mountainous country of Nepal provides a very interesting case study to evaluate the extent to which approaches towards decentralization have actually been implemented on ground, and to assess their effectiveness. Our initial analysis, in two regions in the plains and middle hills of Nepal, indicates that there has been much deforestation in the past 30 years. However, community-based initiatives have been successful in promoting significant reforestation over the past decade. The landscapes of the sub-Himalayas are thus a shifting mosaic of forest boundaries, and need careful interpretation.

CIPEC research in Nepal is located in two biophysical regimes: the Terai plains and the middle hills. Community forestry is considered to have had a greater degree of success in the Nepal middle hills, as compared to the Terai. As a result, the Nepalese Government is seeking to re-establish control over community forests in the Terai. The Terai communities vigorously contest these claims. Our research on land use/cover change in the Terai and hills can help provide empirical evaluation of this issue.

Terai

The Nepal Terai region refers to the southern lowlands of Nepal, which form part of the Gangetic plain, and also the river valleys located between the Shivalik and Mahabharat ranges (generally referred to as the Inner Terai). The CIPEC Inner Terai site is located in the eastern half of the Chitwan district. While the once malarial-infested area was thinly populated prior to the 1960s, extensive migration from the middle hills has taken place since then, giving rise to significant recent deforestation in recent years. The challenge for the Terai is to support the creation of new institutions of community forest management. Larger forest sizes, increased user group heterogeneity and proximity to the timber market across the border in India, create additional obstacles in the way of community management in this region.

Harvesting fuelwood from a community forest, with a few large standing trees but a highly disturbed understorey.

The protected areas in the Terai have remained relatively immune to the current wave of deforestation sweeping the region: most notably the area enclosed within the Royal Chitwan National Park (RCNP), covering an area of 932 km2. While park boundaries are guarded by the Royal Nepal Army, park-people conflicts are frequent. In order to mitigate this, large sections of the forest in the vicinity of the Park have been converted to Buffer Zone Community Forests. Empirical evaluations using primary data are needed to investigate the conditions under which community forestry and buffer zone forest management practices are functioning in the Terai. CIPEC research in the Chitwan combines multiple approaches including remote sensing and GIS analysis to look at forest cover change, forest mensuration to assess biodiversity, user group interviews to evaluate institutional organization and household interviews to assess equity and participation: thus providing a comprehensive overview of this complex issue.

Local communities have claimed that they have been given poorer forests, and that this is one of the reasons for the degradation observed in some community forests. CIPEC research supports this, indicating that forests recently handed over to the local communities to be managed as community forests, were significantly poorer in species richness and Shannon species diversity, and had significantly lower tree densities per plot, when compared to forests that were retained by the Forest Department as national forests (Nagendra, 2002). This is an important finding, which needs to be factored into future evaluations of their performance. These results clearly delineate the importance of benchmark assessments in effectively evaluating the "success" or "failure" of community forestry.

The agro-forestry landscape of Kabrepalanchowk.

Our research utilizing Landsat satellite images of 1976, 1989 and 2000 has indicated that several forest patches just adjoining the Park, that fall within the purview of the buffer zone community forestry program, show a substantial increase in forest cover (Nagendra and Schweik, in press; Schweik et al, in press). However, in-depth interviews with user groups indicated that local users have limited decision making power, and that the success of the program is in large part due to the massive input of financial and technical support by international agencies. This raises concerns about the long term sustainability of the program, once external aid is phased out (as will happen in a couple of years).

Related publications:
Agrawal, A, and Ostrom E., 2001. Collective Action, Property Rights and Decentralization in Resource Use in India and Nepal. Politics and Society 29(4), 485-514.

Nagendra, H (2002). Tenure and forest conditions: Community forestry in the Nepal Terai. Environmental Conservation, 29(4), 530-539.

Nagendra, H. and C.M. Schweik. Forests and management: A case study in Nepal using Remote Sensing and GIS. Forthcoming in 100 Geographic Solutions to Saving Planet Earth: Association of American Geographers Centennial Volume, eds. B. Warf, K. Hansen, and D. Janelle. Kluwer Academic Publishers.

Schweik, CM., H. Nagendra and D.R. Sinha (in press). Using satellites to search for forest management innovations in Nepal. Forthcoming in Ambio.

Middle Hills:

Our second site is located in the Kavrepalanchowk district, in the middle hills. Located close to the country capital, Kathmandu, this landscape has undergone extensive land cover modification and change due to urbanization and agricultural extension in the past twenty years. This provides an effective contrast to our Terai analysis in the Chitwan. While there is a far longer history of settlement compared to the Chitwan, the area has experienced particularly dramatic deforestation over the past twenty years, mainly due to urbanization and agricultural expansion.

Park people conflicts: Herding water buffalo at the border of the Royal Chitwan National Park.

Differences in land use and land cover change are being related to the social, institutional and biophysical differences in these areas. The topography in the hills is much more rugged, and presents far greater challenges to human movement, forest protection and agriculture in the landscape as compared to the Terai. Land holdings tend to be smaller, with relatively homogeneous, small groups of forest users living close to the forest: thus creating an atmosphere that appears to be more favorable for community conservation. However, CIPEC affiliated research has indicated that heterogeneity cannot be automatically assumed to cause problems for successful collective action and organization (Varughese and Ostrom 2001).

Our field research indicates that the landscape in the middle hills is far more fragmented than in the Terai. This appears related to the topographic complexity of the middle hills landscape, upon which patterns of land settlement have been placed. Coupled with the far greater variation in elevation and steep slopes, this fragmented landscape presents a formidable challenge for satellite image classification. We also find that community forestry initiatives have been implemented far more aggressively in Kabrepalanchowk than in Chitwan. This district was the location for implementation of the first community forestry initiatives. In recent years, there has been an aggressive "top-down" Government initiated expansion of this program, with worrisome implications for the strength and long term sustainability of these rapidly "created" community forest communities.

Related publications
Varughese, G. and Ostrom, E., 2001. The contested role of heterogeneity in collective action: Some evidence from community forestry in Nepal. World Development 29, 747-765.

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Last Updated: May 11, 2005
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