Nepal: Private trees for jobs and growth
Nepal is a global leader in forest conservation, having increased its forest cover from 26% to over 46% in the past three decades. This success in large part is due to community-based forestry management practiced since the early 1990s.
National forests were handed over to community forestry user groups who helped restore degraded forests creating exclosures to allow biomass to regenerate and then allowed regulated access to member households for extracting non-timber forest products such as firewood, fodder, and leaf litter.
Community forestry management has also been shown to reduce poverty in Nepal.
To sustain these gains, promoting tree plantations in privately-owned lands can help complement Nepal’s community forestry successes and further enhance livelihoods and economic opportunities for Nepalis.
The case for private trees
Gita Regmi from Palpa harvests firewood, fodder, leaf litter and fruits from her household’s small private farm. The mix of harvests has helped her earn extra income and improve her household’s well-being.
Gita’s household is not alone. According to May the Forest Be with You, a recent report by the World Bank that maps Nepal’s forest landscape and livelihoods, 48 percent of Nepali households own private trees which they use towards their energy and livelihood needs. Experts agree that private tree ownership has increased over the last 20 years.
Private trees not only improve the livelihoods of households by providing productive inputs such as firewood and fodder; they also help lower pressure on community forests in Nepal.
Private trees not only improve the livelihoods of households by providing productive inputs such as firewood and fodder; they also help lower pressure on community forests in Nepal.
In contrast to global trends, Nepal has seen a reduction in land under crop cultivation and a simultaneous increase in forest cover over the past two decades. This shift is largely driven by rising outmigration, which has resulted in a shortage of labor for planting staple crops like rice and wheat. As a result, many agricultural lands have been left fallow or barren. With nearly 77 percent of households now receiving remittances, families are increasingly purchasing food rather than growing it themselves.
These underutilized lands present a unique opportunity for private tree plantations, which require less labor than staple crops. By focusing on high-value tree species, private trees could not only sustain Nepal’s gains in forest conservation but also provide significant new income streams and employment opportunities for rural households.
The report also states that nationally, 38 percent of households continue to depend on public forests—mostly community forests—for non-timber forest products such as firewood for cooking, fodder for livestock and leaf litter to improve fertility of farmlands. The greatest share of users of community forests belong to the poorest households. In contrast, private tree ownership is uniformly distributed across richer and poorer households.
What can be done to boost private trees?
Increasing the productivity of private tree planting can enhance rural livelihoods and resilience in Nepal. But this will require investment in extension services in both agriculture and forestry sectors.
Investments in forest extension services: Community forests have been successful at enhancing livelihoods for poor households by easing access to vital productive inputs such as firewood, fodder, food items and leaf litter. With strategic planning and foresight, it may be possible, over time, to transition community forests that contain commercially important timber species to increase productivity of such trees and earn greater revenues. However, this transition will need significant environmental and social safeguards. On the social side, safeguards need to ensure that the poorest members of community forestry user groups do not lose access to productive inputs, and that they benefit from greater revenues. On the environmental side, safeguards that reduce the risk of rapid deforestation in the pursuit of larger cash revenues need to be intentionally designed and enforced. Such a transition will require investing in public forest extension services that can transparently partner with community forestry user groups to increase cash revenues while minimizing the risks.
Investments in agroforestry extension: Since land holdings in Nepal are small, households’ benefits from diversified non-monoculture practices are likely to be higher than from monoculture. Strengthening design and delivery of agroforestry systems that can cater to the economic needs of smallholders would significantly enhance rural livelihoods. Extension programs will need to identify ecologically appropriate and economically profitable mixes of crops and trees. They will need to improve the supply of technical information and training on practices such as regenerative agriculture. They will also need to improve the local availability of quality inputs such as seeds and saplings. Extension investments that enhance technical and economic capacity of agencies and rural populations are important building blocks for boosting private trees, advancing Nepal’s development priorities, and creating forest-based opportunities for Nepalis.
Gita confirmed the importance of training when we met her, and we suspect that she is not alone. “We would benefit greatly from receiving technical training on how to manage our land better to increase yield of firewood, fodder and fruits, along with crop yields,” she told us “This will improve my household’s income and reduce the amount of time we have to spend in securing forest products which are very important for our livelihoods.”
“We would benefit greatly from receiving technical training on how to manage our land better to increase yield of firewood, fodder and fruits, along with crop yields. This will improve my household’s income and reduce the amount of time we have to spend in securing forest products which are very important for our livelihoods.” - Gita Regmi, Palpa, Nepal
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