Ecological and economical sustainability assessment of community forest management in Nepal: A reality check

ABSTRACT

This study analyzes the sustainability of community forest management, representing four forest types of two physiographic region Hills and Terai of Nepal. We assess the sustainability based on species composition, stand density, growing stock volume, and growth-to-removal ratio using inventory data of 109 permanent forest plots from four consecutive intervals of three to five years. In addition, forest users, forest committee members, and forest officials were consulted. We observed increment on the representation of economically valuable tree species in all forest types of both regions. The pole-size tree dominates in all forest types with declining number of trees and regeneration. In case of Hills forests, they were over-harvested until 2013 but were under-harvested in the recent period. In contrary, forests were under-harvested in the Terai. We found that ecological objectives of sustainable management are fully achieved while economic benefits remained unharnessed where harvesting is far below the growth. We conclude that maintaining a large number of trees may contribute to ecological but not on economical sustainability. We argue to rationalize annual harvest in all categories of the forest to enhance resource conditions together with regular benefits to the local communities.

KEYWORDS:

• Community forests
• diversity
• growing stock
• forest management
• sustainability
• Nepal

Acknowledgments

We are thankful for the APPEAR—Austrian Partnership Programme in Higher Education and Research for Development funded under ‘Austrian Agency for International Cooperation in Education and Research (OeAD-GmbH).’ We are thankful to Institute of Forestry, Pokhara, Nepal for providing time series data of 2005, 2010 and 2013. We are also grateful to the forest officials and community forest user groups member of Kankali community forests and Tebrikot community forests for genuinely sharing information without which this research would not be possible. We extend our thanks to enumerators and field research facilitator who supported for information collection.

Notes

¹ Enabling Conditions for Sustainable Forest Management, 2. Forest Resource Security, 3. Forest Ecosystem, Health and Condition, 4. Flow of forest produce, 5. Biological Diversity 6. Soil and Water, 7. Economic, Social and Cultural Aspects (Source: ITTO, 2005).