Status and Trends in Forests and Forestry Development in Nepal: Major Success and Constraints

Author(s): Digambar Singh Dahal

Forestry is an extensive land use system in Nepal. Forest management has historically dealt primarily with the silviculture and biological management of forest. Forest is a renewable natural resource, which provides a wide range of environmental, socio-economic and cultural benefits and services. To obtain these benefits and services in perpetuity, an effective management strategy integrating both natural and social part of the forest dependent communities is one of the crucial prerequisites. The major issues lie on interaction between social and natural components and their adaptive mechanism. Management of forestland on a commercial scale has never been a successful story although it was started more than 40 years in Nepal. The first National Forest Inventory (NFI) was carried out with the sole intention of commercial harvesting of the forests so that financial returns could be made possible. Realizing that no significant efforts were made towards the introduction of silvicultural practices to improve the status and condition of forests, the Master Plan for the Forestry Sector, 1989 felt the need for scientific forest management in the Terai. On this basis, the new Forest Act 1993 and Forest Regulations 1995 were introduced and emphasized scientific forest management for government.

Policy, Forest management, Forest act, History, Community Forestry

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