Giving local communities in Nepal the opportunity to manage their forests has simultaneously reduced deforestation and poverty in the region, new research has shown.
In the largest study of its kind, an international team of experts led by The University of Manchester has found that community-forest management led to a 37% relative reduction in deforestation and a 4.3% relative reduction in poverty.
This is particularly significant in a low income country, where more than a third of the country’s forests are managed by a quarter of the country’s population.
The findings, published in Nature Sustainability, is the largest study on community-based forest management. It estimates the impacts of more than 18,000 community forest initiatives across Nepal, where community-forest management has actively been promoted for several decades.
Forests are critical to sustainable development: they regulate the world’s climate, sequester carbon from the atmosphere, harbour biodiversity, and contribute to the local livelihoods of millions of people worldwide.
Over the past four decades, governments and international organizations have actively promoted community-based forest initiatives as a way to merge natural resource conservation with human development. Local communities now legally manage approximately 13% of the world’s forests.
But evidence of the impact of community-based forest management has been largely limited to small-scale evaluations, or narrowly focused studies until now.
Lead author Dr Johan Oldekop, The University of Manchester said, “Our study demonstrates that community forest management has achieved a clear win-win for people and the environment across an entire country. Nepal proves that with secure rights to land, local communities can conserve resources and prevent environmental degradation.”
Reductions in deforestation did not occur at a cost to local wellbeing. The study found that areas with community forest management were 51% more likely to witness simultaneous reductions in deforestation and poverty.
Co-author Professor Mark Whittingham, Newcastle University said, “It’s not easy to balance sustainable management of the environment against the needs, or wants, of mankind. These findings highlight one positive solution.”
The research, authored by an interdisciplinary team of ecologists, economists and political scientists, overcomes previous data limitations by using rigorous techniques to analyse publically available data on forests, people, and institutions. The team combined satellite image-based estimates of deforestation with data from Nepal’s national census of 1.36 million households, and information on more than 18,000 community forests.
Co-author author Professor Arun Agrawal, The University of Michigan said, “Identifying a mechanism – community forestry – that can credibly reduce carbon emissions at the same time as improving wellbeing of the poor is an important step forward in global efforts to combat climate change and protect the vulnerable.”
Mexico, Madagascar, and Tanzania have similar community-forest management programmes, with Indonesia and others developing them.
Co-author Katharine Sims, Amherst College, said, “We sought to learn from Nepal’s experience implementing an innovative conservation policy. We hope our methods will be useful for future study of community forestry in different contexts and compared to alternate governance structures.”
If other areas are able to replicate Nepal’s success, community-forest management could play an even greater role in achieving multiple Sustainable Development Goals.
###
For media enquiries contact Chris Jordan on +44 (0)7989 381153 or christopher.jordan@manchester.ac.uk
Note to editors:
- The 37% reduction in deforestation and 4.3% reduction poverty are relative to changes in comparative individual administrative areas not under community management. At the level of individual administrative areas this equates to 1.7 hectares of deforestation and 14 households lifted out of poverty.
- A series of images and a video highlighting the key findings are available at: https:/
/ www. dropbox. com/ sh/ ha5zgd23lzvtpeg/ AAAOYiaLMS9YD1a6MKy2Xnt1a?dl= 0 Photos should be credited to Johan Oldekop.
About The University of Manchester
The University of Manchester, a member of the prestigious Russell Group, is one of the UK’s largest single-site universities with more than 40,000 students – including more than 10,000 from overseas. It is consistently ranked among the world’s elite for graduate employability.
The University is also one of the country’s major research institutions, rated fifth in the UK in terms of ‘research power’ (REF 2014). World-class research is carried out across a diverse range of fields including cancer, advanced materials, global inequalities, energy and industrial biotechnology.
No fewer than 25 Nobel laureates have either worked or studied here.
It is the only UK university to have social responsibility among its core strategic objectives, with staff and students alike dedicated to making a positive difference in communities around the world.
Manchester is ranked 29th in the world in the QS World University Rankings 2018 and 6th in the UK.
Visit //www.
Facts and figures: //www.
Research Beacons: //www.
News and media contacts: //www.
Global inequalities
Global inequalities is one of The University of Manchester’s research beacons – examples of pioneering discoveries, interdisciplinary collaboration and cross-sector partnerships that are tackling some of the biggest questions facing the planet. #ResearchBeacons
[Addressing global inequalities video]
Disclaimer: AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert system.
