Community based forest management in the Himalayas III

project summary

This project uses and expands unique time-series data to study household-level climate change adaptation strategies in Nepal. The project is jointly developed and implemented by the Institute of Forestry, the Department of Forest Research and Survey, Ministry of Forests and Soil Conservation, Nepal and the Global Development Unit at the Department of Food and Ressource Economics, Copenhagen University.

The project aims to contribute towards improved livelihoods through sustainable and equitable management of forest resources in Nepal, and follows a two-pronged approach:  (i) providing improved understanding of dynamic livelihood-forest interactions in response to climate change through integrated studies in three physiographic zones of Nepal, and (ii) developing increased capacity for undertaking high quality climate related research on forest and natural resources management at key forestry research institutions in Nepal.

A long-term study is implemented to reach the research objectives; it takes place in 3 sites since phase I, a 4th site was added in 2008 (phase II)

Research methodologies include livelihood analysis, institutional analysis and social-ecological modelling. Data collection methods include social household surveys, forest surveys, semi-structured interviews and dendrochronological measurements.

Capacity building is mainly based on joint research development, implementation and dissemination. Additional capacity building activities include topical trainings (e.g. methods for dendrochronological analysis) and trainings in general academic skills (scientific paper writing), competitive allocation of small grants to Strategic and Small-scale Nepalese faculty research and PhD scholarships.

This third phase of the project benefits greatly from capacity building activities undertaken in previous phases - institutional procedures for research at the Institute of Forestry have been streamlined and support implementation of high-quality competitive research.

Target: 10 Nepalese PhD students, 20 international papers (10 by PhD students), 3 regional papers, 10 national papers, establishment of unique time-series socio-economic and biophysical databases documenting changes in livelihoods and forest resources in case areas practicing community based forest management.