May the Forest Be With You: Mapping Nepal's Landscapes and Livelihoods

World Bank

May the Forest Be With You: Mapping Nepal's Landscapes and Livelihoods

Autores

World Bank

Editor

Washington, DC: World Bank

Descripción

In contrast to global trends, Nepal has achieved impressive success by boosting its forest cover from 29 to more than 46 percent of the country’s area over the last three decades, serving as an example of what is possible when communities are positioned as equal partners in the management of natural resources. As outlined it its 15th and 16th Development Plans, Nepal aims to build on these successes in the forest sector by transitioning from a conservation-focused model to a sustainable forest management model that will deliver jobs, secure livelihoods, and increase value addition for Nepal. Forests have been among the highest development priorities for Nepal. The Government of Nepal has recently identified landscape management to optimize benefits from the water-agriculture-forest (WAF) nexus as one of the top ten priority transitions for Nepal’s GRID path. The World Bank supports this transition through, among others, a strategic forest landscape program which encompasses a set of investment projects, policy and carbon financing, and advisory services, that build on Nepal’s major development successes to scale up impact, in line with the World Bank Group’s Nepal Country Partnership Framework (FY19-23 and FY25-31). This analytical support to the Government is carried out as part of the World Bank’s programmatic engagement on forest landscapes in Nepal. In response to a request from the Ministry of Forests and Environment (MOFE), the analytics aim to support investment decision making, resource planning, forest management practice, and policy implementation, by filling critical forest data and analytical gaps on the biophysical conditions and economic contributions of forests at national and subnational levels.