Land-Use Changes in Two Middle Hills Districts of Nepal

Between 1993 and 1996 the Nepal Australia Community Forestry Project carried out four comparative land-use stud- ies in Sindhu Palchok and Kabhre Palanchok districts of Nepal to evaluate the impacts of Australian development assistance over a continuous 19-year period fostering community forestry. The four studies made use of sets of air photographs taken in 1978 and 1992 to assess land-use changes. The samples covered almost 15 percent of the 400,000 ha land area of the two districts; they ranged between 600 and 4,000 m in altitude. Land-use change based on photo interpretation and ground truthing was supple- mented by Rapid Rural Appraisal and by information obtained from local villagers. Community forestry activities within certain areas at the lower altitudes are having a beneficial effect on the balance of land use as part of a broader process of agrarian change. Shrublands and grasslands are being converted to more productive categories of forest land, reflecting the care of communities in managing and conserving their own forest resources. The same cannot be said for the upper slopes where there is evidence that the forest cover is being denuded rapidly and that the shrubland and grassland areas are expanding at the expense of forest cover. Many current land-use practices need to be abandoned or modified. Use of land for agricultural purposes appears to be stable. Recent evidence suggests that reliance on subsistence farming is de- clining as opportunities increase for off-farm income, but whether this has allowed population pressure on land resources to be contained is debatable. While it appears that community forestry has reduced the pressure on land at the lower altitudes of Sindhu Palchok and Kabhre Palanchok, sustained population pressures, combined with a lack of coherent and coordinated land manage- ment policies and practices, have resulted in a rapid decline in forest resources on the upper slopes together with loss of catch- ment stability.