A new five-year forestry conservation program has been launched in Nepal in an attempt to try to reduce the impact of climate change in the country.
Some 1.9 million people in Nepal are living in areas that are highly climate vulnerable and a further ten million are thought to be increasingly at risk. With this in mind, several international organizations, including WWF, the National Trust for Nature Conservation (NTNC) and Cooperative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere (CARE), have teamed up to launch the Hariyo Ban program.
The project – which means ‘green forests’ in Nepali – will invest in encouraging biodiversity and carbon sequestration by adding to the amount of forested regions in Nepal. It is expected to also help some of the poorest regions in the country by giving them a livelihood in forestry management
The project won the praise of Patricia Mahoney, of the US embassy in Nepal, who said, “This initiative promotes strategic efforts to build lasting resilience against climate impacts, reduce deforestation and land degradation, foster low-carbon growth, and promote sustainable societies, thus, meeting the adaptation and mitigation needs of developing countries like Nepal.”
Other reforestation schemes in countries like Brazil have been successful in helping to reduce the amount of illegal logging taking place. Schemes that encourage forestry investment from abroad, such as the plantations projects run by Greenwood Management, are useful in improving sustainable forestry practices in developing regions.
