Banko Jankari-2017(5).1.1


Forests and Biodiversity Conservation in Federal Nepal 
Nepal is endowed with rich biological diversity. It shares 1.1 and 3.2 percent of 
total faunal and floral diversity of the world respectively, while occupying only 0.1 
percent of global area. Biodiversity and forest resources are integral component 
of rural livelihoods and economic prosperity of Nepal.  Nepal’s Constitution 2015 
has explicitly mentioned to maintain certain portion of the land of the country 
as forest land for environmental equilibrium. The essence of the Constitution 
has been later incorporated in Forest Policy (2015) emphasizing to maintain at 
least 40% of the total land as forest cover with equal importance to biodiversity. 
Undoubtedly, Nepal has been able to maintain  the given target to date. 

For the conservation of Forest and Biodiversity, Nepal has formulated various 
policy documents and action plans which are underway. However, these documents 
were made under the framework of unitary system. The new constitution of Nepal 
has led the country towards federal system from its long unitary system. The 
federal system has given opportunities to share power among different levels of 
government. Annexes from 5 to 9 in the constitution have clearly specified three 
tiers of government i.e., federal, provincial, and local to exercise their individual 
and shared rights over the different resources including forests and biodiversity 
within their political boundaries.

Political boundary and forests ecosystem services boundaries are not mutually 
inclusive. They are completely independent to each other. Ecosystem services and 
externalities from forests and biodiversity spreads beyond the political boundary. 
The management of such widely spread services and externalities is difficult to 
restrict within territorial decision-making approach after long experiences. Now, 
new paradigm shift of landscape level forests and biodiversity conservation has 
been in existence worldwide irrespective of political boundaries. Conservation 
forest resources and biodiversity beyond the political boundaries in the newly 
formed federal system in Nepal is quite challenging.

In the federal system, different aspirations of different governments either 
horizontally or vertically might bring conflicting interest among themselves 
for the conservation and management of forests and biodiversity. However, the 
model of Forest and biodiversity conservation has already been decentralized to 
settlement levels in Nepal but has very limited acceptance of political devolution 
on forest resource governance. The Community-based forest management 

Banko Janakari 
A Journal of Forestry Information for Nepal



Banko Janakari, Vol. 27, No. 1

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practices, community managed conservation areas, the community based-seed 
and genome conservation practices, and buffer zone resource conservation are 
exemplary participatory resource management practices developed within unitary 
system of government. Transforming the existing decentralized model to a more 
strongly devised political devolution model need an innovative planning and 
strategic intervention. 

Adoption of ecosystem approach in the federal system can be a strategic point 
of intervention to address gaps in forestry and biodiversity sector. The widely 
accepted ecosystem approach in conservation science and popular power 
devolution in political science need to be blended to secure optimum benefits 
for people and nature. The benefits sharing among governments should need  
trade off while maintaining well-established system of ecosystem structure and 
functions. Ecosystem structure and functions should not be detached by territory 
based political decision rather they have to be restrengthened in the process of 
federal restructuring of forestry sector. 

Federal restructuring of forestry sector should follow a different course rather 
than a general administrative, legal and basic infrastructure development model. It 
should begin with mapping forest and biodiversity, outlining services flow pattern, 
mapping economic potentiality of different level governments and devising a 
sound and resilient management structure. At the end, the model should appear as 
ecologically sound, economically viable and socio-politically acceptable. 

While devising this kind of model i.e., governance model, the forestry sector 
should neither be reluctant on constitutional rights of different tiers of governments 
nor it should forget the ecological integrity. Despite some challenges, we have no 
option to ignore any of these. Therefore, it is high time for the forestry sector to 
start designing a governance model with wider consultations. The model should 
be able to optimize forest and biodiversity services, benefits sharing and integrity 
of the ecosystem with well recognized and accountable institutions in all tiers of 
governments as envisioned by the constitution of Nepal.