Digambar Singh Dahal

Ecosystem-based Adaptation (EbA) interventions, while primarily aimed at enhancing resilience to climate impacts, can also produce measurable climate mitigation benefits. This study evaluates the carbon sequestration and emission reduction potential of EbA interventions implemented in degraded forests and rangelands of Nepal to quantify their climate mitigation outcomes. Carbon sequestration was estimated using secondary data from national sources and literature for two types of interventions: reforestation of 1,393 hectares and Sustainable Forest Management (SFM) over 10,000 hectares. Standardized carbon stock increments from similar ecological zones were applied over 20 years. Reforested areas sequestered an average of 83.4 tons of CO2 per hectare per year, while sustainably managed forests contributed 4.4 tons of CO2 per hectare per year. Over 20 years, these measures are projected to sequester approximately 1,134 t CO2/ha from plantations and 533 t CO2/ha from SFM. EbA interventions in Nepal not only build adaptive capacity but also provide significant climate mitigation benefits. The observed carbon gains highlight the importance of incorporating ecosystem restoration into national climate policies, especially in forest and rangeland landscapes where adaptation and mitigation collaborations can be achieved.

Community forestry is a strategy in which communities are, to some degree, responsible for managing the forests, using a more participatory approach to replace the traditional top-down model. Various forms of policies and governance have been developed to balance goals to ensure the community’s socioeconomic resilience and the landscape’s biological sustainability. The reinvestment of community forest (CF) income back into forest regeneration is not well documented, and there is a lack of research comparing forest income to the costs associated with forest regeneration. This research examines how changes in timber income and forest-regeneration costs affected CF social and ecological viability. We conducted expert elicitation interviews for CFs (n = 33) under three zones of management in Chitwan, Nepal (Zone 1: buffer zone, Zone 2: forest corridor, and Zone 3: community forest). To examine how CFs differ financially, we asked questions regarding timber income and forest-regeneration expenditures and then posed 22 questions regarding socioeconomic and biological aspects of the CF. Finally, a Kruskal–Wallis rank-sum test was performed to determine whether there were statistically significant differences in perceptions between groups, including zone, timber income (high, medium, low), and forest-regeneration expenditures (high, medium, low). The amount of income from timber had a substantial impact on the communities’ biological benefits and financial stability. Lower timber-income areas were thought to be less economically stable, lack the resources to enforce rules and regulations necessary to meet the CF’s socioeconomic or biological goals, and place more significant restrictions on the amount of wood members can harvest from the forest. Communities that spent less money on forest regeneration reported poorer levels of forest regeneration, economic sustainability, and community rights. Our research shows that community-forest user groups in the Chitwan district have a significant income and expenditure gap between their forests’ biological and socioeconomic advantages and resilience.