Rajendra Kc

The rapid pace of global development, characterized by population growth, resource consumption, and technological advances, has led to significant environmental threats. These issues are not confined to individual nations; their regional and global impacts have become increasingly evident over the past several decades, as seen in biodiversity loss, environmental pollution, global warming and ozone depletion, which undermine the regenerative capacity of ecosystems and threaten environmental quality. Over the past fifty years, Nepal has signed more than 20 Multilateral Environment Agreements (MEAs). The country first ratified the Treaty Banning Nuclear Weapon Tests in the Atmosphere, in Outer Space, and Under Water in 1964, becoming a party to it. Since then, Nepal has continued to sign, ratify, or accede to various international environmental agreements, including: (i) Plant Protection Agreement for the South East Asia and Pacific Region (

It is likely that changing monsoon patterns and changes in other climatic parameters will have an impact on forests. Tree growth and biomass may respond differently across the different forest recovery contexts after the disturbance regimes. It is essential to understand the response of different tree species in order to comprehend their ability to adapt to climate change. An enhanced understanding of how tree species dynamics change with a substantial shift in climate attributes is crucial to develop adaptive forest management strategies. Advances in the statistical application of tree ring data results in more reliable dating with the high accuracy and precision of any of the paleo-records and robust and long-term reconstructions of key indices such as temperature and precipitation. In this study, we analyzed how different species inhabiting together respond to changes in climatic variables using dendroclimatic analysis. We assessed the growth performance of Abies pindrow, Pinus wallichiana, and Tsuga dumosa in the temperate region of Nepal. The climate sensitivity of the species was analyzed using bootstrap correlation analysis and the climate-growth relationship over time was assessed using the moving correlation function. Tree ring growth of Abies pindrow is stimulated by higher June temperatures and higher March precipitation. This positive relationship is consistent and stationary over time. However, in the other two species, both response function and moving correlation analysis showed that the relationship between climate and growth is inconsistent and changes over time.

The Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) principles and criteria have been implemented in over 80 community forests in Nepal over the last decade. However, the total size of community forests certified under the FSC certification is relatively small (0.1% of the total area of the country), which limits the overall benefits they can provide to the surrounding communities. The national government has instituted the Collaborative Forest Management (CFM) initiative to maintain forest connectivity and give local communities jurisdiction over the nearby forests that they and their ancestor have lived with and managed for many generations. The CFM policies strive to ensure the restoration of large and continuous patches of forest, equitable benefit sharing of forest products and good governance, yet these policies do not certify the forests as sustainably managed, and thus cannot provide increased prices on the international market for products from these forests. Two collaborative forests were assessed in the Tarai region of Nepal to understand how well these community managed forests already follow the FSC principles and where changes must be made for these forests to be certified in the future. Field observations were undertaken, focus group discussions held, and semi-structured interviews carried out in order to understand current management practices in these two collaborative managed forests. Findings showed that the CFM helped improve biodiversity and benefit sharing from the forest amongst the wide range of communities. Collaboratively managed forests and FSC principles were shown to have complementary objectives: to sustain forests, strengthen forest governance and conserve indigenous species and knowledge, and it is argued that these plans can be synchronized for the benefit of both forests and people.

Climate change can adversely affect the growth of European beech (Fagus sylvatica L.) across its entire distribution range. Therefore, knowledge of the adaptive potential of this species to changing climatic conditions is of foremost importance. Genetic diversity is the basis for adaptation to environmental stress, and the regeneration phase of forests is a key stage affecting genetic diversity. Nevertheless, little is known about the effect of climate change on the genetic diversity of adult trees compared to their progeny. Here, we present genetic diversity data for 24 beech populations ranging from northeast Germany to southwest Switzerland. Potentially adaptive genetic variation was studied using single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) markers in candidate genes that are possibly involved in adaptive trait variation. In addition, more than 2000 adult trees and 3000 of their seedlings were genotyped with simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers to determine selectively neutral genetic diversity and differentiation among populations. All populations showed high SSR and SNP variation, and no differences in genetic diversity were found between adult trees and their offspring. The genetic differentiation between adults and seedlings within the same stands was also insignificant or very low. Therefore, we can conclude tentatively that the transfer of genetic variation among tree generations, currently, is not much affected by climate change, at least in the studied beech populations.