Giving local communities in Nepal the opportunity to manage their forests has simultaneously reduced deforestation and poverty in the region, new research has shown.
In the largest study of its kind, an international team of experts led by The University of Manchester has found that community-forest management led to a 37% relative reduction in deforestation and a 4.3% relative reduction in poverty.
This is particularly significant in a low income country, where more than a third of the country’s forests are managed by a quarter of the country’s population.
The findings, published in Nature Sustainability, is the largest study on community-based forest management. It estimates the impacts of more than 18,000 community forest initiatives across Nepal, where community-forest management has actively been promoted for several decades.
Read more at University of Manchester
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