The IMF’s April 2025 Regional Economic Outlook for Sub-Saharan Africa presents a clear warning: regional growth is slowing, debt pressures are mounting, and donor assistance is declining. Yet the report outlines critical opportunities particularly in domestic revenue mobilization, structural reform, and private sector activation that can shape a more resilient …
An increasing number of studies and reports are indicting the Gujarat government for letting off polluting industries lightly. A recently-released report by the Indian People's Tribunal ( ipt ) on Environment and Human Rights says that "of the approximately 90,000 industries in Gujarat, 8,000 are highly polluting chemical industries. Of …
europe is in the middle of a major environmental disaster - the worst since the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster in Ukraine. On January 30, about 100,000 cubic metres of slurry, consisting major concentrations of cyanide and other heavy metals, from a containment dam spilled into the Szamos river in Romania. …
ASAD R RAHMANI The article "Mutually Assured Destruction" is full of rhetoric, unsubstantiated statements and a plea to give our protected areas ( pa s) to people for 'management'. The author has quoted that 4.3 per cent of the country's geographical area is under pa s, implying that this area …
beware the fury of a long-suffering impoverished people, give them back the control of their natural resources so that they can rid themselves of their poverty and allow them to take control of their destinies, was the gist of the President of India's Republic Day speech. President K R Narayanan …
H B MATHUR While the last century belonged to liquid fuels, this century is going to witness a preference for gaseous fuels, which are renewable and also comparatively cleaner. With time there is bound to be a shift towards gaseous fuels such as natural gas and ultimately hydrogen, which is …
In 1993, the Nepal government decided to hand over certain forest areas to rural communities. Six years later, 8,559 such communities are managing 621,942 hectares of forest land in the country. They are bent on accomplishing what the government has not been able to do
For British historians and administrators, Indian villages were self-sustaining units and they termed these units as village republics. Later, this terminology was done away with by historians and sociologists. Although utopian, villages situated along the Arvari river in Alwar district, Rajasthan, have retained the basic essence of a "self-sustaining republic,'
Forest-Users' Group (FUG): It comprises households using or dependent on forest resources. They are identified by the district forest officer (DFO) after a house-to-house survey to check their dependence on the forest. Once the users' group is identified, it charts its own constitution (a five-year plan) for the management and …
Man Bahadur Chettri of Sarang Kot is aware of the gradual plunder of the forests and the evolution of cfm in his country. "For the rulers of Nepal, forests were an infinite source of revenue,' he says. The strategy varied from ruler to ruler. But there was only one agenda: …
"Notwithstanding anything contained elsewhere in this Act, no part of any national forest, which is suitable for being handed over to a users' group in the form of a community forest shall be given away in the form on a leasehold forest,' reads Nepal's Forest Act, 1993. It defines a …
The Samudaik Ban Upabhokta Mahasangh or the Federation of Community Forestry Users (FECOFUN) in Nepal is an association founded by and for community forest users. The federation has been established to increase awareness, expand and strengthen the role of forest users in Nepal. After the enforcement of the 1993 Forest …
On November 2, 1999, the department of forests ( dof ) and the Community Forestry Development Programme ( cfdp ), both under the ministry of forests and soil conservation, issued a circular to forest officials across the country to ask fug s to immediately stop commercialisation of timber. "However, all …
Perhaps the Nepalese forest department had never expected communities to regenerate the forests to the point that they would become cash-rich. But now that the communities have done the
Community forestry has been identified as the only viable forest management strategy in many developing countries. To this effect, both India and Nepal have launched programmes. But while in Nepal forests are on the road to recovery, severe limitations come in the way of managing forests successfully in India. Some …
INDIA: A colonial system of forest management left behind by the British NEPAL: Forest regulation and management is hardly 50 years old. INDIA: Ninety-five per cent of forests is owned and managed by state forest departments NEPAL: There is a clear demarcation between various types of forests INDIA: Forestry is …
What is the greatest benefit you have derived from community forest management? There is a centuries-old monastery near our village. It was robbed of its sanctity after the forest around it was denuded. Once the community regenerated the forest, the spiritual splendour that is associated with a religious place was …
Employment through ecological innovation: The guidelines of this programme involves sustainability, social justice, democracy, citizen rights and equal rights for women. In the centre is a package of measures to combat mass unemployment by creating new jobs through ecological innovation over the next four years. A policy of reduced working …
For 30 years, 60-year-old Gyan Bahadur Karki, along with his fellow villagers, has been protecting a 24-hectare (ha) patch of forest in the vicinity of his village Kahnu, near Pokhra. He has been sourcing his fodder and fuelwood needs from the forests since then. "But there is a big difference …
