Abstract
Global initiatives to promote large-scale forest landscape restoration (FLR) require adaptive approaches consistent with locally relevant models of land use, management, ownership and economic incentives. The Phewa Lake watershed was subject to severe degradation leading to high siltation of the lake. Forests were restored to this hilly and mountainous landscape as a result of four-decades of conservation and communitybased forestry (CBF) efforts. This study assessed the process and key motivating factors for community-based forest landscape restoration. The main finding is that community participation, promoted by Nepal's policy of decentralised forest management, was a key motivating factor for the success of forest landscape restoration and increased local ownership of restoration efforts. Promotion of natural forest regeneration through CBF was an effective landscape conservation method compared to the government-led investments in structural engineering. The CBF approach can make a significant contribution to forest restoration and achieving national and international restoration targets.
Highlights
Deforestation is one of the causes of global environmental change and the degradation of ecosystem services of value to humanity (MEA 2005)
The participation and control of local communities in the management of forests and the watershed increased. These stages of restoration were consistent with the general development of forest management and watershed conservation in Nepal with a focus on technocratic solutions towards people-based approaches
Restoration interventions were mostly focused on installing retaining walls, check dams and gabion walls to prevent landslides and reclaim land destroyed by floods
Summary
Deforestation is one of the causes of global environmental change and the degradation of ecosystem services of value to humanity (MEA 2005). The global rate of net forest loss is 3.39 million ha per year (Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations 2015, Keenan et al 2015), with much of this occurring in developing countries. For this reason, forest conservation is a critical environmental priority across the developing world (Leblois et al 2017, Sears et al 2017). Reversing the rate of deforestation and degradation through forest restoration is key to increasing the capacity of landscapes to provide ecosystem goods and services in support of those goals
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