Migration, youth workshops and forestry: Case studies from Nepal

Abstract

Migration of people from rural areas to cities and foreign countries is drastically increasing in Nepal. This changing dynamics is impacting forests by limiting the number of people that take part in enterprises such as non-timber forest products and eco-tourism among others. With mostly young members migrating, there is already a vacuum in the number of entrepreneurs who strive for such enterprises. The need to stop this migration trend is very urgent. I adopted case study approach to show two examples of how community has been successful to retain its youth population. I conducted ‘youth workshops’ in community forests of Dolakha and Chitwan to understand why youths in the selected communities of these two districts did not opt for migration. I show that if given a platform (like youth workshops) to express their plans with knowledgeable persons (like forest rangers, forest experts), people can actually change their decision not to migrate from their locality and strive to get involved locally. I also show that these youth workshops could be a potential venue to communicate new forest management and income generating ideas. While there are literatures linking migrations with various features of forestry, there is a lack of understanding of ways to retain and engage the migrating people in local forest-based enterprise and other forest management activities. COVID 19 pandemic has impacted the forestry sector tremendously. With increasing influx of people in the village as an escape from the pandemic, youths have shown increased interaction with natural environment surrounding their village including forests. Tools such as youth workshop could be vital in addressing some of the eminent potentials and challenges faced by the forestry sector.