What Determines Indigenous Chepang Farmers’ Swidden Land-Use Decisions in the Central Hill Districts of Nepal?

Sharif A Mukul,Anja Byg

doi:10.3390/su12135326

Abstract

Swidden or shifting cultivation is a widespread yet controversial land-use in the tropical forest–agriculture frontier. In recent years, the extent of land under swidden and the people who rely on it for subsistence and income have declined. We report swidden land-use changes in two central hill districts of Nepal by indigenous Chepang communities—a stronghold of swidden cultivation in mountainous Nepal. Despite a common trend of swidden decline, as in other parts of South and Southeast Asia, we found that swidden is important in the life and livelihoods of smallholder rural Chepang farmers in the area. Swidden cultivation was found to be more important to farmers with limited off-farm opportunities and in areas where alternative land-uses were scarce. We discuss biophysical, socio-economic, institutional, and other key drivers affecting farmers’ decision to shift away from or continue with swidden in the area. Using linear mixed effect models, we also examined households’ attributes that may expedite swidden decisions in the area. Our study recommends greater access to alternative land-use(s) and other income-generating options for the wellbeing of smallholder indigenous Chepang farmers, as well as the sustainability of this age-old land-use practice.

Highlights

Swidden, shifting cultivation or slash-and-burn is a traditional land-use common in forest–agriculture frontiers in tropical developing countries [1,2]
[2,21].Here, Here, we we report perseveres in Nepal, andand negatively impacts swiddening in inthe report swidden land-use and and drivers drivers of of swidden swidden change change in in two two central central hill hill districts districts of of Nepal
We considered the Akaike Information Criterion corrected for small sample sizes (AICc) for the selection of our top models, where the best models had the lowest AICc scores

Summary

Introduction

Swidden, shifting cultivation or slash-and-burn is a traditional land-use common in forest–agriculture frontiers in tropical developing countries [1,2]. Swidden involves the cultivation of forest patches after the clearing and burning of indigenous vegetation for a few years, before shifting to another place to favor the regrowth of the secondary vegetation [3,4,5]. Swidden has been part of the life and livelihood of millions of smallholder rural farmers in tropical forested regions [1,6]. Local and regional land-use and development policies have sought to minimize swidden agriculture and encourage a shift towards other forms of agriculture and land-use [15,16]

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Results

Conclusion