Nepal has been classified by the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) as the highest risk zone in Asia in terms of the ecological crisis. The root cause of all environmental problems is poverty compounded by an ever-growing population. The direct impact of the country’s socio-economic realities on the natural and cultural diversity is magnified by widespread illiteracy, inaccessibility to basic services and financial constraints. The country is predominantly agricultural. Roughly half of the nation’s population lives in rugged mountain terrain. More than 80% of Nepal’s over 23 million people are subsistence farmers. The population is growing at an extremely fast rate of 2.08% per annum, which has serious repercussions on the nation’s economy and ecology. About 40% of farmers live below the poverty line. They depend on marginal lands for agriculture and fast depleting forests for fuel, fodder and timber.

“Green forest is the wealth of Nepal” used to be a popular saying prior to the 1960s. But with the increasing population, which has more than doubled in the last 40 years, and consequent exploitation of the forest resources for livelihood and existence, the forest resources are depleting at an alarming rate.

The situation has been further aggravated by commercial logging, shifting cultivation, uncontrolled grazing and encroachment of forest lands. Consequently, over 50,000 ha. of forest land are lost annually. All this has resulted in increased soil erosion, sedimentation, floods and landslides. It is estimated that annually 240 million tons of topsoil are washed down from the hills of Nepal into the Bay of Bengal. Similarly, the inadequate ecological consideration in development activities and the uncontrolled influx of visitors in ecologically fragile regions have further intensified environmental degradation.