Private Management
For Forest Development

By Khilendra Basnyat

POPULATION growth and limited agricultural land has increased the pressure to convert forest into agricultural settlements in Nepal.

In the Middle Mountains, forests were earlier converted to grazing land and then to the farmland. However in the Tarai, government resettlement schemes and migrants from the Middle Mountains converted land directly from forest to farmland.

Actually, most cultivable and in the Middle Mountains had been converted to farmland by 1960. More increases in farmland during the past few decades have taken place on marginal Middle Mountain land.

Further increase in farmland is possible from the conversion of the remaining Tarai forest to agriculture. If the present trend persists, it is likely that all the Tarai forest will be converted to farmland in order to feed the runaway population.

The increase in the number of livestock causes overgrazing which results in the continuing degradation of forests. In fact, grazing animals degrade the forests by eating seeds and small tree seedlings.

Fodder consumption does not directly reduce the forest area. However, the destruction of the shrubs and grass layer may be the chief cause of forest degradation which leads to increased erosion due to depleted ground cover and compacted soil.

People often harvest the fodder from the trees over a long period of time in order to prevent regeneration.

In areas close to government offices/agencies, communities have been less autonomous and have to share a great proportion of their forest resources with the country. Less isolated communities have had great interaction with the Forest Department and its programmes. However, remote villages have been left to manage their forest resources with little interaction from the forest office, regardless of the government’s plans and programmes.

Heavy reliance on forests for domestic energy use is one of the main factors leading to deforestation. Firewood is the chief energy source and is likely to remain so far a long time to come.

In fact, the planting of trees has the potential to benefit the small and marginal farmers if it brings about economic benefits from the sale of products to the markets or from the growth of forest-based industries linked with tree development on small farms. However, in Nepal with a significant number of landless persons, policies must be formulated top provide land to the landless groups. These policies are in need of strong institutional support.

In recent years, Nepalese women encounter an increasing workload as deforestation expands. The extra time spent in collecting firewood and other forest products takes time away from agriculture. This tends to reduce their overall labour input in agriculture, thereby decreasing further the already low agriculture productivity. This adversely affects food consumption and eventually the nutritional status of population.

Supplying rural wood through commercial operations is not always viable nor is the continuation of wood gathering in the forests sustainable or even environmentally acceptable.

The best way to increase the supply of wood is by mobilising rural labour and land for the planning of trees and for the better management of non-forestry trees.

The Middle Mountain regions of Nepal have a lot of relatively sparse forests, whereas the Tarai has a little dense forests mostly in the western part of the country. In the Tarai, private and leased forestry may offer the best solution to the energy problems.

In some parts of the Tarai, it may be possible to do large commercial plantations. However, secure individual tenure over forestland in areas where the forest has been an open access resource will deprive the poor of their use of the forest.

Actually, private management of forest resources can play an important role in forest resource development. It includes managing trees not only on private land but also on governmental land through leasehold or contractual arrangements.

In lease forestry, there is a community agreement in assigning government lands to poor people organised and functioning lease-hold groups that are responsible for developing and protecting these lands. These groups, have both the benefits and burdens, and the government should be aware of skill development and awareness raising schemes of rural people.

Leasehold forest rules place limits on forest areas, varying from two and half hectares for individuals in the Kathmandu Valley to sixty-eight hectares for institutions in the Tarai. These rules represent a step in private ownership of forest land.

In reality, recent regulations limit forest holdings to small plots of trees and effectively prohibit private forest management on a commercial basis. The leasehold forest provisions of the community forestry legislation have not yet been implemented in all districts except in a few isolated areas.

Despite the fact as the Eighth plan stated that an unspecified forest and will be leased to economically deprived groups, it was not possible to translate them into reality.

It ha been found out that the forest offices in Nepal do not support private and leasehold forestry because this reduces their authority over forest resources. This may be one of the reasons for the lack of implementation of leasehold forests. However, private management is essential for the promotion and protection of our forest resource development.

Strengthening Mental Health Promotion

THE positive dimension of mental health is stressed in WHO’s definition of health as contained in its constitution: "Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease of infirmity." WHO’s 191 member states have endorsed this sweeping statement.

Definition

It is a state of well-being in which the individual realises his or her own abilities, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully, and is able to make a contribution to his or her community.

Mental health promotion is an umbrella term that covers a variety of strategies, all aimed at having a positive effect on mental health. The encouragement of individual resources and skills and improvements in the socio-economic environment are among them.

Most health care resources are spent on the specialised treatment and care of the mentally ill, and to a lesser extent on community treatment and rehabilitation services. Even less funding is available for promoting mental health.

Mental health promotion requires multi-sectoral action, involving a number of government sectors such as health, employment/industry, education, environment, transport and social and community services as well as non-governmental or community-based organisations such as health support groups, churches, clubs and other bodies.

National mental health policies should not be solely concerned with mental illness but recognise and address the broader issues affecting the mental health of all sectors of society. These would include the social integration of severely marginalised groups, such as refugees, disaster victims, the socially alienated, the mentally disabled, the very old and infirm, abused children and women, and the poor.

Psychosocial and cognitive development of babies and infants depends upon their interaction with their parents. Programmes that enhance the quality of these relations can improved substantially, the emotional, social, cognitive and physical development of children. These activities are particularly meaningful for mothers living in conditions of stress and social adversity. WHO has developed an international programme to stimulate mother-infant interaction that has been widely adopted.

It is clear that schools remain a crucial social institution for the education of children in preparation for life. But they need to be more involved in a broader educational role fostering healthy social and emotional development of pupils.

WHO has developed a ‘life skills’ educational curriculum, which teaches a wide range of skills of school age children to improve their psychosocial competency. The skills include problem-solving, critical thinking, communication, interpersonal skills, empathy, and methods to cope with emotions. These skills enable children and adolescents to develop sound and positive mental health.

"Child -friendly schools" are another WHO mental health initiative to promote a sound psychosocial environment in the school to complement the life skills curriculum. A child-friendly school encourages tolerance and equality between boys and girls and different ethnic, religious and social groups. It promotes active involvement and cooperation, avoids the use of physical punishment, and does not tolerate bullying. It is also a supportive and nurturing environment; providing education which responds to the reality of the children’s lives. Finally, it helps to establish connections between school and family life, encourages creativity as well as academic abilities, and promotes the self-esteem and self-confidence of children.

Special emphasis should be given to those aspects of work places and the work process itself which promote mental health. Eight areas of action have been identified: increasing an employer’s awareness of mental health issues; identifying common goals and positive aspects of the
work process; creating a balance between job demands and occupational skills; training in social skills; developing the psycho-social climate of the workplace; provision of counselling; enhancement of working capacity, and early rehabilitation strategies.

Another significant issue is unemployment, in particular, youth unemployment. In this area, mental health promotion strategies seek to improve employment opportunities, for example, through programmes to create jobs, provide vocational training, and social and job seeking skills.

Ageing of the population is a highly desirable and natural aim of any society. By 2025 there will be 1.2 billion older people in the world, close to three-quarters of them in the developing world. But if ageing is to be a positive experience it must be accompanied by improvements in the quality of life of those who have reached-or are reaching-old age.

Quality of life

WHO has developed a tool to assess quality of life as an additional measurement, along with the traditional morbidity and mortality data. A primary goal of mental health promotion is to help member states improve the quality of life of their people and to place mental health firmly on the national agenda.

(WHO)

Dream

By Ronald Nash

IT was on one of those seemingly endless trips to Beijing that I made in those days. Only this time it was longer. Six days, and time to squeeze in the Ming tombs, the Spiritual Way and even the Great Wall. It was early in the year, the atmosphere grey, cold and dusty. I had contracted an annoying cold.

After the official supper I took a long evening walk among the rickety and fast disappearing hutongs, the traditional, single-storey dwellings of Beijing’s past. Restaurants and bars closed lazily as bicycle trailers were tethered for the night. It was cold and dark but not yet frosty. I trailed through the twisted and now sleepy streets where fireplaces glowed back to my hotel. The place seemed more than usually colourless after the bustle of the hutongs. Time was beginning to drag I missed family and home. Surfing absentmindedly through the international news channels, more of the same. Troubles, and rumours of troubles. The world seemed to anticipate another war with Iraq…

My dry throat and sniffing nose irked me and I went early to bed unable to concentrate on book or TV.

I had a dream. It was an Eastertime of my early childhood. I was on an English wooden armchair in a raised garden area outside the French windows of an unknown stone house. Thomas Hardy’s West Country coastline meandered in the distance.

Sitting there, I was intent on a novel. Closer to the old house below us, on a deck chair, sat Uncle Jack, my paternal Grandmother’s half-brother. He was magnanimous and glowing, less mischievous and irritating than I remembered him. He was looking across the lawn, in the full English sunshine, towards a well-groomed hawthorn hedge. Beyond it lay two cottages. An electric bulb burned in the leaded window of the further one.

Jack called across the hedge for his longtime lady friend Margaret to come. She appeared at the wicker gate, a red scarf around her head and her curls blowing loose about her face as I had often remembered it from family albums. Only the curls were greying now. She had an ordinary cream raincoat wrapped around her, which was odd since Jack and I had been sunning ourselves.

That day it was the older of the two Margarets in my memory who appeared. Oddly, since she was only there for a short phase of my life, as a young woman in her early to mid thirties. But in the dream she must have been about sixty, yet kind, smiling, warmhearted as ever she was as a young woman bringing us chocolates in the post war austerity at our little Uxbridge flat. But Jack had changed. Gone was his former gruffness. He was mellowed. He watched gently and knowingly as Auntie Margaret approached from her garden.

The two of them then mysteriously called out to another, younger lady, also from next door. She was slim, well groomed, in a red blazer. She was attentive as she approached. I wondered whether this was Jacqueline, for whom Jack abandoned Margaret in middle life. Or perhaps it was Margaret as she would have been had she been better cared for by my Uncle Jack. I puzzled long over her identity, but for now I will call her Jacqueline.

Images then spun uncontrollably. Margaret had visited Mussoorie and I got a glimpse of swirling jacaranda in the old hill station I once knew. Margaret said Jacqueline’s partner was now recovering from cancer and resuming a normal life. I asked Jacqueline if she would like tea. I felt vaguely guilty: the novel was once again drawing me. I went for the tea.

Suddenly the little cameo freezes and I see no further sequences. A rustling had sounded through the night and in my coughing half-sleep I had supposed it to be the electric clock on the console or the flapping net curtains of my 23rd storey room. But it was the China Daily under my door, billowing in the morning breeze.

I gathered myself. Outside the hutongs again prepared to make way for high-rise encroachments. Grandfathers played badminton with boys on morning pavements. Older folk did shadow-boxing in parks. I prepared for another day of bargaining, throat sore and nose running.

I had not seen Jack or Margaret for fifty years, and Jacqueline I had never met.

(The author is the British Ambassador to Nepal)