Forest cover may have increased but agricultural land is shrinking

Farmlands have shrunk by 2.1 percentage points with the expansion of built-up area from 2000 to 2019, latest data suggest.

While the forest area of Nepal increased by 1.7 percent, the agricultural land shrunk by 2.1 percent with the expansion in built-up area from 2000 to 2019, according to the latest data released by the Forest Research and Training Centre (FRTC), a government body under the Ministry of Forests and Environment.