Turning Nepal's forests into fortune

Nepal is committed to preserving forest coverage, but the focus must be on effective implementation.

In the late 1970s, the World Bank made a grim prediction that the forests in Nepal’s hilly regions would disappear by the 1990s. Fortunately, that did not happen as the government made necessary course corrections by launching community forestry programmes. Since then, the forest cover has nearly doubled, with forests now accounting for almost 45 percent of the country's total land area.