Population, Health, and Environment in Nepal (Webcast)

Like many developing countries, Nepal faces serious challenges, including poverty, a growing population, natural resource constraints, and poor access to basic health services. Some areas of Nepal have successfully organized community groups of forest users to address these and other challenges. In this event, we will hear how efforts to integrate population, health, and environment (PHE) programs and coordinate different organizations have improved the management of natural resources and people’s health.

Presenters: 

1. Rishi Bastakoti, Resource Identification and Management Society (RIMS) Nepal
2. Jon Miceler, Managing Director, Eastern Himalayas, World Wildlife Fund

Live Webcast at Wilson Center. Follow this link wilsoncenter.org on March 19 2009, 12:00 p.m. - 2:00 p.m (Eastern Time, USA).

Rishi Bastakoti will present the successes and challenges that his integrated PHE program has experienced in Dhading and Bardia, Nepal. Jon Miceler, managing director of Eastern Himalayas programs at WWF-US, will discuss community conservation in Nepal, including the role of health in ensuring the long-term viability of environmental programs. He will also discuss WWF’s PHE programs in the Terai Arc Landscape.

Rishi Bastakoti is the director and co-founder of Resource Identification and Management Society Nepal (RIMS Nepal). He started his professional career at a USAID-funded community development and forestry project, Dhading Resource Management Project, where he worked for three years as Community Forestry Officer. He is the editor of the book, Chepang: Food Culture and Agro-Biodiversity, and received a master’s degree from Technical University of Dresden, Germany.

Jon Miceler is managing director for the World Wildlife Fund's Eastern Himalaya Program and advisor to the WWF China's Upper Yangtze River Watershed program. He has studied and worked throughout the Himalaya since first landing in Nepal as a university student in 1988. In the early 1990s, he founded the first foreign ecotourism company ever based in Lhasa, Tibet. He has produced four documentary films on topics ranging from Himalayan exploration to the reopening of the old Burma Road. His latest book is Tribal Worlds of the Eastern Himalaya and Indo-Burma Borderlands. He holds a master’s degree from Yale University and a bachelor’s degree from University of Colorado, Boulder.

Update 03/31/2009: The presentation of Rishi Bastakoti is available here (PDF).