Environment and Forest Enterprise Activity (EFEA) was a joint effort of
His Majesty's Government of Nepal (HMG/N) and United States Agency for
International Development/Nepal (USAID/N). EFEA was built on the past
two decades of USAID/N's rural development programming in the Rapti Zone.

EFEA Project Partners and Areas of Work include:

• CARE -- community and private forestry
• World Wildlife Fund -- conservation management
• GreenCOM -- policy dialogue and communications
• Government of Nepal -- collaboration on all project activities

EFEA was implemented in in eight districts (Dang, Salyan, Pyuthan, Rukum, Rolpa, Dolpa, Banke and Bardia) of the Mid-Western
Development Region. CARE worked with the Department of Forest in the mid-hills and Terai, and WWF/Nepal Program worked with the Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation in the northern mountain areas, particularly in and around Shey Phoksundo National Park and Dhorpatan Hunting Reserve.

The Forest Based Mirco-enterprise Development (Ban Udyam in Nepali) component of EFEA project was implemented by Biodiversity Support Program (BSP) and New ERA from 1996. Ban Udyam (BU) provided direct technical assistance to a series of pilot forest user groups, focusing on strengthening their capacity in sustainable forest management leading to the development of a range of forest-based micro-enterprises. BU also assisted pilot user groups, HMG/N line agencies and FPP-CARE/N to design and implement more appropriate and effective community forestry monitoring system. The work of the BSP and New ERA focused mainly on forest-based micro-enterprise development and monitoring.