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Forest or farm? The politics of poverty and land hunger in Nepal
| Publication Type | | Journal Article |
| Year of Publication | | 1998 |
| Authors | | Ghimire, K, |
| Journal Title | | Forest or farm? The politics of poverty and land hunger in Nepal. |
| Pagination | | xv + 213 |
| Key Words | | mountain areas; forests; forest resources; forest management; land use; land ownership; tenure systems; poverty; settlement; peasant farming; migration; conflict; conservation; environmental; policy; rural development |
| Abstract | | It is argued that countries such as Nepal could increase social benefits through the promotion of smallholder land settlements in regions most suitable for agriculture, instead of pursuing policies associated with conservation which lets productive land lie idle. The book suggests that the historically evolved unequal distribution of cultivated land across various social classes, and in particular the existence of extremely small land units held by the majority of farmers, combined with declining yields and population growth, has produced a process of landlessness. There has been a high level of internal migration and spontaneous land settlement in forested areas in the Nepal Tarai. Recent state policies emphasize forest protection, and the eviction of self-settled peasants. The book examines this situation, and considers the rationality of present land-use policies, looking at the interests of many socially dominant groups, whose interests coincide with the official forest-protection measures, but which contradict the subsistence needs of the landless. Data are presented for the case study sections in the Tarai, through fieldwork conducted in the late 1980s, surveying 160 households. |
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