Events

About the workshop

The International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) and Forest Research and Training Centre (FRTC) are jointly organising a daylong consultation workshop on the development of sub-national biophysical forest indicators.

Based on the need for building a sustainable sub-national level land cover monitoring system that produces reliable data with key forest types on an annual basis at municipality level, the World Bank has launched an Advisory Services and Analytics (ASA) activity “Improving data and analytics for sustainable forest management in Nepal” as part of the Green, Resilient, Inclusive Development Advisory Programme (GRID PASA) in Nepal. FRTC and ICIMOD are undertaking the technical work under the component of producing sub-national biophysical forest indicators for Nepal. To facilitate the appropriate representation of forest types from different provinces/municipalities, provincial-level consultation workshops are being planned to receive input from local forestry experts and municipalities.

Objectives

• Introduce sub-national biophysical forest indicators for sustainable forest management and forest-related revenue transfers in Nepal
• Recognise the number of forest type classes based on dominant tree species, elevation, slope, and aspect
• Collect inputs on defining forest type classes and integrate local expert knowledge on mapping

Expected output

Upon completion of the workshop, the technical team will have a better understanding on the requirement of sub-national biophysical forest indicators specific to needs of provincial and municipal forest management. It is expected that the workshop will outline details of the selected biophysical indicators to be generated at sub-national level relevant to the province/ municipalities.

Target audience

Participants will include both technical experts and stakeholders from all districts and municipalities of Koshi province, provincial offices related to the forest sector, and representatives from relevant federal organisations such as the Ministry of Forest and Environment (MoFE), National Natural Resources and Fiscal Commission (NNRFC), Department of Forest and Soil Conservation, and REDD Implementation Centre.

Venue and logistics

The workshop will take place in Biratnagar, Koshi Province, Nepal. ICIMOD will cover the costs of travel and overnight stay for the participants coming from outside the district.

Background

The Government of Nepal (GoN) has committed to maintaining 45 per cent of Nepal’s forest cover in its most recent Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) communicated under the Paris Agreement. The Forest Act 2019 and Forest Regulation 2022 aim to increase the contribution of forests towards national incomes, while at the same time maintaining forest cover, in line with Green, Resilient, Inclusive Development (GRID) principles. In this context, the World Bank is supporting the GoN in its efforts toward a major transformation of the forest sector through multiple interventions in Nepal.

Understanding forest conditions at the provincial level is important for informing forest management plans, forest resource revenue sharing, and forest projects financed by the World Bank. Currently, available biophysical indicators on forests (e.g., forest cover, forest condition, etc.) are at the national level and cannot be disaggregated to produce reliable estimates of forest cover at the provincial and municipal levels, as attempting to do so would create estimates with significant non-systematic and non-classical measurement errors. Therefore, the GoN has requested the World Bank’s support in building a system in which forest cover data disaggregated by key forest types and representatives at municipality level can be generated on an annual basis.

FRTC has identified the need for sub-national forest statistics so that they might support provincial and municipal governments in developing sustainable forest management plans. Similarly, NNRFC has expressed a need for sub-national forest statistics so they might improve the implementation of the formula used by them to share forest revenues with provincial and municipal governments. Forest data representatives at the municipality level will allow for forest revenue transfers to better reflect the performance of municipalities in terms of forest management and forest livelihood dependency. Finally, forest projects in Nepal (approved and in design) financed by the World Bank would benefit through the provision of forest-related data and analysis.

Agenda

Tuesday, 11 June 2024