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Bhutan’s stated vision is to go 100% organic by 2020
. However, given the compulsions of ensuring food security and a desire to attain import substitution in agriculture, this vision demands a serious reappraisal. On a pragmatic level, given that there are only about three years to go, achieving this target holistically and systematically is unlikely, or practical. Aiming for a 100% organic agriculture is impractical in the short- to medium-term, especially given the significant challenges involved, including the fact that Bhutan currently imports about 50% of its food requirements. Nevertheless, it is feasible to move towards an agriculture that is predominantly organic, particularly in selected crops and agro-ecological settings, promoted in a phased manner and over a long-term framework
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The study recommend diversifying the limited livelihood strategies (potato farming and livestock grazing) to reduce the potential vulnerability of the local community and reduce the pressure on forest and marsh
. Proper land use planning in the valley would be beneficial to maintain and regulate land uses in an effective way and avoid possible conflicts between settlement, agriculture, forest, and marsh
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The Hindu Kush Himalayan (HKH) region being seismically active and sensitive to climate change is prone to glacial lake outburst flood (GLOF)
. The Lemthang Tsho GLOF breached in the evening of 28 July 2015 innorth-western Bhutan is reminds of the looming threat, and stresses the need to have good risk management plan. The need to understand the physical processes in generating GLOF to is therefore imperative in order to effectively manage the associated risk. The paper therefore assesses the cause and impact of the Lemthang Tsho GLOF event using field and remote sensing data
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Shifting cultivation is a dominant form of farming in the eastern Himalayas, practised by a diverse group of indigenous people from the most marginalized social and economic groups
. The survival of these indigenous people and the survival of their forests are inextricably linked. However, policy makers and natural resource managers perceive shifting cultivation to be wasteful, destructive to forests, and unsustainable. Although policies have tried to ban it or ‘wean’ shifting cultivators away from the practice by incentivizing them to take up alternative options, shifting cultivation persists. As a result, neither the livelihood issues of the shifting cultivators nor the health of the forest ecosystems on which shifting cultivation depends are properly protected. Shifting cultivators and policy makers must seek common ground to improve shifting cultivation for farmers and forests. A joint solution is also required to address climate change as good forest cover plays a prominent role in the sequestration of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide. This publication is the result of research undertaken in Bangladesh, Bhutan, and Nepal on the promotion of innovative policy and development options for improving shifting cultivation in the eastern Himalayas. It is divided into two parts: Part 1 presents the findings of the study on the effect of government policies on customary tenure and institutions and alternative options. Part 2 presents a discussion of the findings of the three countries as well as some general and country-wise recommendations. It is hoped that the findings of the research will enable governments to improve their shifting cultivation polices, which will, in turn, help shifting cultivators to improve their economic and social status
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This study investigates the effects of climate and socioeconomic change on the livelihoods of mountain people in the Hindu-Kush Himalayan (HKH) region, causes of vulnerability, and the ways people's cope with and adapt to change, with the overall aim of contributing to enhancing the resilience of vulnerable mountain communities
. ICIMOD conducted a community-based vulnerability and adaptive capacity assessment in four areas Uttarakhand in northwestern India; Nepal, Eastern Bhutan, and North East India to identify people's perceptions of climate variability and change; to identify underlying causes of vulnerability of mountain communities; to assess existing coping and adaptation mechanisms and their sustainability in view of predicted future climate change; and to formulate recommendations on how to improve individual and collective assets. An extensive participatory rural appraisal exercise was followed by field studies including focus group discussions at the community level and in-depth interviews at the household level. Special attention was paid to potential differences in the vulnerability and adaptive capacity of women and men and of different social groups. The general role of formal and informal institutions in the adaptation process was also considered. The findings demonstrate that climate and socioeconomic change are already affecting the livelihoods of mountain communities, and that the communities have developed a repertoire of response strategies to these changes
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This article focuses on a PES pilot on tourism in the Jigme Singye Wangchuk National Park of Bhutan in 2006
. A Village Development Fund (VDF) was set up by collecting campsite fees which was used to pay for community development and activities as alternative energy sources, compensation for damage of harvest by wildlife and any other environmental activity. Village Tourism Management Committees (TMC) were responsible for the management of funds and minimizing negative effects of tourism and raised awareness of communities. Revenues from five villages along the trial increased from USD 10,000 (2006-2007) to USD 12,000 (2008-2009) .
This pilot project shows that communities can benefit from community managed tourism development. PES mechanisms were implicitly included and might be explicitly in future product and service designs.
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The area surrounding Mount Kangchenjunga in the eastern Himalayas is spread across four countries: Nepal, India, Bhutan, and China
. It includes many protected areas—of particular interest to mountain overs—that are still unexplored. However, these protected areas are islands that are facing degradation through a number of activities, the latest of which is tourism. The pressures on the region range from subsistence agriculture to the extraction of forest products to tourism. The fact that 1.5 million people live in this landscape, with heavy dependence on landscape resources, has resulted in the need for "ntegrative" and "livelihood-linked" conservation. Because of the four jurisdictions, this region is an obvious candidate for some form of transboundary management or cooperation.
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The 2010 Janauray edition of Mountain FOrum Bulletin mainly focuses on the articles' based on Payment of Environmental Services in Mountain Areas of different parts of the world
. The bulletin contains total thirty two case articles and consists of activities done on PES in different environmental resources such as agriculture, water,carbon, biodiversity, ecotoursim and forest.
The list of articles included in the Bulletin are:
1. Paying for Environmental Services: Using the Contingent Valuation Method to Estimate Willingness to Pay for Conservation in the Sho’llet Forest, Peru
2. A Case of Voluntary Collection for Environmental Services, Zapalinamé, Mexico
3. Conservation of water sources in Moyobamba: A brief review of the first experience in payments for ecosystem services
4. Valuing Watersheds in Rural Landscapes: A Case Study from Nepal
5. Payment for Forest Environmental Services: A Pilot Government Policy in the Dong Nai River Basin, Vietnam
6. Protecting Environmental Services in Vittel, France: A Business Opportunity for the Private Sector
7. Payments for the protection of watershed services: A potential tool for improving protection of “paper parks” in Latin America?
8. Complementary Environmental Service Reward Programmes for Sustainable Mosaic Landscapes in the Sierra Madre de Chiapas, Mexico
9. Using water funds to finance watershed conservation in the Andes and Costa Rica
10.Local governmental-led PES for watershed protection: Cases from the Philippines
11.The Cloud Forests of Quillosara: A Local Government Initiative to Establish a Compensation Mechanism for Environmental Services in Ecuador
12.Using Payments for Environmental Services to improve conservation in a Tunisian Watershed
13.Payment for Environmental Services for Sustainable Water Management in Loktak Lake, Manipur
14.Compensation for Hydrological Services in Bolivia: The Comarapa Municipal Water Fund
15.Using Waste Land for Afforestation: Assessing the Results of the First Registered CDM Forestry Project
16.Delivering Environmental Services in Landscapes: Lessons Learned from Experience with PES through IUCN’s Livelihoods and Landscapes Strategy
17.Introduction to the SARD-M Project: An Initiative of FAO, Rome, for Remuneration of Positive Externalities in Mountain Regions
18.Organic Farming: Enhancing Environmental Services from Farmland in Austria
19.Using a Biogas Scheme to Control Soil Erosion on Sloping Lands, North Vietnam
20.Can Payments support Environmental Services from Farmland?
21.Honeybees as Providers of Pollination Services
22.Snow Leopards and ‘Himalayan Homestays’: Catalysts for Community-Based Conservation in Mountain Areas
23.The Voluntary Gopher Tortoise Habitat Credit Trading System
24.Rewards for Environmental services and collective land tenure: Lessons from Ecuador and Indonesia
25.Valuing Environmental Services for Recreation in the Margalla Hills National Park, Islamabad
26.Tourism and Payments for Environmental Services: The Outlook for a Stronger Business Case to Develop Rural Tourism in Bhutan
27.From Poachers to Park Wardens: Revenue sharing scheme as an incentive for environmental protection in Rwanda
28.The Rhön Biosphere Reserve: Developing New Financing Options to Conserve a Traditional Agricultural Landscape
29.Khasi Community Landscape Restoration and Conservation Project: Mawhplang Lyngdohship, Meghalaya
30.Payments for Carbon Sequestration in the Philippines: Lessons and Implications
31.Can Nepal Benefit from Forest Carbon Financing : An assessment of opportunities, challenges and possible action
32.Valuing the Services provided by forest and agro ecosystems in the Central Himalaya, Indi
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