Stakeholder perspectives on commercial medicinal plant collection in Nepal: Poverty and resource degradation

The present article reports the results of a survey on the views of persons involved in commercial alpine medicinal and aromatic plant (MAP) exploitation and conservation in Nepal. Open-ended questionnaires were administered face to face to 175 respondents in the following categories:

1. collectors,
2. traders,
3. district forest office staff,
4. staff at the departmental and ministerial levels in the Ministry of Forests and Soil Conservation, and
5. (I)NGOs and donors.

The issues explored are related to striking a balance between poverty alleviation and halting MAP resource degradation. Stakeholder beliefs about the benefits derived from MAPs, the current state of the MAP resource, the tenure of MAP pastures, the effectiveness of government bans on collection and the possibility of community management, and the tradeoff between collection and conservation are presented. Widespread misconceptions about collectors and local management are identified, and implications of differences in belief among stakeholder categories are discussed. The main findings show that collectors are seen as gaining important financial benefits from MAPs, but that 71% of non-collecting respondents believe the MAP resource to be degraded. Most stakeholders, other than district forest office staff, favor collection over conservation, and find that current collection bans are inefficient, indicating the potential for addressing village poverty by, for example, changing the present centrally-based regulation mechanisms and handing over some MAP resources for community management.