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The Nepal Australia Community Resource Management and Livelihoods Project (NACRMLP) is the sixth and final phase of a forty-year partnership between the Australian and Nepali governments designed to promote reforestation in the Middle Hills of Nepal in order to decrease environmental degradation and to improve rural welfare through the development and institutionalisation of a sustainable community-based approach to natural resource management (NRM). Forests got special attention because they are at the foundation of the subsistence economy of farmers in this region. In its first stage (January 2003-January 2005) NACRMLP worked to test and refine methodologies for addressing the social, economic and environmental issues associated with second-generation control of community forests. In its second two-year stage, which began in June 2005 after a four-month interim period, it is consolidating those lessons and aiming for a smooth handover.

Ecological regions of Nepal

  
Ecological regions -two districts (Sindhu & Kabhre)

The need for project intervention, and, now that the project is wrapping up, community action, is striking: even after four decades of work, the approximately 650 thousand people of the two districts the project has targeted - Kabhre Palanchok and Sindhu Palchok are appallingly poor, not just in terms of money but in all poverty indicators. The average annual income per capita is NRs. 288 (KP) and NRs. 219 (SP) considerably less than the national average. Life expectancy is 51 years for women and 58 for men. Just 52% are literate and not even 4% graduate from Grade 10.
However, locals have made considerable progress in the area of community forestry since Phase 1 began in 1966. Over 21,000 ha of forest (11% of the total) have been planted and twice that area of natural forests (42,500 ha or 21%) have been handed over to 800 community forestry user groups (CFUGs), local-level bodies which assume the ownership and responsibility for the management of forests previously under government control. Almost three-quarters of the 120,000 households belong to the groups, which in a truly democratic spirit, enable users of forest resources to make their own decisions about how their resources shall be utilised and then implement these ‘operational plans’ to their own advantage. Initially, it was a remarkable change in the attitude of rural people to conserve seedlings (and thus freeing Department of Forestry officials from the need to police) that was striking. In fact, forest coverage increased 13% between 1972-1990. However, since Phase 5 (which began in May 1997) the trend has been increasingly from protection and subsistence-level usage - just eking out a survival level of output - to the commercial sale of products. In the process, the livelihoods of people have been noticeably improved.

Some key features of these districts What we’ve done so far: The first stage (Feb. 2003-Jan. 2005)
	Component 1: Institutionalising sustainable natural resource management systems Component 2: Income generation and equity within rural communities Component 3: Sustainable resource management Component 4: Upper-slope, community-based resource management Component 5: Project management
What we’ve inherited: The standard of community forestry in Phase 5
	On the technical level On the economic level On the environmental level On the social level