Leasehold Forestry and Livestock Programme

This programme covers the mid-hills area of Nepal, where a large percentage of the population is poor. It targets families living below the poverty line in a wide area extending across the country – excluding districts that are already part of the ongoing, IFAD-supported Western Uplands Poverty Alleviation Project. The programme pays particular attention to those who live in areas adjacent to degraded forest lands and cannot secure enough food for their families year-round.

The overall goal of the programme is to reduce poverty by allocating leasehold forestry plots to poor families, thus enabling them to increase their income from forest products and livestock. Specifically, the programme works to:

• Improve household forage and tree crop production
• Increase household production of livestock, especially goats
• Provide access to microfinance services
• Support the government's capacity to implement leasehold forestry in a gender-sensitive way.

The programme builds on the success of the now completed Hills Leasehold Forestry and Forage Development Project in helping to establish leasehold forestry groups that will eventually become village finance associations. Women will be hired to mobilize the leasehold groups and train them in group management and rural finance.

Source: IFAD