Forests and Climate Change: Analysis of local experiences of climate change impacts in Nepal’s community forestry

Abstract

Community management of forests are considered to be vital for responding to Climate Change (CC) impacts. However, the questions of how do local communities perceive climate changes and how or whether their activities contributing to addressing climate change impacts are still widely debated. This paper aims to examine Nepal’s community forestry stakeholders’ experience of Climate Change (CC) impacts. A semi structured questionnaire survey of 310 local households was carried out on 31 Community Forestry User Groups (CFUGs) in Siraha, Saptari and Udaypur in inner Terai and Terai regions, Nepal. We stratified households into rich, medium, poor, and poorest based on their socioeconomic status. The analysis results showed that 59% of local respondents had seen an increase in temperature, heat waves (82.9%) and cold waves (51.6%). Conversely, rainfall intensity (65.8%), fog intensity (47.42%), fuzzy sky (50%) and humidity (36%) had decreased. Socioeconomic conditions, forest and climatic change variables were used as explanatory variables against the dependent variables of CC impacts, rainfall and changed temperatures over the last 40 years. Multinomial logistic regression analysis shows that broadleaf forest type, sky haze and rainfall were positively significantly and temperature, fogs, cold waves, biodiversity and amenity variables were negatively significantly correlated with CC and CFOMP that, in turn, increases the likelihood of affecting the livelihoods of local respondents. Results demonstrated that people’s beliefs and perceptions of CC and the adaptations and mitigating responses are vital for devising effecting policies and practices. We propose a set of models that help linking locals experiences with policy, thereby improving both climate change and forest management policies.