Labour migration in Nepal is having profound effects on land management. We take two examples from the hills of Nepal where the increasing trend in outmigration continues unabated and explore its consequences. The purpose of this study is to understand the impacts of the subsequent labour shortage on land management and how it affects households. We used data from two surveys and assessed land use change and degradation with a qualitative mapping method. The findings show that the local context leads to very different strategies in terms of land management. In one study area, land was left to lie fallow without any use, leading to overgrowth and forest recovery due to favourable climate conditions. In the other, land was no longer used as cropland but turned into grazing land with consequences such as land degradation. This study provides strong empirical data and also contributes to the mountain research community by shedding light on the effects of outmigration on land management in the hills of Nepal. We suggest that these effects, including the labour shortage and the increasingly important role of remittances, should be addressed in an integrative but differentiated way that takes into account the regional context.
This study contributes to the ongoing discussion on how to attribute and evaluate the contribution of transdisciplinary research to sustainable development. As co-created knowledge is a key product of transdisciplinary research, we tested the hypothesis that the extent to which this knowledge is utilized beyond the projects consortia, in different areas-from scientific methods and insights to policy decisions-and across a continuum of geographical scales can be used to identify potential impact pathways. With this aim we developed an analytical framework that links the transdisciplinary process to six possible utilization stages as indicators for usability of co-created knowledge and implemented it using a survey and semi-structured interviews in 22 research projects active in 36 countries. Our results show that even during the implementation of the projects, co-created knowledge is utilized by multiple actors at different stages, in all areas and scales simultaneously, suggesting multiple impact pathways. Utilization of project knowledge was predominantly indicated for national-level policymaking and research partners named co-creation of knowledge with key stakeholders as the most frequently used mechanism for promoting knowledge utilization. Closer analysis showed different understandings of and approaches to knowledge co-creation. These can be linked to weaker or stronger definitions of transdisciplinarity. The analysis shows that when using strong transdisciplinarity approaches researchers need to face challenges in encompassing multiple epistemologies and in facilitating dialogue. Some results suggest that inclusion and collaboration by co-created knowledge can empower actors otherwise excluded. Our research shows that although transdisciplinary projects have non-linear impact pathways, these can be partially assessed using the proposed analytical framework. Further, our results indicate interesting links between usability-through knowledge utilization-inclusion and collaboration regarding knowledge co-creation in transdisciplinary research. We conclude with the observation that transdisciplinarity and its requirements still need to be better understood by actors within and beyond the research community.
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