Effects of New Roads on Environmental Resource Use in the Central Himalaya

Abstract

Construction of roads into remote rural areas can improve livelihoods by reducing transportation costs, but may also have negative environmental impacts, such as increased deforestation. However, evidence of the effect of rural roads on household environmental income and reliance, as well as local level forest stand conservation is limited. This study, conducted in Mustang District in Nepal, contributes to answering the following questions: (i) what are the impacts of the establishment of rural roads on household environmental income and reliance; (ii) what are the determinants of environmental income and reliance, and how are they affected by road establishment; and (iii) what are the short-term impacts of the construction of a rural road on local forest conservation? Following the Poverty Environment Network (PEN) methodology, income data from 176 randomly-sampled households were collected in 2006 from two similar Himalayan villages, Lete and Lulang, and again in 2012 after a new road was constructed in 2008 in Lete. Forest strata data were collected in Lete through permanent sample plots (n = 59) measured in 2005 and 2010 and used to estimate stock change (before and after road construction), annual increment and annual wood extraction. Results show that the new road had significant positive effects on absolute household environmental income, but negative effects on reliance as other income options became available. Wood product extraction levels remained below increment levels, indicating that the road did not (yet) have negative implications for local forest conservation.

Commercial Medicinal Plant Collection Is Transforming High-altitude Livelihoods in the Himalayas

“…The average share of income from commercial medicinal plants in total annual household income in 2014-2015 was 58%, ranging in a narrow band from 55-60% across the terciles. This is outside the previously reported range of 3-53% for all environmental products in studies that report total household incomes (Rayamajhi et al 2012;Meilby et al 2014;Chhetri et al 2015;Charlery et al 2016;Oli et al 2016). This is likely to reflect our in-depth focus on the medicinal plant portfolio, the rising prices for many products, and the tendency for households to allocate more labor to medicinal plant collection over time.…”

The Effects of Road Access on Income Generation. Evidence from An Integrated Conservation and Development Project in Cameroon

“…Among others, roads enable access to public services and institutions, providing connection and simplifying transport [4]. In the past, studies have focused on highlighting these positive effects of road access on poverty alleviation and livelihoods by reducing travel time and costs, as well as creating job opportunities and establishing better access to local markets, which in turn increase agricultural production and household income [1][2][3][5][6][7][8]. Additionally, local communities profit from employment during construction and better access to public services, like hospitals and schools [4].…”

Capturing forest dependency in the central Himalayan region: Variations between Oak (Quercus spp.) and Pine (Pinus spp.) dominated forest landscapes

“…The Himalayan region is an ecologically important mountainous terrain as it provides a wide range of forest ecosystem services for many mountain communities (Rasul 2014;Badola et al 2015;Chakraborty et al 2016a). In addition to this, the Himalayan region is often associated with social and economic benefits for most rural households in this region (Sandhu and Sandhu 2014;Charlery et al 2016;Hoy et al 2016). The local communities are directly and/or indirectly dependent on natural resources for sustaining their livelihoods (Tiwari and Joshi 2015).…”

“…In addition to these challenges, due to inadequate infrastructure (Doppler and Bahadur 2013) and meagre income-generating opportunities (Childs et al 2014), many people in this region are multi-dimensionally deprived in terms of economic growth and development (Tiwari and Joshi 2016). Even with recent construction of roads increasing the relative accessibility in the rural mountainous areas (Charlery et al 2016) and reasonably high literacy rate (up to 80%) in the Himalayan region (Yadav et al 2016), most of the population continue to indulge in traditional forest-centred livelihood practices. In several cases, this forest dependence of local communities is often associated to poverty, unemployment, and lack of alternate livelihood sources (Sandhu and Sandhu 2015).…”

“…With the increasing population and subsequent high dependence on forest products , it has resulted in lower diversity in forests (Sharma and Vetaas 2015), forest loss (Grumbine and Pandit 2013;Bruggeman et al 2016), and forest degradation in many areas in the Himalayan region (Mishra and Chaudhuri 2015). Current resource extraction practices decreases the productivity of forests, and it will eventually lead to the depletion of forest resources in future (Meilby et al 2014;Pandey et al 2014;Behera et al 2016;Charlery et al 2016). In addition to these disturbances causing changes in the Himalayan forests (Malik et al 2016), significant impacts due to climate change have been observed at multiple scales ranging from within-species to ecosystem-level changes (Shrestha et al 2012;Aryal et al 2013;Wani et al 2013).…”