110,655 research outputs found
Mixed-methods approaches in health research in Nepal
Get PDFCombining and integrating a mixture of qualitative and quantitative methods in one single study is widely used in health and social care research in high-income countries. This editorial adds a few words of advice to the novice mixed-methods researcher in Nepal
2.7 Changing forestry interests in the mid-hills of Nepal: Implications for silviculture policy and practice
No full textThis is a Thematic paper within the report Paudel, N.S., Ojha, H., Banjade, M.R., Karki, R. and Tamang, S. (Eds.). 2021. Revitalising community forestry in the changing socioeconomic context of Nepal. Kathmandu: EnLiFT2 programme and ForestAction Nepal. Research Paper Series on Improved Forest Management in Nepal, 2022-01: 1-86.Forests continue to play important livelihood roles in rural Nepal. However, forest and society relationships are at a new crossroads, driven by a political regime shift and profound changes in the socio-economic context associated with a transition in the agrarian economy. A prominent example of changing forest-society relation is the declining household dependency on major community forest products such as timber and firewood. Increasing outmigration and remittances are a component of that reduced household dependency on community forest, but there has also been a trend to an intensification of agricultural and forestry activities on private lands and a greater reliance on non-farm income. While these changes have been identified only recently, concerns had been raised as to how forest policies and silviculture regimes could be reflective and responsive to community forest users and private forest owners having multiple forest management objectives. Here we discuss the key results emerging from a recent socio-ecological analysis of the perceptions of rural respondents in Nepal, to describe how the households’ aims and activities appear to be changing in relation to the forest.Edwin Cedamon, Douglas Bardsley, and Ian Nuber
The roles and potentials of renewable energy in less-developed economies
Get PDFIncreasing the renewable energy share in national energy mix remains one of the major energy policy goals across many economies. This paper assesses the roles and potentials of renewable energy sources in less-developed economies while citing Nepal as an example. Renewable energy has a significant role to play in the electrification of rural areas in developing economies and contribute towards sustainable development. Realizing full potentials of renewable, however, requires addressing both the associated demand-side and supply–side constraints. Innovative subsidies and tax incentives, adequate entrepreneurial support, strengthening institutional arrangement and promoting local community-based organizations such as the cooperatives are the necessary factors in promoting the green technologies in countries like Nepal. International factors such as large scale investment and adequate technology transfer are equally crucial to create a rapid spread and increase affordability of decentralised renewable energy technologies in less-developed economies.renewable; electrification; research and development
Why are so many Nepali women killing themselves? A review of key issues
Get PDFBackground: For decades the maternal mortality in Nepal was the lead cause of death among women, with great improvements in the maternal mortality ratio in the twentieth century the second most common cause has become more prominent. Suicide is now one of the leading causes of death for women of a reproductive age in Nepal. This scoping review brings together the key available literature to identify the causes of suicide among women in Nepal. Methods: Published and unpublished studies and the grey literature published on women and suicide related to Nepal between 2000 and 2014 were searched and included in this review. Results: This review suggested a number of explanations for the high rate of suicide among women including: partner violence, alcoholism and polygamy, the culture of silence, early age marriage and prolonged child bearing and dependency on men for financial security. Conclusion: This paper highlights some challenges and suggests ways forward in the improvement of mental health in Nepal
Work-related migration and poverty reduction in Nepal
Get PDFUsing two rounds of nationally representative household survey data in this study, the authors measure the impact on poverty in Nepal of local and international migration for work. They apply an instrumental variable approach to deal with nonrandom selection of migrants and simulate various scenarios for the different levels of work-related migration, comparing observed and counterfactual household expenditure distribution. The results indicate that one-fifth of the poverty reduction in Nepal occurring between 1995 and 2004 can be attributed to increased levels of work-related migration and remittances sent home. The authors also show that while the increase in work migration abroad was the leading cause of this poverty reduction, internal migration also played an important role. The findings show that strategies for economic growth and poverty reduction in Nepal should consider aspects of the dynamics of domestic and international migration.Population Policies,Anthropology,Rural Poverty Reduction,Consumption,Small Area Estimation Poverty Mapping
Services Trade in Developing Asia:A Case Study of the Banking and Insurance Sector in Nepal
Get PDFThis study reviews the development of the banking and insurance sectors in Nepal and the effect of reforms and commitments linked to these sectors since the 1980s, when financial sector liberalization in Nepal began with deregulation of the interest rate structure and opening of the banking sector to foreign investors.Service Trade, Nepal
Dating and Sex Among Emerging Adults in Nepal
Get PDFSocial and cultural changes in Nepal, including better communication facilities and transport, more urbanization and a rising age at which people marry, have created more opportunities for young people for “dating.” Our qualitative
study explores whether the existence of dating cultures influences young people’s sexual behavior in Nepal. Focus group discussions with a total of 75 participants and 31 in-depth individual interviews were conducted among young people in Nepal. Most urban and rural young people liked the dating culture. Although it is a new kind of culture in Nepalese society, it is gaining popularity. The mass media were regarded as encouraging and creating an environment for dating. Most participants believed that dating culture encourages premarital and extramarital sexual behavior.
The authors underpin their findings by linking it to the “emerging adulthood” framework. In terms of public health, they recommend that dating practice should be discussed in formal and informal education to promote
safer sex
Contraceptive use in Nepal
No full textThis thesis presents three inter-related studies investigating different aspects of contraceptive use in rural Nepal.The intrauterine device (IUD) is one of the most cost effective methods of reversible contraception available but is not well known or understood and consequently not well used in Nepal. This has not always been the case, when family planning was first introduced in Nepal the IUD was the most widely used method. Over the decades its use has dwindled to a point where less than one percent of women of reproductive age use it as their preferred method of contraception.This thesis identifies the reasons behind the low use of the IUD in eastern rural Nepal, by employing qualitative methodology. These qualitative findings are then further employed to create demand for the IUD. The thesis draws attention to the various roles different routes of increasing awareness and demand for the IUD have. By creating demand it is shown that the uptake of the IUD is increased. Increasing demand alone does not equate to satisfaction with the method so the thesis points to quality of care being an important factor in high satisfaction leading to high continuation of the IUD.Male influence is shown to have an influence on the uptake of the IUD within two of the studies so a third study investigates the knowledge, attitudes and practice of Nepalese men towards family planning and reproductive health. This thesis identifies a number of factors that are influencing positive changes in Nepalese men’s knowledge, attitudes and practice that may have an effect on future contraceptive use, family planning and sexually transmitted infection rates. These changes may have an effect on fertility rates, contraceptive prevalence and levels of unmet need
Political conflict, community forest governance and local livelihoods in Nepal
Get PDFNepal is one of the world’s richest biodiversity hotspots with varied climate, geography and ecosystems. The majority of people in Nepal’s hills and mountains still depend heavily on forest resources for their livelihood and wellbeing. However, since the breakdown of the traditional system of forest management and the nationalization of forests in the mid 1950s, Nepal's forests had undergone severe degradation and deforestation. In addition, political instability, illegal clearing, expansion of agricultural land and resettlement policy were also responsible for degradation. The deforestation was so rapid that between the period of 1964 and 1975, 2.3 million hectares of forests were lost and the livelihoods of people in the hills and mountains of Nepal were on the verge of collapse. Since the popularization of the theory of Himalayan Environmental Degradation and realization on the part of government of the urgency of restoring and improving the condition of Nepal's forests, a number of conservation projects were launched.
In 1978, the government of Nepal initiated the community forestry program through the enactment of the Panchayat Forest and Panchayat Protected Forest Rules. These were further strengthened by the endorsement of the 1989 Master Plan for the Forestry Sector (MPFS) and enactment of the1993 Forest Act and 1995 Forest Regulation. The community-based forest co-management initiatives in Nepal transferred forest management authority to local community user groups. However, since the onset of the Maoist insurgency in 1996 and subsequent armed conflicts over the next decade, the community forestry program in Nepal was under threat. It was not known what happened to the community-based forest co-management arrangements during the period of insurgency due to restricted access to the countryside.
Through a comparative case studies of three Community Forest User Groups (CFUGs) with three different conflict settings (the first controlled by neither of the contending parties, the second under the control of security forces and the third under the control of the Maoists) in Kavrepalanchok district in the Middle Hills region of Nepal, this research investigates the effectiveness of CBFCM in strengthening local forest governance processes and outcomes. It focuses particularly on equity in access and benefit sharing, the participation of different socio-economic strata in forest governance, and the provision of environmental services within these communities during pre/early and late conflict periods.
This research shows that the community forestry program has provided a significant space to local communities for collective action that enabled them to reverse the trend of forest degradation, improving the environmental condition of the forests and the supply of forest products. Over time, the community forest program has been successful in gradually building the capacity of CFUG institutions and has increased the involvement of women and other marginalized sections of the community. Through the expanded networks among CFUGs and with the assistance of outside organizations, these communities have now attained considerable influence in national forest policy formulation. This study confirms that although the governing mechanisms of state agencies, including the Department of Forests (DoF), became dysfunctional during the period of armed insurgency, governance structures of the local CFUGs in the case study villages were largely stable and most forest management activities were carried out during the period of armed conflict. The CFUGs have survived as vibrant self-governing institutions and have maintained reasonable access to forest resources to satisfy the subsistence needs of local people within the community. These findings suggest that community-based forest governing institutions had the bargaining capacity and ability to overcome the pressures arising from the armed conflict because of the resilience and adaptive capacities of the CFUGs.
Key words: Co-management (CM), community-based natural resource management (CBNRM), Community-based forest co-management (CBFCM), governance, and community forest user groups (CFUGs)
Supply and demand for cereals in Nepal, 2010–2030:
Get PDFThis paper attempts to estimate the future supply and demand for cereals in Nepal. While there has been considerable research in the past examining the agricultural sector in Nepal, to the best of our knowledge there has been no analysis of the supply-demand scenario for food grains in the country. The analysis undertaken in this paper attempts to bridge this gap in the literature by estimating supply and demand models for the three most important cereals in Nepal's food basket: rice, wheat, and maize. The supply projections have been carried out on the basis of a single-crop production function model using data for the period 1995–2008. For estimating the demand function and projecting future demand, data from the Nepal Living Standards Survey II (NLSS II), undertaken in the year 2003/04, are used.cereal supply, cereal demand,
- …
