JOETP, July 2021, Volume 2, Number 1 Bishnu Prasad Gautam

A Concept of Optimum Forest Area for the Sustainable Development of Nepal

Bishnu Prasad Gautam, PhD1*
1
Member, Province Planning Commission, Lumbini Province, Nepal; and Eminent Fellow of Nepal Academy of
Science and Technology.
*
Corresponding Email: [email protected], Phone: +977-71-532368

Abstract
Forest sector was badly suffered due to anthropogenic activities in the last two centuries before it is getting
revitalized due to serious conservation efforts particularly after the Earth Summit in 1992. In order to expedite
the development efforts by being considerate to the environment of the planet we live, United Nations has adopted
seventeen sustainable development goals (SDGs) to be achieved by 2030. Sustainable development aims for
harmony among physical, social and environmental development, and hence, guides for finding a balanced
approach of development and conservation. This paper highlights the need for finding a balance between
infrastructure development and forest conservation initiatives in Nepal with a focus of attaining SDGs by 2030.
The economic status of Nepal is reviewed along with the plans, policies and trends of forest conservation. It
highlights the need for a system perspective in which forest conservation is a component of the overall objective
of sustainable development. A theoretical framework of optimum forest area for Nepal is presented by considering
the contributions and obstacles of the forest sector towards attaining SDGs. Rather than focusing on complicated
mathematical models, this paper presents a simple and practical concept of gauging the attainment of SDGs by a
single index that may be useful to planners. The optimum forest area for Nepal has not been assessed and will be
a scope of future studies. Once the idea of optimum forest area is adopted, major breakthroughs can be expected
towards attaining SDGs in Nepal.

Keywords: Conservation; Infrastructure development; Optimum forest area; Planning; Sustainable development
goals

Introduction
Forests covered four-fifths of the earth’s area at the beginning of the Eighteenth century; it decreased
to 30% by the mid-Nineteenth century, and further decreased to 24.4% by 1990 (THC1/iwggf, 1994).
While forests are influenced by climate, landform and soil composition, anthropogenic activities
associated with economic development were the primary reasons for this alarming reduction in the
global forest cover. Scenarios like this were the reasons behind the organization of the United Nations
Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) [also called the Earth Summit]. The 1992
Earth Summit held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil proposed an action plan called Agenda 21, which later
became the basis of the seventeen sustainable development goals (SDGs) set for 2030. Agenda 21
highlighted the necessity for all countries to develop harmonized approaches in the management,
conservation and sustainable development of global forests to meet the socio-economic and
environmental needs of the present and future generations.
United Nations adopted the seventeen goals for sustainable development as shown in Figure 1. The
SDGs consist of 17 goals, 169 targets and 230 indicators. SDG #15 is about the protection, restoration
and promotion of sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems and sustainable management of forests. SDG
#13 suggests taking urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts. It aims to halve the base
year’s CO2 emission level. Forests are effective to absorb CO2 and hence, this goal also implies for the
conservation of forests. In the post-Earth Summit era, forest cover has gained public attention and
improvements are observed in many parts of the world. From the depleted forest area of 24.4% in 1990,
the forest area has increased to 31% as of 2020 (FAO, 2020). Nevertheless, conservation of forests and
gain in forest cover are quite challenging.

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Figure 1: SDGs adopted by the United Nations (source: undp.org)

Forest conservation has been an important agenda in Nepal since long. Strict regulations were
implemented and the conservation efforts in Nepal have become quite effective lately with forest area
being increased to 44.74% (MFSC, 2017). However, the regulations are regarded as challenges by the
people working for development. Project managers of many construction projects often blame that
forest clearance is one of the most critical factors for the delay of the projects. Irrespective of the scale
of deforestation and urgency of the project, every project has to get an approval from the Nepal
government cabinet for cutting even a single tree. The process is quite lengthy and goes for years. For
instance, Dang section of the Postal road project, which is a national pride project, was waiting for the
forest clearance for at least three years (based on a discussion with the project authority). It is widely
realized that rules are not only harsh but also irrelevant in many aspects.
As a counter-productive outcome of the harsh and lengthy legal procedures, projects are sometimes
heard of encouraging illegitimate practices for opening tracks and clearing construction sites,
particularly in projects undertaken by the local governments. This reaction to over-regulation must be
stopped and it will be possible by properly addressing the development needs and public aspirations.
The aspect of forest conservation should acknowledge other goals of sustainable development too,
particularly in the challenging circumstances of attaining the SDGs by 2030.
Apart from the goals focused on forest conservation, SDGs also emphasize the building of resilient
infrastructure and promotion of inclusive and sustainable industrialization (SDG #9). SDG #8
emphasizes to promote economic growth and productive employment. Economic growth, infrastructure
construction and industrialization require cutting of trees at certain places. Infrastructure such as roads,
airports, and urban facilities often require large scale tree cutting in the project areas. SDG #10 asks to
reduce inequality within and among countries. This suggests that many of the benefits and opportunities
available in the developed countries should also be made available in the developing countries. Despite
conscious efforts on conservation, the transformation of countries from the “developing” to
“developed” stage will incur not only the monetary cost but also the environmental cost.
SDG #7 is about ensuring access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all. The
world is moving from the fossil fuel sources of energy towards renewable energy sources including
hydropower, solar and wind energies. Construction of such energy facilities will also require some
deforestation in the construction areas. Even to ensure the availability of water and sanitation for all as
stipulated in SDG #6, reservoirs, tanks, large treatment facilities, and extensive pipe networks should
be constructed. Often, the source of water is within or besides forest areas, and hence, these structures
also warrant for cutting of trees in the construction areas.

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Goals such as ending poverty (SDG #1), ending hunger (SDG #2), ensuring healthy lives (SDG #3) and
ensuring quality education (SDG #4) also involve many construction and land development activities.
Forests cannot remain untouched except for the protected areas. Moreover, Nepal has a forest cover of
44.74% with many people having their livelihood connected to forests, and hence for Nepal, SDGs #8,
12 and 15 infer that forest resources should be sustainably utilized for achieving economic growth and
prosperity.
Forest cover is basically a function of cover loss and cover gain. Conservation aims to increase cover
gain while development activities including infrastructure construction, settlement and expansion of
agricultural land have caused loss in forest cover, particularly in Terai and urban region. Similarly,
utilizing forest resources for economic development may result in the loss of cover unless forests are
sustainably managed. Therefore, forest conservation and development needs are often seen as two
conflicting agendas. However, both are essential and hence should be promoted in harmony. The crux
of the problem lies in treating the two agendas separately, and accordingly, the solution lies in striking
a balance between the two agendas as a system perspective. The system perspective will not only
account for the loss and gain in forest cover but will also assess the need of development activities by
acknowledging the importance of conservation, and thus, determine optimum forest area for the
sustainable development of Nepal. As a planning perspective, this paper analyzes the role of forestry
sector towards achieving SDGs and outlines a theoretical framework in introducing the concept of
optimum forest area for Nepal.

Economic status of Nepal and the challenge of achieving SDGs

The United Nations Committee for Development Policy during its triennial review in February 2021
recommended for Nepal’s graduation from the Least Developed Country status, thus, paving way for
Nepal to be transformed into a developing country by 2026. Out of the three indices decisive for the
question of graduation, namely, Gross National Income (GNI) per capita, Human Assets Index, and
Economic and Environmental Vulnerability Index, Nepal met the thresholds for the latter two, thus
being eligible for graduation (PMUN, 2021). While the threshold for the GNI per capita was set at USD
1222 for the triennial review, Nepal’s GNI was USD 1090 as of 2019. Nepal is a lower middle income
country and has envisioned to achieve the middle income country status by 2030 AD. The SDG roadmap
of Nepal (NPC, 2016) has set a target of per capita GNI of USD 2500 by 2030. Similarly, Nepal’s GNI
per capita should exceed USD 4046 in order to achieve the status of a middle income country. This
means the national income should be increased by approximately four times in 10 years. Nepal needs
to achieve an unprecedented high rate of sustained economic growth for several years in order to
materialize the target of being transformed into a middle income country by 2030.
Furthermore, as a member of the United Nations, Nepal is destined to achieve SDGs by 2030. National
Planning Commission of Nepal has estimated the budget requirement for attaining the SDGs. The
average annual budget requirement is estimated at approximately USD 20 billion (NPR 2025 billion).
As per the predictions based on currently available resources, yearly deficit of USD 5.8 billion is
estimated (NPC, 2017). This warrants for exploring all possible resources including natural resources
in Nepal that were mostly underutilized in the past but have prospects of being significantly utilized.
Such resources include not only the conventionally acknowledged sectors of agriculture, tourism and
hydropower but also the yet to be properly acknowledged sectors of natural construction materials and
forests. On the supply side, Nepal is bestowed with abundance of these two latter resources and on the
demand side these sectors have a promising market in Nepal and neighboring countries. Preliminary
analysis of the supply and demand sides at the Province Planning Commission of Lumbini Province
(e.g., Gautam et al., 2020) indicates that these sectors have potential of attaining growth of at least one
order of magnitude in the respective sectors by 2030.
While assurance of resources is a challenge, improvement in the ability of the country for capital
expenditure has become equally challenging. The capital expenditure of Nepal government has been

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consistently poor with expenditure as low as 50% of the budget. A plethora of factors affect the ability
to execute the budget including political system; governance; policies and acts; and availability and
capability of human resources. Among the policy and act related issues, forest clearance has been a
major obstacle for the commencement and timely execution of nationally important infrastructure
projects. Delay in project execution will jeopardize the attainment of SDGs, and hence, all obstacles
should be critically reviewed to expedite the execution of development projects. Attaining all SDGs
should be prioritized over attaining a few SDGs (e.g., #15 and 13), and a holistic approach will be
essential.

Analysis of forest scenario in Nepal from planning perspective

Global perspective
The global forest area in 2020 was estimated at 4.06 billion ha, which is 31 percent of the total land
area (FAO, 2020). Approximately 50% of the global forest area lies in only four countries including
Russia (20%), Brazil (12%), Canada (9%) and USA (8%) and approximately two-thirds of the global
forest area lies in ten countries. Eight countries have no forests and another fifty countries have forest
area less than 10%. Seven countries have forest area greater than 90% (FAO, 2020). Forest area of
Nepal is 6.6 million hectares and occupies 44.74% of the land area of Nepal (MFSC, 2017). Forest area
of Nepal is 0.16% of the global forest area. Comparison of Nepal’s forest to the global forest reveals
two aspects: first, percentage forest area of Nepal is well above the percentage forest area of the world,
and second, Nepal’s forest being negligibly small for the globe, Nepal should aim to address its own
needs of sustainable development before aiming to influence the global environment. This overall
outlook will be essential to accurately resolve the often conflicting perspectives of forest conservation
and infrastructure development.
Role of forests to the economy and development of Nepal
Gross domestic product (GDP) of Nepal and its composition for each fiscal year is estimated by the
Bureau of Statistics, Nepal. The contribution of forestry is jointly reported with that of agriculture. For
fiscal year 2019/20, contribution of the agriculture and forestry sectors to the national GDP was
estimated at 27.08% (MoF, 2020). Even though exact breakdown of forestry sector is not available,
agriculture is the predominant sector and the forestry sector has a small contribution to the national
economy despite the large forest area of 44.74%.
The Fifteenth Plan of Nepal has set a target of maintaining the existing forest cover area of 44.74% by
2024. It aims to sustainably produce 0.85 million m3 of wood per year. Based on the current market rate
of approximately USD 350 per m3, this amount of wood may hardly contribute 1% of the GDP of Nepal.
Apart from timber, forests contribute through herbs, fruits, firewood and tourism. However, the
contribution of forests to the national economy has not been estimated in the Plan. It rather states that
mobilization of forestry sector is a major challenge. The Plan estimates the combined percentage
contribution of the agriculture, and forestry sector to the national economy to shrink from 27% to 22.3%
of the national GDP in 5 years’ duration ending in 2024 (even though it will grow in terms of absolute
value). Three major drawbacks can be associated to the Plan document. First, the target of 44.74% forest
area was set to be identical to the existing forest coverage of 44.74% and does not have any rational
basis associated with development or economy. Second, except for the incremental growth in the
production of forest resources, the document has not set a major departure to utilize forest resources so
as to achieve the sustained high economic growth rate anticipated by 2030. It is worthwhile to mention
that, owing to the harsh and short-sighted regulations, Nepal imported at least 0.83 million m3 of timber
from Asian, African and Australian countries in 2015 but wasted 1 million m3 of timber to decaying
during the same period (MFSC, 2017). The third drawback of the plan document is that it does not
recognize the obstacles created by forest sector to the infrastructure development, and hence, fails to
address on how to remove such obstacles.

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Ministry responsible for forests has been implementing a Forest Investment Program since 2017
(MFSC, 2017). The program outlines nine major drivers of deforestation and forest degradation in
Nepal as: (i) unsustainable harvesting and illegal harvesting; (ii) forest fire; (iii) infrastructure
development; (iv) overgrazing; (v) weak forest management practices; (vi) urbanization and
resettlement; (vii) encroachment; (viii) mining/excavation; and (ix) expansion of invasive species. Low
priority on research and development is identified as one of the causes of deforestation and forest
degradation. Moreover, lack of effective land-use planning systems (at all levels) is identified as a
challenge that hinders the decision-making processes and fails to address cross-sectoral conflicts
regarding forest land use and allocation, particularly for infrastructure development. While national
plan and policy documents do not address the cross-sectoral conflicts regarding forest conservation and
infrastructure development, the Investment Program acknowledges the need of addressing this aspect.
However, none of its five action plans considers reducing such conflict.
Trend of forest cover
While Nepal encountered mean annual loss of forest of 0.47% during 1978-1994 and 0.53% during
1990-2000, this negative trend was reversed with an annual increase in forest cover of about 0.8% from
2000-2010 (MFSC, 2017). From the 40.3% forest area in 2015 (Sharma, 2017) to 44.74% in 2020, an
average increase in forest area per year is 0.89%. Out of the forest cover area of 44.74%, approximately
23% of Nepal’s land area has been designated under protected areas including national parks, reserves,
conservation areas and buffer-zones (MFSC, 2017). Many villages in hilly areas have witnessed a
declining population. With a declining population and also with the changes in their lifestyles (reduced
use of firewood and less demand of fodder for cattle), many agricultural plots in those villages have
now been converted into jungles. More than 20% of agricultural land is abandoned or unutilized in hilly
districts (MFSC, 2017) and this must have contributed partly to the recent gain in forest cover in Nepal.
This trend can be expected to continue in the coming years.
The gain in forest cover has lately brought some negative consequences, particularly, human-wildlife
conflicts. Public consultations and focus group discussions during preparation of the first periodic plan
of Lumbini province (PPC, 2019) revealed that monkey population has significantly increased due to
increased tree cover and has been a major driver for forced emigration from hills to Terai region. Banke
and Bardiya national parks are situated in Lumbini province and people in Bardiya district suffer a lot
from wild lives including tigers and elephants. Ten people were killed by tigers in Bardiya district
during 2020 April to 2021 March (Adhikari, 2021). This is an alarming situation and should be solved
in a systematic way. A senior conservationist authority in Nepal government suggests that Nepal should
urgently implement a policy for defining the maximum threshold population of a particular type of
animal considering the availability of resources (Acharya, 2021). While forest conservation contributes
positively to bio-diversity, it may be reasonable to think of conservation in an optimum way that
maximizes the merits of conservation without escalating human-wildlife conflicts.
Forest policy and conflict with infrastructure development
Nepal government implemented a forest policy in 2014 (MFSC, 2014). The policy states to maintain
the forest area of Nepal to at least 40% and this target resembles to the forest area that existed in Nepal
during 2014. It appears that a rational basis was not followed to choose this target. This is further
illustrated by the fact that the Fifteenth Plan set a target of 44.74% because the forest area in Nepal
during preparing the plan was 44.74% (NPC, 2020). Nepal cannot afford to set an ever increasing target
as the forest area keeps on increasing. Therefore, Nepal needs to think of an optimum forest area for
maximizing the attainment of SDGs.
The latest forest act of Nepal came into effect in 2019 (MoFE, 2019). However, the act was drafted on
the philosophy of maximizing the forest area and not on optimizing it. Any infrastructure project,
irrespective of its size, should get a permission from the Nepal government when it needs to be
constructed within forest boundary and that applies equally for all types of lands within the national

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forest territory. In order to proceed for the permission, the project should be demonstrated as a nationally
important project. Even with that, an equal area should be provided somewhere for compensation
forestry. Sub-national governments should also apply for permission from the national government even
to cut a single tree. Moreover, the application for the permission should be filed on case by case basis
for individual projects with duly performed environmental studies. The duration from the date of
application to the date of approval is indefinite and may go for years.
Even if legal procedure is lengthy, development projects should comply with the legal requirements.
However, not all the projects comply with the environmental regulations. A road in Dhangadhi was
blacktopped without removing approximately 200 Sal trees as shown in Figure 2. A similar story
repeated in Chitwan with 50 trees in between the road pavement (Pokhrel, 2020). While these are mostly
the cases of legal non-compliance, they illustrate a form of prevailing conflict between forest
conservation and infrastructure development. Two approaches will be required to prevent such
misdeeds in the future. From the perspective of implementation, legal compliances should be strictly
enforced, and from the perspective of planning, complicated and lengthy procedure in granting forest
approval should be simplified and expedited.
The implementation of the forest act is based on qualitative grounds, and hence, the scale or extent is
not a focus. For instance, the total forest land handed over to infrastructure projects during 10 years
from 2006/7 to 2015/16 was 2137 hectares with a yearly average of 213.7 hectares (Sharma, 2017). The
forest land handed over for infrastructure projects during a decade accounts for 0.0145% of the total
land area of Nepal. At this rate of deforestation, it will take approximately 690 years for the forest area
to deplete by 1%. For the forest area to deplete from 44.74% to 44%, this rate will take more than 500
years. Moreover, the Forest Investment Program aims to rehabilitate 10000 hectare of degraded forest
in 8 years with an average of 1250 hectares per year (MFSC, 2017). The planned 1250 hectares per year
of conservation is 5.8 times the 213 hectares per year of forest area handed over to infrastructure
construction. This data and the encouraging forest cover growth rate of 0.89% in recent years illustrate
that Nepal is witnessing net forest gain in recent years despite small loss caused by infrastructure
development. Estimation of optimum forest area for Nepal could provide confidence and a means to
simplify the process of handing over the forest land for infrastructure development aimed at achieving
SDGs.

Figure 2: Road blacktopped in Dhangadhi without removing trees from the pavement (Bist, 2020)

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Optimum forest area for sustainable development

System perspective
Forest is a cross-cutting sector related to environment, bio-diversity, landslide prevention, infrastructure
development, land planning, timber, herbs, livelihood, employment and many others. Therefore, forest
is a crucial aspect of national planning with dimensions of environment, economy, physical
development and social development. However, most forest-related studies inadequately analyze these
multiple sectors, particularly infrastructure development and land planning perspectives. Even when
they are considered, the issues are often regarded as conflicting issues and not on a holistic approach.
This study proposes to consider forest sector as one of the components of a system of planning and
development. Lately, the concept of sustainable forest management is regarded as an effective approach
of forest management. Even though it has been effective for the management of forest resources, the
approach is still inadequate from the system perspective as conceptually illustrated in Figure 3. Since
forest sector has served as an obstacle for the rapid infrastructure development aimed at attaining SDGs,
management of forests should be regarded within the framework of achieving SDGs. As a cross-cutting
sector, planning and management of forests should be an area of interest for researchers involved not
only in forestry sector but also in economics, physical infrastructure and social development.

Sustainable
forest
Forest sector
management

Forest sector Sustainable development

a. Existing approach b. Proposed approach

Figure 3: Forest management from sustainable development perspective

Single index of SDGs

The overall concept of sustainable development would arrive at the integration of 230 global indicators,
169 targets and 17 goals. Moreover, Nepal has added 249 local indicators, thus increasing the number
of indicators to 479. Despite thoughtful assessment by many experts around the globe, measurability
and practicality of these goals, targets and indicators pose challenges to researchers (Hansson et al.,
2019; Li et al., 2020). The link between a single indicator and the overarching SDG may be difficult to
establish (Hansson et al., 2019). This is true mostly because SDGs cover the wide and multifaceted
dimensions of development and numerous indicators were actually proposed to gauge these dimensions.
Even though indicators for the SDGs were proposed to measure the complex idea of development in
simpler terms, the indicators are not easy to be expressed into a set of mathematical functions. Several
indicators were not relevant as standalone indicators and some indicators may have unintended negative
consequences when viewed in isolation (Hansson et al., 2019). Hence, despite a plethora of studies, the
idea of sustainable development still remains a complex topic for academic research.
While researchers globally have faced difficulty in monitoring and interpreting the indicators, additional
indicators have made it extremely complicated to monitor and govern the progress of SDGs in Nepal.

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From the planning perspective, one should be able to compare SDG status reports from different years.
Even if a single value indicator may be questionable from the viewpoint of mathematics, a practical
approach from a planner’s experience in arriving at a single value is proposed as below.
A country is assumed to have achieved SDGs if all the targets are achieved by 2030. For the target that
shows reasonable possibility to be achieved by 2030, the probability of the given indicator is treated as
1 (or 100%). As countries aim to achieve SDGs by 2030, the probability should theoretically be 100%.
However, rather than assuming the probability as always 100%, year-wise improvement in the level of
probability can be a useful strategy. Accordingly, a country may have the probability of achieving the
targets of, say, 70% during year 2021 and it may increase to 100% by 2030. For instance, Nepal has set
the GNI per capita of USD 2500 by 2030 but, say, the probable value of GNI by 2030 appears to be
USD 2000 as of 2021’s analysis. Then, the probability for this indicator is 80% in 2021. In order to
increase this probability in 2022, new avenues should be explored to increase the rate of growth in
income. Easing the permission of forest land for infrastructure development or increasing the utilization
of forest resources may increase the probability and hence a policy action in that direction in 2022 may
increase the probability of attainment of GNI target to, say, 85%. This is how the probability for a
particular indicator can be estimated. Probabilities of all indicators for a given target can be estimated
and an average probability for that particular target can be obtained. Furthermore, probabilities of all
targets can be averaged to estimate the probability of the given goal and accordingly, probabilities of
all goals can be averaged to estimate the probability of all SDGs. The limitation of the mean value
should however be acknowledged as the average of 0.5 and 0.5 is 0.5 and that of 1 and 0 is also 0.5.
Nevertheless, the ultimate goal is 100% and when targets are closer to 100%, this limitation becomes
feeble. Hence, this simple approach is expected to serve as a planning strategy by yielding a single
index for the seemingly complex and diverse SDGs.
Optimum forest area
The SDG status and roadmap document of Nepal has included the forest area of 44.7% as the baseline
information for indicator 15.1.1 and does not set any increment or decrease in this value by 2030 (NPC,
2016). It is understood that Nepal needs to strike a balance between forest conservation and physical
development. Therefore, studies should be conducted to determine the optimum forest area for Nepal
from the perspective of attaining SDGs.
From the standalone perspective of forest conservation, attempts are made to maximize the forest area.
However, efforts of forest conservation (attaining SDGs #15 and 13) should not hinder the efforts to
attain remaining SDGs, such as SDGs #1, 7, 8 and 9. Therefore, forest coverage area for a particular
region or nation could be regarded from the perspective of an optimum content. When the forest
coverage area is too low, forests cannot impart the precious environmental benefits of acting as the sink
for greenhouse gases, promoting bio-diversity, maintaining hydrological cycles, and so on. On the other
hand, when the forest coverage area is too high, inadequate land is available for infrastructure and
settlement development. Human life is endangered of wild animals. Evapotranspiration can be
excessive (Barkey & Nursaputra, 2019). Moreover, when use of forest resources is prohibited in a nation
despite having a relatively high forest area, human needs of forest-based resources are fulfilled by
imports. This will negatively contribute to the national economy and promote poverty, thus opposing
the attainment of SDG #1. Between the two extremes, an optimum forest content will provide
environmental benefits, will supply forest resources and will not restrict for essential development
activities aimed at attaining sustainable development.
Figure 4 presents a schematic graph to illustrate the optimum forest area concept. This paper outlines
only a theoretical framework, and hence, indicative functions are presented. In order to illustrate the
concept, four lines are plotted in a single graph. Percentage forest area is chosen for the x-axis and
double y-axes are chosen for the dependent variables. For lines of Type 1 to Type 3, the y-axis on the
left side represents an output function that can be measured in terms of a specific indicator or target.

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For the fourth line (overall), the y-axis on the right side represents the single index of SDGs as defined
in Section 0. Ideally, the peak of the overall line should be 100% but forest is only one of the many
variables contributing to the attainment of SDGs, and thus, the optimization function of forest will have
the peak lower than 100%.
Some indicators of SDGs may be independent of the forest cover area and such indicators are
represented by the line of Type 1 in Figure 4. Some indicators may increase with an increase in forest
area and can be represented as Type 2. On the contrary, some indicators may decrease with an increase
in forest area and they can be represented as Type 3. Type 2 and Type 3 are idealized here as linear
functions but in reality they may be nonlinear with second or higher degree polynomials. Some output
functions may already show an optimal relationship with the increase in forest area. For instance,
considering watershed management as the output function, Barkey & Nursaputra (2019) determined the
optimal forest area for Maros watershed in Indonesia. The study indicated that an increase in forest area
causes the surface runoff to decrease and hence the supply of ground water to increase. However, this
becomes valid up to an optimal forest area beyond which the evapotranspiration component becomes
increasingly larger and hence the supply of ground water begins to decrease. For the Maros watershed,
forest area of 33.74% was shown to be optimum for balancing the supply of ground water and
evapotranspiration (Barkey & Nursaputra, 2019).
Output function (artibrary scale)

Single index of SDGs (%)

Type 1
Type 2
Type 3
Overall

Forest area (%)

Figure 4: Schematic optimization function of forest area for sustainable development

It is believed that the proposed theoretical framework serves as a system perspective to estimate the
optimum forest area to maximize the sustainable development of Nepal. For this simplified and practical
model, it will be unlikely to obtain a clear mathematical function for the output variables but a plot of
at least three points may give an idea of the output function. The current status of the desired output
function and the existing forest area can be taken as a reference point and successive points can be
generated by assuming an increase or decrease in forest area by some percentage points.
Output variables of environmental benefits such as conservation, bio-diversity, carbon trading and
global warming can be evaluated as a function of forest area. Similarly, output variables such as
economic benefits from forest resources, expedition in infrastructure construction due to ease of forest
clearance (SDG #8 and 9), reduction in poverty (SDG #1) can also be estimated for different forest
areas. To a certain extent, utilization of renewable forest resources may actually discourage the import
and use of non-environment friendly products such as aluminum and plastics, thus, serving more to the

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environment than from the mere conservation of forests. For this particular case, the y-axis (left) of
Figure 4 may plot CO2 emission from the additional aluminum products imported to substitute the
demand of timber products that could not be materialized due to forest conservation. The framework of
Figure 4 can be applicable even for the imported timber because 1 m3 of imported timber for Nepal will
be the sum of a) loss of forest somewhere in the world to produce 1 m3 of timber, and b) extra energy
and resources consumed to transport the timber to Nepal. The framework of Figure 4 can also be utilized
for human-wildlife conflict.

Concluding remarks
With the aim to facilitate the attainment of sustainable development goals (SDGs) by 2030, this paper
discussed about forests from a planning perspective. By reviewing the economic status of Nepal and its
journey towards SDGs, the role of forests to the national economy and development were discussed.
This paper analyzed the forest cover area in Nepal and reviewed plans and policies regarding forest
conservation and management. It highlighted the often conflicting idea of forest conservation versus
infrastructure development. While standalone perspectives on these two sectors have led to conflicts, a
system perspective was deemed essential to strike a balance between these two aspects and to achieve
SDGs. A conceptual model was proposed to regard forest management from sustainable development
perspective. As a cross-cutting sector, planning and management of forests should be an area of interest
for researchers involved not only in forestry sector but also in economics, physical infrastructure and
social development.
Once forest is regarded as a component of a system of sustainable development, this paper proposed a
theoretical framework for the optimum forest area for Nepal. The model stresses that forest conservation
should focus on both positive and negative sides of the conservation efforts Nepal has been practicing
and the conservation should aim not for maximizing the forest area but for optimizing it. Forest
conservation should be analyzed in relation to the attainment of not only SDG #15 and 13 but also the
SDGs in overall. Accordingly, this paper presented a simple and practical concept of gauging the
attainment of SDGs by a single index that may be useful for planners.
Developing countries have an opportunity to realize sustainable development by learning from
developed countries’ experience. Since forest conservation is largely regarded as a “do not touch”
approach in Nepal, the fear of touching the forest resources will be reduced when optimum forest cover
area is determined. By adopting the idea of optimum forest area, two major breakthroughs can be
expected in the forest management sector in Nepal. First, the obstacles created by the forest policies in
constructing infrastructures vital for achieving SDGs can be removed, and second, the negligibly small
contribution of the underutilized forest resources to the GNI of Nepal can be scaled up by manifolds.
The objective of this paper was to establish the concept of optimum forest area for sustainable
development. The optimum forest area was not assessed in this paper and will require further research.

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