Humans have lived in the eastern Himalayas for several millennia, over the course of which they have adapted their customs, lifestyles and livelihoods to the local environments. The rugged terrain has precluded convenient movements and mixing of communities, as reflected by the diversity of ethnic and religious groups across the Eastern Himalayas Region. But, from about the last half-century or so, exposure to external circumstances has changed these sustainable lifestyles. Now, land tenure issues, increasing influence of both global and regional market economies, and a rapidly increasing population have combined to create and intensify socioecological conflicts.
People use most of the corridors and even some of the smaller sites that are identified as outcomes; thus the anthropogenic changes also impact and influence the region’s biological richness at intensities never before experienced in the region. These threats to biodiversity are issues that have to be addressed to achieve the conservation targets in the region. Since many areas within the corridor outcomes will never become fully protected areas the solutions will have to involve a wide range of civil society.
The region includes three countries, each with subtle or conspicuously different political and governance structures. Even within a country, differences in state government regulations and policies have to be considered in a conservation strategy.
Bhutan’s Institutional Framework: In Bhutan, all conservation and related activities are mandated with the Department of Forestry Services in the Ministry of Agriculture, better known as the RNR sector (Renewable Natural Resources Sector), and encompasses agriculture, animal husbandry, and forestry. The Department of Forestry Services fulfills its responsibilities through four functional divisions: the Forest Protection and Utilization Division, Nature Conservation Division, Forest Resources Development Division, and the Social Forestry Division. Field activities are implemented at the regional level through 11 Territorial Divisions and five national park/sanctuary offices.
The Nature Conservation Division is responsible for all management and other activities within the protected areas. Although its focus is the protected areas system, its ambit extends to biodiversity conservation issues outside the protected areas, especially in the buffer zones and corridors. The Forest Protection and Utilization Division is responsible for protecting and managing all government forests outside the protected areas system, and the Forest Resources Development Division for developing management plans for sustainable utilization of governmental Forest Management Units.
The National Environmental Commission (NEC) is an independent institution that is the national focal point for environmental policies and responsibilities outlined in the Convention on Biodiversity. Together with a Biodiversity Management Board (BMB) comprising of a 13 member cross-sectoral panel, the NEC oversees the implementation of the National Biodiversity Action Plan. The BMB is also responsible for advising, reviewing or reforming national policies, projects, and actions that pertain to the nation’s biological resources, including conservation and sustainable use. The Natural Resources Training Institute trains mid-level civil servants in forest, livestock, and agricultural extension services.
The nongovernmental conservation sector in Bhutan is represented by two major conservation NGOs operating in Bhutan—WWF Bhutan Program and the Royal Society for Protection of Nature (RSPN). Other relevant institutions include the National Women’s Association of Bhutan, the Youth Development Fund, and gewogs (village level development agencies). WWF has been active in Bhutan since 1977, engaged in training and capacity building, biological surveys, assisting with protected area management, helping to develop forestry legislation, and supporting conservation monitoring. WWF was also closely involved with the revision of Bhutan’s protected areas system and in designing the system of corridors that now constitute the Bhutan Biological Conservation Complex.
RSPN was founded in 1987, and remains Bhutan’s only national conservation NGO. Its focus is to promote conservation through environmental education in schools, integrated conservation and development programs, and advocacy. RSPN is now in the process of developing an endowment fund to ensure sustainable funds for financial security.
The Bhutan Trust Fund for Environmental Conservation (BTEF) is another parastatal conservation organization that was established in 1991 as one of the world’s first conservation trust funds to provide a sustainable source of revenue for conservation. This innovative program now contributes more than $1 million annually toward conservation, funding projects such as graduate training for conservation biologists, providing seed money for the RSPN endowment, support for protected areas management and development, and capacity building by providing scholarships.
Nepal’s Insitutional Framework: In Nepal, the Ministry of Forest and Soil Conservation (MFSC), its departments and parastatals are the main policy-making agencies for forest and wildlife management. The MFSC is organized into three policy divisions and four implementing departments, the latter being the Department of Forests, Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation, Department of Watershed Management and Soil Conservation, Department of Forest Survey and Research.
The Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation (DNPWC) is mandated with conserving the country’s major representative ecosystems, unique natural and cultural heritage, wildlife protection, and research. While the earlier emphasis was on species protection, the DNPWC now stresses a participatory approach to biodiversity conservation and management. The Department of Forests (DoF) is responsible for managing, demarcating, controlling, and conserving all national forests outside the protected areas. The Community and Private Forestry Division of the DoF carries out forest development and management, and oversees utilization programs in community and private forests, while the Planning and Training Division formulates management plans and programs for the conservation and promotion of Nepal's forests and its rational use.
Under the 1990 Constitution of the Kingdom of Nepal, there is provision to establish a Natural Resources and Environment Committee in the House of Representatives. This committee has the powers and functions to evaluate the policies and programs pertaining to conservation and natural resource management, in collaboration with the Ministries of Forest and Soil Conservation; Water Resources; Land Reform and Management; and Population and Environment, and relevant departments and agencies under these ministries. Therefore, these other ministries are also relevant to conservation activities in Nepal. For instance, the scope of the Ministry of Population and Environment extends to oversight of the National Conservation Strategy and the Nepal Environmental Policy and Action Plan. This ministry is also responsible to ensure compliance of various international conventions.
The Environment Protection Council, established in 1992, provided the guidance and impetus for the government to ratify the Convention on Biological Diversity, the Convention on Climate Change, the Vienna Convention on the Protection of the Ozone Layer, and the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer. Nepal has also developed its institutional capacity for biodiversity protection and conservation management through national and overseas training, and recently produced the National Biodiversity Strategy.
The nongovernmental conservation community in Nepal is much larger than in Bhutan. Some of the major institutions include WWF Nepal Program, the King Mahendra Trust for Nature Conservation, UNDP, IUCN-Nepal and The Mountain Institute. The International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD) is a regional organization based in Kathmandu.
IUCN began work in Nepal in the 1960s, assisting early government efforts to protect environmentally sensitive areas and wildlife. Nepal became a State Member of IUCN in 1973 with the Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation (DNPWC) as the active link. In the 1980s, IUCN supported the Nepal government in formulating a National Conservation Strategy (NCS). IUCN’s current focus in Nepal is wetland conservation and environmental education.
WWF has been involved in conservation efforts in Nepal since 1967, and is considered one of the key organizations involved in conservation in Nepal. Over the years, WWF’s initial focus of species conservation has expanded to involve local communities in natural resource management, capacity building within nongovernmental and governmental institutions, conservation education and institutional support for a landscape approach to conservation based on ecoregional scale planning. WWF Nepal has also played an important role in imparting technical support to the government in biodiversity-related policymaking, planning and implementation issues, and issues related to transboundary conservation. Currently, WWF Nepal supports four major projects: Terai Arc Landscape (TAL) Program, Kangchenjunga Conservation Area Project, Sagarmatha Community Agro-Forestry Project (SCAFP) and Northern Mountains Conservation Project (NMCP) on medicinal plants.
The King Mahendra Trust for Nature Conservation (KMTNC) was established in 1982. For nearly two decades now, KMTNC has successfully undertaken over 100 small and large projects on nature conservation, from Chitwan and Bardia in the lowlands to the Annapurna and Manaslu regions of the high Himalayas and Trans-Himalayas regions of Upper Mustang and Manang.
The International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICMOD) is a regional program based in Katmandu with the mandate to promote the development of an economically and environmentally sound mountain ecosystem and to improve the living standards of mountain populations in the Hindu Kush Himalayas Region. ICIMOD works mainly at the interface between research and development and acts as a facilitator to generate new mountain-specific knowledge to further conservation and development in the mountains. ICIMOD also facilitates sharing of new knowledge among relevant institutions, organizations, and individuals in the region, and thus functions as a multidisciplinary documentation and information center on integrated mountain development. It is also a focal point for mobilizing and coordinating applied and problem-solving research activities, and for training in integrated mountain development.
In addition to the above NGOs, there are more than 100 local and national level NGOs and community-based organizations (CBOs). Nepal Forum of Environmental Journalists, Bird Conservation Nepal, Environmental Camp for Conservation Action, The Mountain Institute, and Mountain Spirit among others are active in raising awareness of conservation issues in Nepal.
Northeastern India’s Institutional Framework: In India, the forests and wildlife are constitutionally vested as state subjects. Thus, the respective state Forest Departments are primarily accountable for managing forests and the Wildlife Wings of the Forest Departments manage the protected areas. The Chief Wildlife Warden is responsible for the implementation of Wildlife Act, and has to report to the central Ministry on select wildlife matters. The Ministry of Environment and Forests has overall responsibility for forests and protected areas in India.
But, unlike in the rest of India, about 54 percent of the forests in the northeast hill states are categorized as unclassed state forests. These are largely under the control of private individuals, clans, village councils, district councils and other traditional community institutions. In Assam, two district councils manage 3,589 square kilometers (1 percent) of Reserve Forests and Proposed Reserve Forests, the rest being under the state Forest Department. In comparison, the neighboring hill states Meghalaya (97 percent), Nagaland (97 percent) and Tripura (84 percent) have much greater proportions of their forests managed by autonomous district councils as well as clans, village councils and individual families. Manipur, Arunachal Pradesh and Mizoram have about 63 percent, 52 percent and 46 percent, respectively of community managed and controlled forests (Down to Earth 2002). Utilization of unclassed state forests includes traditional usufruct rights.
Thus, in these hill states the District Councils are an important part of the governance structure, and forest management comes under the purview of the Council Forest Departments. Despite the devolution of management rights to the states and districts, the central Ministry of Environment and Forests, in Delhi, retains responsibility for sourcing funds to the state departments, formulating legislation and amendments, and providing direction to state Forest Departments on major policy decisions in forest and biodiversity protection. Acceptance of central-level directives by the state departments is, however, discretionary.
Even at the village level, there are institutions such as the village durbars and Village Development Councils that play a very important role in conservation of biodiversity and ecological services. These councils run the day-to-day village administration, including the management of village or community forests where fuelwood extraction, thatch grass collection, and gathering materials for house construction are permitted and regulated. Certain village durbars are also the custodians of sacred groves and community forests.
Like the rest of the country, Assam, Tripura and Arunachal Pradesh in northeast follow the Panchayati Raj system, which governs a substantial portion of the common property resources, and is also an important decentralized institution in biodiversity conservation. In Arunachal Pradesh, the Anchal Samitis are the panchayat equivalents, and comprise of village clusters. A substantial portion of undisturbed natural community forests in Arunachal Pradesh is under the control of Anchal Samitis, which makes them important stakeholders of biodiversity conservation and management.
There are more than 150 conservation-related nongovernmental organizations in northeast India. Most are organized at local and grassroots level, but several are regional, national, and international NGOs that have been working in the region for more than two decades. The activities of the grassroots NGOs vary from poverty alleviation through community development, education and awareness, community mobilization, advocacy and action projects, to ex situ and in situ conservation and biological inventory and surveys. Many were established by dedicated groups of individuals motivated to conserve species, biodiversity, or the environment where they live. For example, the Green Guards and Green Manas are two local NGOs based in Assam engaged in small-scale ex situ conservation projects; the former rescues, rehabilitates, and releases greater and lesser adjutant storks, and the latter has a captive breeding program for Pygmy hogs. In Sikkim, the local NGO, Ecotourism & Conservation Society of Sikkim (ECOSS) is involved in developing and promoting good ecotourism practices. In Assam, Nature’s Beckon is a small activist group striving to save the last few patches diverse rainforest in the remote Jaipur, Upper Dihing and Dirak districts of eastern Assam from industrialization.
Some of the regional and national NGOs active in northeast India include ATREE, a NGO that promotes biodiversity conservation and sustainable resource use in the eastern Himalayas and the Western Ghats. Aaranyak is a regional NGO dedicated to biodiversity conservation and other environmental issues in Northeast India and coordinates activities of smaller, grassroots NGOS such as Nature’s Foster, Green Heart Nature Club, Green Forest Conservation, New Horizon, Green Manas, and Green Guard. Because many of these grassroots NGOs are unable to receive and convert foreign-currency grants from international donors, the larger NGOs function as “nodal agencies” to receive, disburse and coordinate activities of the former.
CEE is a national NGO active in northeastern India. CEE is primarily engaged in environmental education programs, and is also the National Host Institution for the UNDP Small Grant Programme in India. The northeast regional cell of CEE in Guwahati (CEE NE) facilitates the program in the eight northeastern states where it implements 11 ongoing projects, of which five are in Assam, three in Manipur, and one each in one in Meghalaya, Mizoram, Sikkim. Other national NGOs active in the region include Wildlife Trust, India and the Bombay Natural History Society. Another major, national NGO active in the region is, WWF India, which has a regional office in West Bengal with sub-regional offices in Kolkotta, Sikkim, Darjeeling, Assam and Arunachal Pradesh. WWF undertakes diverse activities from helping to protect sacred groves, environmental education and tiger conservation to large, landscape-level projects, such as the ambitious North Bank Landscape project. Other NGOs include Inner Asia Foundation in Arunachal Pradesh, which is striving to create a reserve to the north of, and contiguous to, Kamlamg Wildlife Sanctuary and Namdapha National Park, and the World Pheasant Association which is active in Sikkim, Darjeeling, Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland and Mizoram.
The ‘NGO Landscape’ in context: As evident, the civil society groups active in conservation vary widely in the different countries. For instance, in Nepal the national and international conservation NGOs as well as CBOs can undertake conservation activities with relatively few constraints. In Bhutan, the civil society groups in conservation are more limited, with one international NGO and one national NGO that is incorporated under the Companies Act. However, the village-level government authorities (gewogs) are essentially quasi-NGOs, since they have a certain amount of independence and authority from the central government. Northeastern India has hundreds of grassroots-level conservation NGOs and CBOs, but most cannot receive foreign exchange grants due to exchange control regulations. However, funds can be disbursed through local or regional “nodal” NGOs that have exchange control permits. NGOs, such as CEE and Aaranyak are already perfoming this role.
Because many of the grants are expected to be in small amounts, it is best to identify a recognized NGO, or consortia of NGOs in each country to help the smaller NGOs, CBOs and other civil society groups develop and submit proposals. These “nodal” agencies would also be tasked with project monitoring and ensuring that reports and other outputs are submitted in time.
All three countries have ratified the Convention on Biological Diversity and prepared National Biodiversity Conservation Strategies and Biodiversity Action Plans. All three are members of IUCN, and have also acceded to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora.
The Forest Act, 1969 governs Bhutan’s forestry and conservation sector. This Act guides development of forestry operations, and establishes central control over use of forest resources. The 1995 Forest and Nature Conservation Act provides the legal basis for protection and sustainable use of forests, wildlife, and other natural resources in the country, including protected areas management, wildlife conservation, social and community forestry, trade of forest produce, and soil and water conservation (from DoF 2002).
Other relevant legislative instruments, especially with regard to landscape conservation include: the 1974 National Forest Policy which sets the policy for maintaining at least 60 percent forest cover; the Land Act of 1988 which deals with procedures of land registration and allotment to reduce forest encroachment, and land use regulations in forest lands; and the Environmental Assessment Act of 2000 which establishes the procedures for assessing and mitigating potential environmental threats from projects.
In Nepal the National Parks and Wildlife Conservation (NPWC) Act (amended 1974) establishes regulations for protected areas, and recognizes species for protection. The Himalayas National Park Regulations (1979) provide for people living in national parks to collect natural resources for subsistence. The Buffer Zone Management Regulations (1996) and Buffer Zone Management Guidelines (1999) are meant to design programs compatible with National Park management and facilitate public participation in conservation, design and management of buffer zones. These regulations, under the NPWC Act provide for 30-50 percent of the park revenues to be retained for community development activities in the buffer zone. The Master Plan for the Forestry Sector (1988) recognizes ecosystem and genetic resource conservation as a long-term objective, and states that a pre-requisite to reduce park people conflict is meeting the basic needs of the people through the forestry sector. Significantly for landscape conservation, it also emphasizes the need for a policy of wildlife conservation outside the protected areas through an ecosystem-based approach. This policy is reiterated in the government’s Tenth Five Year Plan (2059/60 – 2063/64). The Forest Act (1993) provides the government with the power to delineate any part of a national forest that has a 'special environmental, scientific or cultural importance' as a protected forest, which is relevant to landscape conservation.
In India, the forested areas are governed under the National Forest Policy of 1988. Central legislation such as the Indian Forest Act, 1927, the Wild Life (Protection) Act, 1972, the Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980, and the Environment (Protection) Act, 1972 apply in the northeastern region. But several state-based legislation, District Council Acts, and community customary laws also apply in each state to regulate forest management and extraction from forests broadly classified as Unclassed State Forests. These forests, under private and community ownership and management, are mostly unsurveyed (both in terms of area, biodiversity value) in the hill states. With 80 percent of the northeast region’s forests under private and community control, the customary laws are widely applicable. But the District Council Acts are too weakly enforced; thus, with the concurrent weakening of the influence of the traditional institutions over the land and people, access to these forests is now almost unrestricted.
Many of the existing laws and policies require amendments to make them compatible with current biodiversity conservation goals. Traditional and customary laws also have to be documented and analyzed so adequate legal back up to appropriate customary and traditional laws could be extended. Biodiversity could be integrated into development sectors, making biodiversity conservation an integral part of all the development activities and to ensure that ecosystem services are valued.
Economic Situation
Bhutan’s economy is based on agriculture, export of hydropower to India and nature-based, high-end tourism. Bhutanese societies are primarily agrarian or pastoral; today, 79 percent of Bhutanese depend on agriculture, and most of the arable lands are already cultivated. Most Bhutanese still rely on natural resources such as fuelwood, fodder, building material, food, and traditional medicines from forests and other natural habitats. It is therefore clear that Bhutan and its people will have to depend heavily on the continued maintenance of environmental integrity for cultural, social, and economic well-being and growth.
Cognizant of the economic dependence of an intact environment, Bhutan has persisted with a cautious approach to development. The government’s economic policy is underlain with an emphasis and need for conservation of its natural resources (MoA 1998). Thus, there is a deliberate attempt to control the pace of the transition from subsistence to a modern economy to ensure sustainability.
The economy of Nepal is also closely bound to its natural resources—arable land, water, forested areas, and protected areas. Agriculture is the mainstay of the economy, providing a livelihood for over 80 percent of the population and accounting for 41 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). In general, agriculture contributes more than 50 percent of household income (HMGN/MFSC 2002). Tourism is the second most important source of foreign exchange for Nepal, after agriculture. About 45 percent of tourists coming to Nepal visit protected areas, generating substantial revenue. Tourism revenues from Chitwan and Annapurna contribute substantially to the national and local economies. But there is more scope for increasing tourism revenue further, and nature-based tourism will be a significant component.
The economy in northeastern India is primarily forestry and agrarian-based. The plains are dominated by settled cultivation, whereas jhum (slash and burn) is practiced in the hills. Forestry contributes between 40-55 percent to local economies (Rahul Kaul World Pheasant Association, pers comm). Development in the region has not been commensurate with its rich resource base. The CMIE (Centre for Monitoring India’s Economy) index of relative development of infrastructure (1966-67 to 1992-93) position shows that, with the exception of Assam (ranked 13), the remaining seven states rank below 15 among the 25 states of the country.
However, the conventional parameters of development are not the best measures for understanding the social and economic status of the Hill communities. The prevalence of traditional lifestyles, barter trade, and common property dissociates tend to hide the level of poverty or prosperity of the highland people. The spread of market economy and policy interventions, and accompanying infrastructure, have impacted the socio-economic dynamics of the hill communities and the rate of exploitation of natural resources in the region. During the past few decades, economic development has been characterized by forest clearing, increased exports of medicinal plants, development of hydro power projects, construction of water resource works, increased tourism, exploration and extraction of minerals, conversion of forested lands to orchards and tea gardens, commercial horticulture, and establishment of cantonments and hill stations. The growth of industrial activity has been largely limited to the foothills. To this is added large scale of migration of people in search of better job opportunities. Overall, these developments are detrimental to the agrarian economic base of the region.
Bhutan is one of the least urbanized countries in the world, but with the 6.7 percent annual increase in migration from rural to urban areas, this situation is changing at a rapid pace (UNEP 2001; NEC 2002). With urbanization there comes a need to secure more land to accommodate urban expansion and to provide infrastructure and services (UNEP 2001). Developing this infrastructure for urban areas, as well as for the population living in scattered and sparsely populated areas, is likely to have significant impacts on the environment and biodiversity in Bhutan. Roads will fragment currently continuous swathes of habitats and corridors. Provision of irrigation and hydropower, while enhancing the lives of the people, can have serious negative impacts on the environment, especially on aquatic biodiversity. Urbanization and infrastructure development also impacts negatively on forest cover on valley slopes as forests are cleared to make room for urban settlement, increasing the risks of soil erosion and disturbances in watercourses. It also increases the probability of landslides and flash floods, which have economic and human life-related consequences.
Nepal offers its citizens one of the poorest levels of infrastructure services in the world (Nepal Country Paper 2001). Only 45 percent of the population has access to safe drinking water, 6 percent to sanitation (39 percent in urban areas) and about 21 percent of households have electricity. Road density is low, with coverage of about 6 kilometers per 100 square kilometers. Most of the existing and planned infrastructure is concentrated in the Kathmandu Valley and in the Terai—a response to the migration of people from the mountains to the Terai zones and to cities, Kathmandu in particular. However, providing infrastructure to the more remote areas is also a government priority.
Several large hydropower projects are underway, which will substantially increase power generation. Road networks are seen as an urgent need, especially to connect villages with market and administration centers. All these projects will have environmental and biodiversity related consequences, in terms of habitat loss, fragmentation, improved access and settlement, human-wildlife conflicts.
Most of the development in northeast India is urban-centric, with the regional governments lacking proper policy on developing villages and suburban areas. The rapid and unplanned urbanization leading to loss of forest cover, unsustainable resource utilization, lack of drinking water (underground as well as run off), poverty and slums in and around the urban areas. The population increased in the region is about 6.94 million between 1991 and 2001 .
Roads are a necessity to connect interior villages and to improve communications, but roads also result in forest fragmentation, and lead to anthropogenic activities that are detrimental to the ecosystem. The Government of India has a priority to establish road communication to all the villages by 2020. Being a long border with China, Myanmar and Bangladesh the Department of Defense also has a priority to develop the roads along the border areas, most of which are fragile ecosystems and wildlife habitat, leading further fragmentation of habitat. Environmental impact assessments are not necessary for defense-related projects.
Large numbers of hydroelectric dams have been proposed in the region, and some are being implemented. The hydroelectricity generating potential in the region is 34,920 MW, or 41.50 percent of all the hydropower in India, according to an assessment by the Central Electric Authority (CEA)2. The dams will inundate important ecosystem areas and increase settlement in forest areas. Further, installing transmission cables will destroy more forest areas.
Agroforestry has a tremendous potential in the region, and may succeed in replacing the traditional slash and burn cultivation (jhum) practiced by the hill tribes. Input of resources from governments and international agencies like World Bank for development of this sector is increasing. However, unplanned and unscientific agroforestry may lead to potential threat to the existing ecosystems as well as monoculture.
The tea industry in Assam is very old, and was started in 1837. Until 1997 there were 947 tea gardens covering over 230,000 hectares in northeast India. Since 1998-99, however, the tea industry has grown sharply, and now covers almost 280,000 hectares. This records a rapid growth of tea gardens in the region and corresponds to the loss of forest cover in the foothills and uplands in the valleys.
There are an estimated 864 million tons of coal reserve in the region. Meghalaya State has the largest reserve of coal in the region particularly in ecologically sensitive area like Garo Hills. Several open cast and rat-hole mining operations extract these deposits, with scant heed for environmental impacts.
With only about 650,000 people, Bhutan has one of the lowest population densities in Asia, which is an opportunity for conservation. However, with the introduction of better health conditions and living standards, the population has begun to grow rapidly with the current level of increase at 2.5 percent per annum. Already, more than 42 percent of the population is under 14 years of age. As this cohort grows up, with increasing economic aspirations and resource needs, the pressure on the environment can be expected to increase tremendously. Although most of the population is still rural, there is an increasing migration into urban centers. Thus the government will be challenged to create more employment opportunities for these growing urban populations.
Nepal’s human population is estimated at 23.2 million people and growing at 2.4 percent annually. At these rates, the population will double in 25 years. The distribution of the population is biased toward the lowlands. Since the eradication of malaria in the fertile Terai lowlands in the 1960s, hundreds of thousands of immigrants moved from the hills of Nepal (and also into Nepal from India) into the Terai. Between 1981 and 1991, the average net gain in the human population in the Terai due to immigration was 94.3 percent in eight out of 14 districts in the Terai (Khatri-Chhetri and Devkota 2001). The consequence of this high population growth rate is unsustainable forest resource use in the Terai. Approximately 80 percent of the households now hold less than 2 hectares of land, which is inadequate to support a family (Khatri-Chhetri & Devkota 2001). Therefore, the people have to depend on forests for their daily requirements of firewood and supplement their food with forest products. If the current trends continue, the Terai forests will be unable to support the resource demands from the increasing human population unless sustainable natural resource use and management regimes are instituted—quickly.
In the mountains, the population as a whole is culturally and ethnically diverse, but the demographics in the mountains reflect the consequences of migration to the lowlands. In the Kanchenjunga Conservation Area, for instance, the population density is only about 3 persons per square kilometer. Emigration to the lowlands and to nearby towns has depleted the population.
Because of its location in the geographic periphery of India, the northeastern region has evolved its own distinct cultural and socioeconomic identities. Covering 255,083 square kilometers—7.7 percent of India’s total area (NEC 2000) —the region supports a population of just over 38 million people, or just about 4 percent of the country’s population that exceeds a billion people (2001 Census). The population density of 151 persons per square kilometer is one of the lowest in the country. More than 85 percent of the northeast region’s population lives in rural areas (Census of India 2001). However, there is a marked difference in the spatial distribution of the population among the constituent states; the more hospitable plains and valleys are much more populous than the difficult mountain regions.
The mountain areas are dominated by a number of indigenous tribal communities who have evolved their economic activities and resource management strategies to exist and exploit the steep topographies, and contend with the inaccessibility and isolation. The indigenous knowledge and practices generally emphasized low intensity resource use, compared to modern commercial lifestyles. But in recent years, increased accessibility and political and economic integration of the mountain communities have impacted the traditional lifestyles and cultures. Economic amalgamation has reduced the autonomy of the local communities, with the risk of marginalization because of their inability to compete with the formal markets and modernized economics of the rest of the country. Socially, the migrant-urban encounters, tourism and exposure to urban life have raised economic aspirations of the local hill communities, and new values and modes of behavior have penetrated traditional norms (ATREE 2003). These changing values, resource-use patterns and demographies will be of consequence to biodiversity conservation in the region. As the traditional sustainable resource-use practices and protectionist values—such as sacred forests—give way to market economy-influenced values, the threats to biodiversity will surely increase.
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