Re-reading Nepalese landscapes: labour, water, farming patches and trees

Abstract

In this paper we use a patches approach to study changes in local land-use practices in response to constraints of labour and the increasing effects of climate change. Drawing on a mix of different participatory exercises and in-depth interviews we describe five categories of land use patches in two contrasting study areas in Nepal. We examine how decreasing access to land, labour and water generate socially differentiated local landscapes. Our findings point toward adaptive land-use responses that secure a subsistence production, encourage close integration between crop and tree land practices, but are supported by a remittance economy. This logic of local land use is not recognised by either agricultural or forestry institutions. We argue that an ongoing debate on land abandonment in Nepal is an example of how narrow sectoral understandings fail to comprehend adaptation practices in a complex landscape system.