Assessment of the Upstream Churia Hills and Downstream Terai Plains Linkage: An Environmental Services Perspective

Abstract

The Terai, considered the granary of Nepal, is facing serious threat from siltation originatingfrom the Churia hills mainly due to heavy deforestation together with forest and watersheddegradation. Discussions with local community people revealed that no such problemexisted 5-6 decades ago when the Churia forest was intact. All the forestry sector policieshad recognized the Churia hills as fragile and environmentally sensitive, but the concernedgovernment agencies and the local community people have not been able to conservethis region effectively. There is heavy exploitation of the Churia hills for the extraction oftimber, firewood, non-timber forest products, and for grazing resources. In addition, gravel,sand and boulders are also being extracted for the sake of revenue to the localgovernments. Jalad River of Dhanusha district originating from the Churia hills has beenconverting fertile and productive agriculture lands into barren river beds at the rate of 25hectares a year. The Churia hills should be conserved for the environmental services ofthe watershed to the entire Terai region rather than for provisioning tangible forest productsservices only to the upstream local communities.Key Words: Environmental services; Churia-Terai linkage; PES; upstream-downstreamDOI: 10.3126/banko.v20i1.3504Banko Janakari, Vol. 20, No. 1 pp.17-23