National level network meeting on “Development of road-map for ecosystem services certification in Nepal”

ANSAB and NEPCon aim to establish a new partnership leveraging on the long-term expertise working with sustainable forest management and ecosystem services certification, combined with local expertise and extensive experience of working with forest dependent communities in Nepal. ANSAB and NEPCon, with funding support from CISU – Civil Society in Development, have been implementing a project “Strengthening forest dependent communities in Nepal through capacity building around sustainable forest management and forest certification”. The project activities have been carried out in 25 community forests -17 in Gaurishankar Conservation Area of Dolakha district and 8 in Nawalpur district of Nepal, to identify major forest based ecosystem services, and assess the knowledge, interests and capacity building needs of the forest user groups, that would be helpful for designing the larger program to increase financial and social empowerment of poor forest dependent communities in Nepal.

As a part of the project, ANSAB organized a national level network meeting in Kathmandu on November 22, 2019 with the overall objective to develop a practical idea for the new project that would support to build resilient communities and sustainable ecosystems through conservation and maintenance of ecosystem services. The specific objectives of the network meeting were to:

  • Share the concept of the ecosystem services and its new approach;
  • Update the stakeholders on the findings of community level trainings and district level stakeholder workshop;
  • Prioritize the ecosystem services and potential activities that can be helpful in order to develop a roadmap for ecosystem service certification.

There were total of 26 individuals, representing government, development agencies such as WWF, IUCN, ICIMOD and RECOFTC, civil society organizations and forest user groups and donor agency namely USAID. There was a brief presence of Secretary and Joint Secretary from the Ministry of Forests and Environment in the inception of the meeting, where they appreciated the work that ANSAB has been doing and showed a full commitment to support for the upcoming project.