- Nepal’s Sagarnath Forest Development Project which ran a reforestation program from 1977-1984 and introduced eucalyptus as a fast-growing, low-maintenance solution for deforestation and fuelwood needs.
- While eucalyptus initially thrived, it depleted soil moisture and negatively impacted nearby crops, leading to reduced yields and financial losses for the farmers who had replaced traditional crops like rice and mustard with large-scale eucalyptus plantations.
- Discontent over eucalyptus’s effects, and the lack of guidance by those who promoted the planting scheme, led to widespread removal of trees, legal disputes among farmers, and complaints to local governments.
- Experts say such large-scale exotic tree plantations are no longer permitted under national and international biodiversity laws, with the project’s failure highlighting the importance of considering ecological sustainability, soil health and informed decision-making in reforestation efforts.
SARLAHI, Nepal — In 1984, Bharat Kumar Pokhrel was a young forester with a mission to turn theory into practice. Fresh out of forestry school, he joined Nepal’s Sagarnath Forest Development Project.
Primarily based in Sarlahi district and extending into neighboring Mahottari in the southeastern Terai landscape, the project’s star crop was red river gum (Eucalyptus camaldulensis), a fast-growing, low-maintenance eucalyptus species that’s a popular source of easy fuelwood. It’s also not native to Nepal, hailing from far-flung Australia.
“Eucalyptus grows rapidly, ready for harvest in five to 10 years,” Pokhrel told Mongabay. “Once established, it requires minimal replanting for decades. It seemed ideal.”
Nearly four decades later, Pokhrel watches on as farmers across the plains uproot these very trees, calling them a mistake that drained their soil, killed their crops, and left them worse off than before. What he thought was an exemplary means of reforestation has now become a cautionary tale of how imported solutions can fail when local conditions are ignored.
Launched in 1977 with a budget of $13.2 million, and later revised to half that amount, the Sagarnath project aimed to reforest 10,000 hectares (25,000 acres) of degraded land. (This, too, was later revised down to 4,150 hectares, or 10,250 acres.)
The project was spearheaded by Australian forestry expert Kevin Joseph White, whose team recommended eucalyptus for its resilience in arid regions.
The initiative came as Nepal’s forestry sector faced a crisis following the nationalization in 1957 of all forests within the country. Although that policy was meant to protect trees from private landowners, it resulted in unintended consequences. Private owners cleared their forested land to prevent their land being nationalized, leading to massive deforestation across Nepal, which saw forest cover shrink by at least 1.7% annually.
From 1966, the Australian government sent in experts such as White to to help Nepal with its reforestation plans. White and his team suggested replanting the hill tracts with pines brought in from higher elevations and beyond: from khote salla (Pinus roxburghii) and gore salla or Himalayan pine (Pinus wallichiana), to the nonnative Mexican weeping pine (Pinus patula). For the lowland Terai plains, they suggested eucalyptus, according to Popular Gentle Bhusal, a Nepali environmental and social science researcher at Charles Sturt University in Australia.
The main advantage of these species was that they grew incredibly fast compared to their native counterparts, rapidly increasing tree cover and allowing for rapid harvesting, as well.
“While the sal [Shorea robusta] trees can be harvested in 80-100 years, the pines and the eucalyptus [can be harvested] in 8-10 years,” Bhusal said.
So they settled on a mix of eucalyptus (60%) and teak (10%) — both exotic to Nepal — and the remainder sissoo, or North Indian rosewood (Dalbergia sissoo), native to Nepal. This blend was seen as meeting the objective of countering deforestation and accommodating the growing demand for fuelwood and timber — for local communities in the Terai in general and for the Janakpur cigarette factory, at the time one of the biggest employers in the region. The wood, if treated, could also be used as electricity poles.
The Sagarnath project planned for an initial harvest of eucalyptus trees after nine years, with subsequent harvests every eight years. By the time the first harvest was carried out in 1989, tree cover had increased and wood supply had improved. Because the project had met its broad objectives, it was deemed successful.
But around 2015, during the fourth harvest period, a eucalyptus frenzy swept through Sarlahi district as farmers saw firsthand the truckloads of fuelwood leaving the Sagarnath forests. Enticed by the low maintenance and quick yields, they cleared their rice, mustard and wheat fields to plant eucalyptus. The plant’s popularity spread to more than 20 districts across the Terai region.
In response to this enthusiasm, the district forest office distributed saplings on a massive scale. Although various reports, both from within Nepal and abroad, warned about the possible ecological consequences of the tree, farmers who planted eucalyptus on their fertile land said they were never informed.
A 1993 report noted that while eucalyptus was more water-efficient than indigenous species and hadn’t depleted water tables as feared, its high water consumption per hectare could reduce yields on nearby agricultural lands. Eucalyptus can also deplete soil nutrients, harming local soil and leading to declining yields and desertification if not managed with fertilization.
Researchers and farmers say they believe that all that might have already happened on Nepal’s plains, already reeling from the impacts of water shortages. Meanwhile, in the hills, the pines were causing similar problems.
Ganga Thapa, a farmer in Sarlahi’s Ishworpur municipality, said the eucalyptus plants on her farm are like “moisture-sucking monsters.”
“I watered plants near a eucalyptus patch, but it got dry really quick,” she told Mongabay. “Even birds don’t like to sit on its branches.”
Khem Raj Nepal, a farmer from Sarlahi’s Harion municipality, planted 300 eucalyptus trees on his farm, expecting a windfall. Today, he said he regrets the decision.
“I earned just $2,000 in 10 years — far less than what traditional crops would have provided,” he said. “Now I’m back to rice and mustard.”
That sense of regret is widespread. Community forest user groups in Sarlahi report that half of farmers who once planted eucalyptus have abandoned it. “People were promised high returns, but instead, their land deteriorated,” said Sita Ram Pokharel, chair of the district’s forest user group.
The scale of the problem can also be gauged from the number of farmers filing complaints against neighbors for planting eucalyptus. In an area of Harion, Kumar Niraula and his neighbors took legal action against Sambhu Rokka, citing crop destruction. The municipal judicial committee ruled in their favor, ordering Rokka to cut down his eucalyptus trees.
Many complaints over eucalyptus have been registered with the local government in Sarlahi, all related to environmental harm and damage to nearby fields and crops.
Hari Maya Ghalan, the Harion deputy mayor, said she receives complaints and cases against eucalyptus every month. “As much as possible, we mediate between the two parties after hearing the complaint,” she said. “When they refuse to settle, we pursue the legal process and issue a verdict.”
Prem Bahadur Tamang, a ward chief in Ishworpur, said he has settled four such cases in the past six months. “All of them were eucalyptus and crop damage-related cases,” he said. “Oral complaints have been received by many others. I have asked them to file written complaints, after which we will decide and settle the issue.”
Nepal’s plains already face a growing water crisis in the face of climate change. Massive deforestation and unregulated extractive activities in the Chure range, the southernmost chain of the Himalayas and the source of the plains’ water, are having an impact on its water absorption capacity.
Historically, the Chure’s tree cover allowed water to percolate into the soil, recharging the water table. But with less vegetation and more intense rainfall, linked to climate change, the ground can’t absorb the water quickly enough. This leads to flash floods and soil erosion, while the groundwater goes unreplenished. All this is happening as the entire Indo-Gangetic Plain reels under severe heat waves.
Bharat Kumar Pokhrel, the young graduate who joined the Sagarnath project in 1984 and has since retired, said he sympathizes with the farmers. They weren’t given accurate information about eucalyptus or its potential impact on land, he said.
“The people were deceived, so they grew eucalyptus on their fertile land, rather than rice and other crops, which was an error,” he said. Eucalyptus should have been planted on dry ground, Pokhrel said; instead, farmers planted it in their moist rice fields.
He said the forest department should have given guidance to the farmers. “The forest department did not provide good advice. It is understandable that people now comment that eucalyptus should not have been cultivated in fertile soil. Unless the leaves are well taken care of, they too might ruin the soil,” he added.
But the government has refused to accept that promoting the exotic species among farmers was a mistake. Deepak Gyawali, joint secretary of the Ministry of Forest and Environment, said there’s no scientific basis for the accusations.
“It has not been proven so far; it is just a hypothesis,” he said, adding that farmers were benefiting from eucalyptus; he cited the tree’s use in plywood factories to make furniture. “The issues have been observed in certain regions, but they are minor compared to the benefits,” Gyawali added.
Scientific research suggests otherwise. Research has shown that eucalyptus, which has been introduced to various regions around the world, has long raised significant ecological concerns. Eucalyptus trees have high water consumption, pose increased fire hazards (as seen during the recent L.A. fires), displace native forests, and have negative impacts on local wildlife and plant diversity.
Bharat Babu Shrestha, a botany professor at Tribhuvan University in Kathmandu, said there haven’t been any ecological studies on eucalyptus in Nepal. But he pointed to South Africa, where eucalyptus trees caused problems and were removed.
“Fast-growing species like eucalyptus consume a lot of water. If planted in dry areas, they can create water shortages. Studies in Africa have proven this scientifically,” he said.
Knowing what we know now, Shrestha said, things could have been done differently. “In hindsight, the real alternative, both then and now, is to let native species grow naturally,” he said. “If our goal is to restore the ecosystem, we should plant native species.”
Given the limited knowledge at the time, planting the trees wasn’t a mistake, he said. “But doing it without proper control and allowing it to spread to the farmers was a big mistake,” Shrestha added.
Former officials with the Sagarnath project told Mongabay that when they realized the mistake, they tried to switch to growing natural forests, but the results haven’t been as expected.
“With the changing times, it was necessary to move away from exotic species and focus on developing natural forests,” said Gyanendra Kumar Mishra, the project manager from March to December 2016.
The project itself has been heavily politicized and faces challenges such as rampant encroachment and illegal logging. It’s even failed to sell the fuelwood it produces, due to lack of market demand and steep government prices, Mishra said. The Janakpur cigarette factory went out of operation in 2013, and people have switched to imported liquefied petroleum gas rather than firewood for cooking.
Experts say this project is the first and last of its kind. Sindhu Dhungana, a forest expert and former joint secretary of the Ministry of Forest and Environment, said such projects are no longer permitted under national and international laws.
“That type of project is not suitable as biodiversity,” he said. “Now the Convention on Biological Diversity [CBD] and the Cancún [Declaration] does not allow planting imported species by destroying natural forests.”
Nepal is a signatory to the CBD, a United Nations treaty, which in 2016 adopted a declaration at its summit in Cancún, Mexico, on “mainstreaming the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity for well-being.”
But if there were lessons to be learnt for Nepal, those in charge don’t seem to have heeded them, said Bharat Kumar Pokhrel, the retired forest official.
The government is planning a new reforestation program this time in the Chure range, considered the water tower of the plains. Here, the government has chosen the native chiuri or Indian butter tree (Diploknema butyracea) as the plant of choice — without a full assessment, according to Pokhrel.
“The Chure range is very fragile,” he said. “We need to carry out detailed studies before opting for a particular tree for reforestation and assess its potential impacts if the farmers adopt it without understanding its costs and benefits.”
Banner image: Ganga Thapa, a farmer in Sarlahi’s Ishworpur municipality, points towards the eucalyptus plants affecting her farm. Image by Mukesh Pokhrel.
Mukesh Pokhrel is a journalist based in Kathmandu.
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Citation:
Bayle, G. K. (2019). Ecological and social impacts of eucalyptus tree plantation on the environment. Journal of Biodiversity Conservation and Bioresource Management, 5(1), 93-104. doi:10.3329/jbcbm.v5i1.42189
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