A team of five students from the University of Wisconsin–Madison—Ali Mammadov, Ben Jaccard, Francie Fink, Gatiosso Traore, and Kanan Mammadov—recently took a deep dive into the future of Nepal’s forests. Under the guidance of Dr. Teri Allendorf, they wrote a 79-page cost-benefit analysis to find out if “community forestry” really works.
So, what is community forestry? It’s a model where local people manage the forest themselves, rather than leaving it up to the government. These local groups are called Community Forest User Groups (CFUGs). The students compared this model to a “business-as-usual” approach where the government technically manages the land, but often doesn’t provide much protection or care.
The students looked at both the costs and benefits of each system over a 30-year period. They considered things like:
🌿 Forest products (wood, herbs, etc.)
🌿 Carbon storage (which helps fight climate change)
🌿 Ecosystem services (like water and soil protection)
🌿 Recreation and tourism
🌿 Administrative and community costs
To make their findings solid, they used a Monte Carlo simulation, which is a fancy way of saying they ran thousands of possible scenarios to see how things might play out under different conditions.
Their conclusion? Community forestry came out way ahead—even when they tested worst-case situations for the current system. The benefits clearly outweighed the costs, making community management both an environmentally smart and economically sound choice.
Their recommendation is clear: Nepal should continue to support and expand community forestry. It’s good for the forests, good for the climate, and good for local communities.
Read the report here and listen to an AI summary of this paper here.