May 3: There has been a problem in utilizing locally produced wood due to the state mechanism. Even though timber worth billions of rupees is being imported every year, the domestically produced wood in large quantity is yet to be utilized. As a result, timber in most of the forests that occupy more than 45 percent of the total area of the country are rotting and wasting away.

Currently, Nepal needs 70 to 100 million cubic feet of wood annually. The country itself produces 20 million cubic feet of wood from the forests annually and it has to rely on imports to fulfill requirements.

According to government officials, 70 to 150 million cubic feet of wood can be produced from the domestic forests. However, experts say that due to existing policies, it is not possible to increase the production of wood. The Scientific Forest Management Procedure 2071 was issued to address this problem of wood shortage and to reduce the import of wood.

Stakeholders say that timber production had increased after the implementation of the procedure.

However, due to the shortcomings in implementing some aspects of the procedure it was scrapped under pressure from NGOs and environmental activists.

Timber traders claim that after the cancellation of the Scientific Forest Management Procedure, 2071 in the year 2020, cutting of trees has been stopped for 3 years in more than 800 forests across the country.

The Ministry of Forestry prepared the National Standard 2078 for sustainable forest management after the cancellation of the Scientific Forest Management Procedure. However, even after all this time, that standard has not been implemented.

Forest management expert Bishnu Gyawali says that there is a problem in implementation of the new standard because the administrative leadership of the forest group is unable to explain the benefits of the new standards while the political leadership does not want to understand it.

Gyawali said, “It seems that the administrative leadership has not been able to explain its point clearly. Apart from pressure on the political leadership not to implement it in various ways, the lack of knowledge and lack of will are also other contributing factors.”

Gyawali, an expert, says that since there are mostly only small investors in the timber business, the political leadership has not been pressured to implement the national standards for sustainable forest management.

From the commercial point of view, the imports of timber from abroad have increased due to the complicated process, lack of cooperation from the bureaucracy as well as the high price of Nepali wood.

Officials of the Ministry of Forest have been delaying the implementation of the National Standard for Sustainable Forest Management, 2078, on the pretext that they do not have a departmental minister. In a conversation with New Business Age, the spokesperson for the Ministry of Forest, Somnath Kafle said, “Discussions about the report have not been able to move forward due to the absence of a minister.”