Do earthquakes change the timber and firewood use pattern of the forest dependent households? Evidence from rural hills in Nepal

Narayan Prasad Gautam, Bir Bahadur Khanal Chhetri, Nirmal Raut, Mulualem Tigabu, Nirjala Raut, Muhammad Haroon U. Rashid, Xiangqing Ma and Pengfei Wu

Forest Policy and Economics, 2020, vol. 119, issue C

Abstract: Studies on the extent to which households are affected by earthquake and their varying degree of dependence on forest resources, particularly reliable and comprehensive ones, are very rare. This study assessed the types of shocks faced by the earthquake-hit households and the change in timber and firewood use patterns by them before and after the occurrence of devastating Gorkha earthquake-2015 in Nepal. The study used household level panel dataset (n = 99 in 2008 and 2018) collected using a modified version of household survey questionnaire developed by Centre for International Forest Research (CIFOR) for studying the poverty-environment network. Separate random effect models are employed to identify the factors that influence the collection of firewood and timber by theearthquake shock exposed households. The results reveal that the households exposed to earthquake lost significant number of livestock and labor, land and other assets. Regression results show that there was a positive and significant association between firewood collection and the households exposed to earthquake, and there was a negative and significant association with migration. Similarly, there was significant increase in timber wood collection but the magnitude of increment was very small. The access control for timber collection, limited assets holding and other access constraints limited their resilience through timber collection. The study highlights the importance of targeted intervention that helps not only to provide access to land and livestock to the affected communities but opens other income-generating options to improve their wellbeing and to invest in human capitals for enhancing their resilience.

Keywords: Random effect model; Forest products; Gorkha earthquake; Migration; Shock (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1389934119306914
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:forpol:v:119:y:2020:i:c:s1389934119306914

DOI: 10.1016/j.forpol.2020.102283

Access Statistics for this article

Forest Policy and Economics is currently edited by M. Krott

More articles in Forest Policy and Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().