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VIDEO: Urbanization aids Bhutan in protecting forests

by Katy Migiro | @katymigiro | Thomson Reuters Foundation
Wednesday, 27 October 2010 11:54 GMT

NAIROBI (AlertNet) Â? Urbanisation Â? and targeted government policies Â? have helped the tiny mountain kingdom of Bhutan expand its area of forest cover, a move seen as key to helping the Himalayan nation ease the effects of climate change.

While many countries struggle with deforestation, Bhutan is now 75 percent covered by trees, up from an estimated 40 to 55 percent in the 1960s, officials say.

"We recognise that we are very vulnerable to climate change events, particularly the melting of glaciers, flash floods, drought (and) windstorms," Pema Gyamtsho, Bhutan's Minister of Agriculture and Forests, told AlertNet.

Bhutan's 2008 constitution decreed that a minimum of 60 percent of the country must remain under forest cover at all times.

But deforestation had already been substantially cut after the burning of forest for pasture was outlawed in 1974, a measure further enforced through the Forest Act of 1979 and the Forest and Nature Conservation Act of 1995.

Traditionally, herders had burned sections of forest every few years to improve grazing for their cattle.

"With the introduction of legislation, we have stopped forest fires altogether," Gyamtsho said.

Just as important has been a reduction in the number of Bhutan's rural dwellers, with a growing number of people moving to towns and cities to look for work.

"Over the last four decades, Bhutan has gradually moved from a subsistence farming economy to a semi-subsistence cash economy, thereby reducing the pressure on agricultural and livestock resources," Gyamtsho explained.

However, there are challenges in maintaining the country's high levels of forest cover, as Gyamtsho explained to AlertNet at a conference in Kampala, Uganda, on using local government to meet the Millennium Development Goals.

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