Western Uplands Poverty Alleviation Project (WUPAP)

Donor:

Lutheran World Federation

International Fund for Agriculture Development (IFAD) and Government of Nepal has come to an agreement to implement Western Uplands Poverty Alleviation Project (WUPAP) in the Mid and Far Western development region as a IFAD supported tenth project in Nepal. The first phase of the Western Uplands Poverty Alleviation Project (WUPAP) was implemented in the four districts of the mountains region; namely Bajhang & Bajura in Seti zone of Far Western Development Region and Humla and Jumla in Karnali Zone of Mid Western Development Region of Nepal. This area is characterized by the remoteness, high level of poverty, illiteracy and very little access to the development and external services. The first phased districts comprised of total 131 Village development Committees (VDCs). Within the three years period, the program was launched in 40 VDCs, 10 VDCs in each aforementioned districts. The WUPAP comprised of five distinct but inter-related components that achieved broad based objective of the project and at the same time, provided suitable opportunities to increase the income of the people on a sustainable basis. The components were;

• Labour intensive infrastructure development,
• Leasehold Forestry and NTFP production,
• Crop and Livestock production,
• Institutional support and
• Rural Micro Finance

DEPROSC-Nepal has been involved in the social mobilization process for the implementation of Leasehold forestry and NTFP Production in the Project area with the financial assistance of Embassy of Denmark.

Objectives

This component of the program is aimed at facilitating the government initiations at district and community level for implementing leasehold forestry program within the framework of leasehold forestry act and rules. The primary objective of the program is to alleviate prevalent poverty at community level through the transfer of barren unfertile and marginal sloppy and degraded forest lands to the poor to increase production of fodder crops, forage seeds and undertake NTFP production in the lease lands. The program aim to create vibrant grass roots institutions, Community Organizations to be specific, that will respond to the needs of the people, especially the target groups and empower them to mobilize their own resource to access external resources and claim social justice.

The specific objectives of this program are to:

• Improve local access and the capacity to actively manage resources including timber and non- timber forest products through social mobilization, training and technology transfer.
• Improve and sustain access of landless and poor people to forest resources through leasehold arrangements.
• Strengthen institutional capacity and improve responsiveness NGOs and governmental agencies in the forestry sector.
• Improve environmental conditions through proper utilization of degraded forestland.

DEPROSC-Nepal had a target to handover 3000ha of barren land as leasehold forest in these four districts in the first phase. However within that given time frame, DEPROSC-Nepal was successful to handover 3278.9 ha government forest as leasehold forest to 2907 poorest of the poor households in the project area.

Activities and Achievement of the Project till 2005

DEPROSC-Nepal again entered into agreement with DANIDA to continue the social mobilization in WUPAP project for another three years from March 2006 to February 2009. Again the target was to handover additional 3000 hectare of degraded forest and barren lands to the poorest of the poor people. By the end of the first year, 1387 hectare degraded forest is already handed over to 75 Leasehold forest user groups.