Editorial»
Law of the land
JUN 08 -
According to government statistics, 28 percent of the total land area in Nepal is used for agricultural purposes. Forests and vegetation cover another 40 percent. But the amount of land available for agriculture has been steadily declining. Unofficial estimates put it at under 20 percent. The areas under green cover are also under threat: the estimate of 40 percent, say conservationists, is 'optimistic'. As the population continues to expand and people continue to flock to the urban areas, more of the land set aside for agriculture and forest is likely to be used to house them. This is an unsustainable trend. The government, at long last, seems to have realised this. It has recently finished drafting the Land Use Policy 2010 to halt this alarming development.
The policy, the first of its kind in Nepal, is geared towards boosting agriculture production and stopping arbitrary fragmentation of arable land across the country. The government seems to be particularly worried about an impending food crisis resulting from rapid destruction of agricultural land. The new policy provisions for distribution of land under discreet categories like agriculture, forest, residential area, urban development and industrial area and makes the use of agricultural land for any other purpose illegal. In the long term, the policy has been envisioned as a cornerstone for land management in a federal setup, aimed at solving all land-related problems within the next 15 years through scientific land reform.
Practical policy provisions like taxation based on land categorisation and better management and utilisation of unused tracts should not be hard to implement given the political will to do so. The provision for a separate Act to guarantee marginalised people's access to land is a welcome inclusion. The policy has many subsidiary goals too: boosting the cultivation of high-value herbs and vegetables in the mountainous regions, development of community forests through the mobilisation of local people, planned housing in the hills, to name just a few.
It has some glaring flaws too. The policy, in the government's view, has been tailored for a federal setup. But there is nothing in it to suggest that. It rather takes the circuitous route of highlighting the importance of another 'clear' policy on land to define jurisdictions of the centre-, state- and local-level authorities in a federal setup. The policy is also short in details, which often seem to have been avoided rather unjustifiably. For instance, it is not clear how the government plans to improve herb production in the high mountains or if it is feasible to map land use patterns through the use of modern technology like Remote Sensing System.
But for all its flaws, one positive outcome of the Land Use Policy 2010 is that it will likely bolster the debate on the best use of the country's limited land resources and could provide important guidelines for the preparation of an integrated and inclusive land use policy for federal Nepal.
Posted on: 2010-06-09 07:33
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