Forest and Environment Minister Ain Bahadur Shahi Thakuri has claimed that he emphasized on policy and institutional reforms during his one-year tenure.
Speaking at the program to inform about the progress of the one-year term held in the ministry on Wednesday, Minister Thakuri claimed that during this period, he was successful in fulfilling the responsibility of balanced development and utilization of the forest and environment sector of the country by performing significant improvement work.
'During this period, following the direction of green economy development, policy reform works have been carried out for forest and environment protection, mountain, snow and glacier protection, biodiversity promotion, environmental impact assessment,' he said, 'Forest and environment administration has been made customer-friendly by facilitating the work process of the ministry and bringing agility to the decision-making process.'
Forest Minister Thakuri said that in one year, significant work has been done on 11 topics, mainly policy reforms, creation of national documents, service delivery and governance, increase in forest area and production, climate change and Nepal's presence, facilitation for development projects, and references to reducing human-wildlife conflict.
National forest integrated strategic plan, exotic species management national strategy and action plan, national bamboo and rattan development strategy, national red plus strategy during his one-year tenure, he said.
Sustainable forest management standard 2081 has been issued, which requires the sustainable management of forest areas, increase in production of firewood and import substitution, and ease the availability of raw materials for industries that use wood-based materials.
Similarly, he has included in his achievements the mapping and publication of the national land area of Nepal so that the land use area can be seen on a single map. He said that Nepal Flora is published so that the details of plants found in Nepal can be studied in one book.
He also said that wild red monkeys and wild boars have been declared as wild animals harmful to agriculture. He mentioned that arrangements have been made to rescue orphans and problematic wild animals. Minister Thakuri said that arrangements have been made to deploy a rapid response team to solve the problem of elephants that have appeared in various parts of the country including Jhapa. Solar fencing on the border of forest area and Awadi and corridor construction and management program for easy movement of elephants are among their achievements.
