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DISASTER RISK REDUCTION
Around 40% of Nepal’s geographical area is covered by forests. There is a high dependency on these forests for everyday needs and livelihoods. It is estimated that >80% of the population depend on forests for fuel wood, timber, and grazing.
Nepal experiences severe forest fires each year. These fires are harmful for the environment and destroy biodiversity and habitats of endangered species. Most importantly, their degradation and loss is important from a climate change perspective since they are irreplaceable as the carbon-sinks of the natural world.
Forest fires and climate change can mutually reinforce each other – forest fires can cause climate change (through carbon emissions), and temperature increase due to climate change can cause forest fires as conditions become hotter and drier.
Despite the destruction, forest fires are beneficial for one thing – nutrient recycling and vegetative succession. Fires help forests recycle. However, the increase in their intensity and frequency could lead to desiccation and death of trees.
In 2016, more than 12,000 community forests in 50 districts of Nepal were damaged by forest fires, killing 15 people. In March 2009, high-intensity and disastrous fires engulfed 48 places in Nepal, including several conservation areas and national parks. In 1995, about 90% of the forests in the Terai region were affected by fires.
In 2012, more than 70% of Bardiya National Park was engulfed by fire, leading to the loss of 40% of small mammals, 60% of insects, and a substantial number of birds. While these are extreme cases, the true problem lies in the trend of forest fires. From 2001 to 2019, more than 38,000 fire incidents were reported in Nepal. Fire incidents are increasing each year, with more than half of the forest covered areas experiencing frequent fires during the dry season. In 2021 alone, from January – July, Nepal had more than 6,000 forest fires.
The most important tool in minimizing the damage from forest fires is preparation. Fire damage can be reduced if we have more time and resources to predict and prepare for them. Efforts in mapping forest-fire risk, and monitoring and identifying fire zones in Nepal would help decision makers tremendously in enhancing preparedness and responses during such fires.
In collaboration with the Government of Nepal, ICIMOD developed a forest fire identification and monitoring tool. The tool is an easy-to-use web-based portal that shows all incidences of forest fires in the past and present. It publishes stored fire data as a map service so that the locations of fire incidents can be viewed on any given date and can be filtered at different levels of province, district, subdivision, and protected areas.
The portal also includes a damage-assessment form (in Nepali) available only to authorized users. The form allows data entry on any damage to a forest or other property by fire, which is stored in a central database system. The portal uses complex mathematical formulations to assess the risks and damage of forest fires in all the districts of Nepal. Some of the variables used in the calculations are:
The tool also conducts close monitoring using satellite imagery and other data such as:
The Government of Nepal has taken up the web-based forest fire identification and monitoring tool as a key resource for forest fire risk assessment, monitoring and management.
The jointly developed web-portal downloads data from NASA’s satellite for South Asia every 24 hours*. The active fire data are then clipped to Nepal’s boundary to get more information about the fire incidents occurring within the country. Major information related to administrative units (district, rural/municipality, division, subdivision, or ward), PAs, land cover, elevation, and slope are then added to the active fire data before they are stored in the fire database. ICIMOD has also provided several trainings on the use of this tool and its various processes to the staff from relevant agencies.
“Forest fire is a major issue every year in Nepal during the fire season. We have been working together with ICIMOD/SERVIR-HKH on the Forest Fire Detection and Monitoring System which has helped us keep track of the fires on a near real-time basis and understand the most vulnerable districts. The information is very useful to us in preparing forest fire management strategies.” – Sundar Sharma, National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Authority (NDRRMA), Government of Nepal.
*The MODIS (or Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) sensors onboard the Terra and Aqua satellites of NASA are commonly used in active forest-fire detection and monitoring across the globe. They provide the location information on the fires occurring across the globe.
The map of forest fire risk depicts the risk levels in all the 77 districts of Nepal – from very low to very high risk – which has helped decision makers prioritize forest management activities, especially reducing the risk of forest fires.
The map is placed in the forest-fire control room in the Department of Forests and Soil Conservation, the main monitoring station in Nepal that reports the occurrence of forest fires to relevant agencies.
This tool not only provides real-time information on the occurrence of forest fires but also sends SMSs and emails to officials from all forest divisions, subdivisions, and to the members of community forest user’s groups across the country.
In 2019, more than 300 fire-alert SMSs were sent to district officials in the months of April, May, and June; more than 200 SMSs were sent in the month of May alone, with Salyan district receiving the highest number (68) of fire-alert SMSs in that month.
Each of the RMS solutions are linked to the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals outlined by the UN in 2015. The SDGs that this intervention contributes to are as follows:
