Bista Rajesh, Parajuli Rajan, Giri Kalpana, Karki Rahul, Song Conghe
Department of Geography, Carolina Hall, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Campus Box 3220, Chapel Hill, NC 27599, USA.
College of Natural Resources, North Carolina State University, USA.
Trees For People. 2022 Sep;9:100312. doi: 10.1016/j.tfp.2022.100312. Epub 2022 Aug 5.
The novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has severely affected all sectors of the economy, and the impacts are expected to last-long. One major impact is that migrants return to their original households in rural communities due to loss of jobs. Since rural communities are highly dependent on forest and agriculture for livelihoods, an influx of return migrants likely increases the consumption of forest products and intensifies the agriculture practices, increasing the pressure on forest resources. Based on in-person interview of 215 in 2018 before the pandemic and a phone interview of the same 215 rural households in 2021 at the peak of the pandemic in Kavrepalanchowk district in Nepal, this study addresses the following research questions: (1) Does COVID-19 exert differential impacts among the socio-economic groups? (2) How do return migrants affect the rural land use? (3) Do return migrants put additional pressure on forests resources? The rare before-and-after dataset provide a precious opportunity to assess the COVID-19 impacts on the livelihoods of rural households in the community forestry landscape in the Middle Hills of Nepal. We found that the impacts of COVID-19 were severe on the households with larger family size, those belonging to the marginalized caste groups, having lower number of livestock, low wellbeing index, those who rely on daily wage-based occupation, with low level of education, and the households with return migrants. A significant number of migrants were found to return to their village of origin. As a result, there was a decrease in abandoned land and an increase in the livestock number and forest product use. These findings provide timely insights for the post-pandemic recovery efforts in better targeting needy household with limited resource in the community forestry landscape in the Middle Hills of Nepal.
新型冠状病毒病（COVID-19）严重影响了经济的各个部门，预计影响将持续很长时间。一个主要影响是，由于失业，移民返回农村社区的原家庭。由于农村社区在生计上高度依赖森林和农业，返乡移民的涌入可能会增加林产品的消费并强化农业活动，从而增加对森林资源的压力。基于对2018年疫情前215人的面对面访谈以及2021年疫情高峰期对尼泊尔卡夫雷帕兰乔克区同样215个农村家庭的电话访谈，本研究解决了以下研究问题：（1）COVID-19对社会经济群体的影响是否存在差异？（2）返乡移民如何影响农村土地利用？（3）返乡移民是否给森林资源带来额外压力？这一罕见的前后数据集提供了一个宝贵的机会，来评估COVID-19对尼泊尔中部山区社区林业景观中农村家庭生计的影响。我们发现，COVID-19对家庭规模较大、属于边缘化种姓群体、牲畜数量较少、幸福指数较低、依赖日薪工作、教育水平较低以及有返乡移民的家庭影响严重。发现大量移民返回了他们的原籍村庄。结果，弃耕地减少，牲畜数量和林产品使用增加。这些发现为尼泊尔中部山区社区林业景观中资源有限的贫困家庭在疫情后恢复工作中更好地确定目标提供了及时的见解。
