Vegetation and Society: Their Interaction in the Himalayas

This book is the outcome of collaborative research on human ecology between Tribhuvan University, Nepal and University of Bergen, Norway. A three-day workshop was organized between November 25-27, 2001 in Kathmandu to present some of the findings of this collaborative research. This book consists of papers presented at the workshop which were subsequently edited based on comments from the reviewers and the workshop participants. Some 60 professionals, with natural and social scientists in roughly equal numbers, met for three days during the workshop and found that interdisciplinary research could benefit the people at the grass-roots level up to policy makers and planners. We pay sincere gratitude to the professors, researchers and academicians from Nepal, Norway and USA who presented and prepared the respective scholarly papers with great patience and in time. The decision to bring such a comprehensive volume was taken during the above workshop. This book has come to this shape because of cooperation, encouragement, advice and support of several institutions, and people. The articles in this volume have been presented in three parts. The first part comprises 11 articles. It deals with conceptual background of the effect of global changes such as global warming and internationalization on a local mountain community in Nepal, biodiversity assessment and sustainable use, and plant environment relationship. The second part contains seven articles. Each of them deal with geographic problems in Arun area. Particularly, they discuss landuse, population dynamics, farming system, micro-nutrient and livelihood strategies of people in the region. The third part comprises 12 articles. They deal with the importance of interdisciplinary human ecological perspective, paleoenvironment, culture, society and subsistence systems.