Helle Overgard Larsen

• PhD
• Professor (Associate) at University of Copenhagen

This technical report provides documentation for the approaches and data collection instruments developed to conduct a national-level empirical investigation of the trade in medicinal and aromatic plants in and from Nepal.

On-farm tree growing is potentially important for livelihood strategies and forest conservation, and varies greatly according to local contexts. A detailed knowledge base is therefore needed, requiring, inter alia, the documentation of factors associated with growing trees on farms. The present study surveyed 304 randomly sampled households in ten...

Guidelines I have written for students following my course on research planning at the University of Copenhagen, Useful for starting researchers

Abstract This paper investigates the economic importance of environmental income to rural households in Nepal and how environmental income influences poverty and inequality measures. Qualitative contextual information was collected from two village development committees in middle Gorkha District followed by a structured survey of 303 randomly sele...

Different arrangements of decentralized forest management have been promoted as alternatives to centralized and top down approaches to halt tropical deforestation and forest degradation. Ethiopia is one of the countries piloting one of these approaches. To inform future programs and projects it is essential to learn from existing pilots and experie...

The introduction of participatory forest management (PFM) may involve the exclusion of previous forest users from accessing forest resources. This is the case for PFM in the two Ethiopian pioneer sites, Dodola and Chilimo that represent two distinct PFM approaches in Ethiopia. This paper analyses how PFM, after controlling pre-PFM differences, affe...

In order to monitor the woody biomass yield 241 permanent sample plots wereestablished in four forests (total 2017 ha) across three physiographic regionsof Nepal. Tree species identification, tree positioning and diameter at breastheight (DBH) for all trees and height for a sample of trees were measured in2005 and 2010. Results presented are densit...

La gestion décentralisée des forêts se répand de plus en plus, dans les pays tropicaux en particulier, mais les impacts sur les revenus des utilisateurs de la forêt n'ont pas encore été évalués. Cet article analyse les résultats intrinsèquement liés de la gestion et des revenus de la décentralisation de la forêt en Bolivie, en se concentrant sur le...

Thousands of surveys on rural livelihoods in developing countries are being done every year. Unfortunately, many suffer from weaknesses in methods and problems in implementation. Quantifying households' dependence on multiple environmental resources (forests, bush, grasslands and rivers) is particularly difficult and often simply ignored in the sur...

Climate change is predicted and currently observed to especially affect the rural poor, and some sort of support for adaptation is relevant. This paper tests two vulnerability assessment indexes in Lete and Kunjo VDCs in Mustang District: the Livelihood Vulnerability Index (LVI) and the Livelihood Effect Index (LEI). The indexes are completed based...

Many recent and current studies are documenting the role of forest products for rural livelihoods in developing countries through snapshots provided by total annual household accounts. It has become clear that while the poor generally are relatively more dependent on forest products, the more well-off often benefit most in absolute terms. Present a...

Community forestry in Nepal strives for forest conservation and sustainable forest management. Evaluating progress towards this end requires periodic measurements, and currently there are no standard tools for undertaking evaluations in a participatory way. The purpose of this paper is to suggest a standardized way for measuring effective forest co...

This article was submitted without an abstract, please refer to the full-text PDF file.

This article was submitted without an abstract, please refer to the full-text PDF file.

Collection and Use of Wild Edible Fungi in Nepal. The significance of the contribution of wild edible mushrooms to rural livelihoods is acknowledged, but remains largely unexplored. This study investigates the collection of wild edible Nepalese fungi, which species are used, and what are the specific characteristics of the collectors and the collec...

The trade in medicinal plants for herbal remedies is large and probably increasing. The trade has attracted the attention of scientists and development planners interested in the impact on plant populations and the potential to improve rural livelihoods through community based management and conservation. This has resulted in a large number of publ...

Processes to develop criteria and indicators (C and I) for sustainable forest management are often expert driven. Although the long-term objective of the Nepalese forest policy is sustainable forest management, no national level C and I specifically for this have been developed. However, the Ministry of Forests and Soil Conservation awards an annua...

Commercial collection of alpine medicinal plants in Nepal is widely believed to destroy the resource base. This study explores the impact of three different collection methods on the regeneration of a frequently collected and traded plant species, Nardostachys grandiflora DC (Valerianaceae), listed in CITES Appendix II. The collected product is the...

Collection of wild edible fungi is important for livelihoods in rural areas of Nepal and neighbouring countries. Only very few species of fungi are being exported from Nepal, and compared to neighbouring countries there is still a potential to be exploited. However, a system of quality control and training of local people must be considered to use...

The present article reports the results of a survey on the views of persons involved in commercial alpine medicinal and aromatic plant (MAP) exploitation and conservation in Nepal. Open-ended questionnaires were administered face to face to 175 respondents in the following categories: 1) collectors, 2) traders, 3) district forest office staff, 4) s...

Commercial alpine medicinal plants are collected from the wild by local rural households throughout the Himalaya and sold in order to increase household incomes. Recent studies indicate that this annual trade amounts to thousands of tonnes of roots, rhizomes, tubers, leaves, etc., worth millions of US dollars. The main market is in India. Based on...

This paper presents a case study from Jumla District, Nepal, investigating local management systems and ecological sustainability of commercial collection of a medicinal plant, spikenard (Nardostachys grandiflora DC, Valerianaceae), growing in alpine meadows. Interviews were undertaken with local collectors, traders, and district forest office staf...

The importance of commercial non-timber forest products (NTFPs) to the livelihood strategies of rural collectors in Nepal is increasingly recognised. This paper provides suggestions for improving rural collectors’ possibilities for income generation. The formation and implementation of NTFP policies in Nepal is examined by investigating the area of...

Nardostachys grandiflora DC belongs to the Valerianaceae. It is the only species within its genus, and it only occurs in the Himalayan region. N. gran- diflora is a perennial herb growing in forests and alpine meadows from 3300m up to about 5000m, with known slow recovery after harvest of the traded product, the rhizomes. The non-processed rhizomes...

Introduction This document provides guidelines for preparing a research synopsis (and indirectly of the final report of your work that will be presented at the end of your research program). The research synopsis is the plan for your research project. It provides the rationale for the research, the research objectives, the proposed methods for data...