Posted on April, 22 2005

Kathmandu, Nepal – WWF's programme office in Nepal has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with a biogas company to promote alternative energy sources.

Under the MoU, Biogas Sector Partnership-Nepal and WWF will help local communities install over a period of five years 10,000 toilet-attached biogas plants, which will cover 30 per cent of households within Nepal's Terai Arc Landscape.

One of the major goals of the WWF-initiated Terai Arc Landscape Programme – which covers 49,500km2 of conservation area – is to conserve the area's biodiversity, forests, soil and watersheds in order to ensure the ecological, economic, and socio-cultural integrity of the region.

In particular, the programme aims to restore corridors of forests linking protected areas of lowland Nepal and the trans-border protected areas of India to facilitate wildlife movement, including that of tigers, elephants and rhinos. 

"The critical areas in Terai Arc Landscape are biologically significant to maintain ecological integrity through maintaining functional link between protected areas in terms of dispersal or migration path of wildlife and gene flow," said Dr Chandra Gurung, WWF Nepal's Country Representative.

"Environmental benefits of bio gas plants will be instrumental to restore the degraded forests in critical areas through reducing pressure on the forests for fuel wood." 
  
Biogas in Nepal has become popular in recent years as the technology is relatively simple, reliable, accessible, and risk free.

With the installation of biogas, it is expected that pressure on the forest of critical areas within the Terai Arc Landscape would be reduced significantly, saving some 45,000MT of fuel wood annually. Biogas plants would also be instrumental in reducing acute respiratory infections and related health hazards, especially for women of 10,000 households, as well as improving sanitation and helping reduce chronic diarrhoeal diseases among 60,000 people. In addition, household chores of women would be reduced, as time spent on gathering fuel wood would be saved. 
 
"The MoU represents a joint effort being made to improve rural livelihood through biogas plants," said Sundar Bajgain, Executive Director of BSP-Nepal. "This has potential impacts such as the creation of physical assets, time saving and reduction in health hazards among the beneficiaries."
  
The Netherlands Development Organization (SNV Nepal) will provide advisory services to BSP-Nepal and capacity-building support to organizations involved in the MoU's implementation.   
 
For further information:
Sangita Shrestha Singh, Communications Officer
WWF Nepal Programme Office
Tel: +977 1 4434820
E-mail: sangita.shrestha@wwfnepal.org