Biodiversity Conservation Network
1. Essential Oils from the Alpine Areas of Humla
Location: Chuwa and Humla
Karnali Watersheds,
Humla District, Nepal
Partners: Appropriate Technology International (ATI)
Asian Network for Small-scale Agricultural Bioresources (ANSAB)
The Humla Conservation and Development Association (HCDA)BCN Funding: $549,995 Partner Contribution: $143,252
Grant Period: January 15, 1995 - January 31, 1998
What's at Stake?
The mountainous region of Humla lies between the Western and Eastern Himalayas straddling two distinct botanical regions and making it extraordinarily rich in plants -- many of which contain aromatic essential oils or are valued for their medicinal properties. Humla's natural bounty make it susceptible to over-harvesting of plants used by perfume and cosmetic manufacturers, as well as the usual Nepalese problems such as serious overgrazing and wood and fodder collection.
The intent of this project is to alleviate the need to harvest as much raw product by adding value to a smaller sustainable harvest. By selling a processed product, the community participants can make more money and keep the revenues in the local communities. Project partners and local people collaborated to establish two essential oil distillation factories. Locals harvest roots from nearby alpine meadows, process it into oil and operate and maintain the processing equipment.
The project also works with villagers to help them gain more control over the resources that they collect from government-owned lands. The goal is to broaden the Humla District Forest Office's acceptance of community-based management of local natural resources and currently this process appears well under way. The project places a strong emphasis on women's groups and establishing mechanisms to allow communities to keep larger portions of the taxes levied on non-timber forest products.
1997 Update
On the whole, 1997 has been a time solidifying the gains made in previous years and fine-tuning the operation of both the factories and the community forest handover process.
The major activities that occurred during this period were as follows:
Humla Oil Pvt. Ltd. continued production of essential oils from jatamansi, juniper, and sagunawaal at both factories, Kurilla and Rodikot, until the end of the summer season. After that, production shut down and efforts switched to maintenance of the facilities until the fall season recommenced at the end of September. Humla Oil also continued to provide technical support on processing and marketing to the new distillation plant in Jumla.
Community forest handover activities accelerated as communities became aware of the benefits -- direct royalty payments on materials harvested from registered community forests. The Humla Conservation and Development Association added another forester to their team in Humla to assist in the handover process. This process is ongoing now in eight Village Development Committees in Humla and will continue into the future.
Biological monitoring teams completed their inventory and regeneration activities in the Humla project area during the summer of 1997. This included mapping of resources in conjunction with local community members and continued work on the regeneration aspects of the commercially utilized plant species found.
Although accessing Indian buyers was initially problematic because Humla was unknown to them, additional market investigations were conducted in India. The majority of the jatamansi oil continues to move into the Indian market with smaller quantities going to Europe and the distributor in North America.
In October 1996, local project manager Tsewang Lama participated in the United States Natural Products Expo where Humla Oils products were presented. He also took part in a presentation to the Expo regarding the issues of sourcing natural materials from community groups. This was a learning as well as marketing experience for the Humla Oil Company and Tsewang developed several leads that are being followed up on. Plans are being made to attend the 1997 Expo.
Basic literacy classes were completed in the project area and the post literacy conservation material was finalized and sent for printing. Distribution in Humla will occur later this year.
Success Stories
With the creation of a legal community forest in Humla, one community was able to directly receive royalty payments for the raw materials that are collected from their lands. In the past, and in communities without community forests, the royalty payment is collected by the district forest office and this revenue goes to the central government, with no provision to return any money to the community of origin.
Once the Humla Conservation and Development Association assisted the Thali community through the community forest handover process, to get their community property back under local jurisdiction, they were able to directly charge a royalty on materials coming from their forest and pasture lands. This allowed them to receive a large (for the local context) new source of revenue for the village that previously went to the central government.
Once this happened and word got around to other communities that Thali Village had made almost $3,000 just for having a community forest in place, HCDA was inundated with requests from villages to help them set up community forests as well. This showed clearly to the communities in Humla that there is a direct and immediate benefit from initiating a community forest and helped raise HCDA profile in Humla as an organization truly working for the development of local villages. As a motivational tool for helping communities realize the benefits of community forests, no number of workshops or other activities could compare with the direct economic benefit of having a registered community forest with a management plan that allows for the collection of royalties.
Challenges
The greatest challenge faced by HCDA in this year was in dealing with a certain village group who, taking advantage of the close and open relation between Humla Oil and the supplying communities, tried to pass off large quantities of low quality material to the factories. Humla Oil had always assumed that the communities supplying the raw material would provide an acceptable quality to the factories along the lines of what had been supplied over the past two years and in line with the specification set out by the management and communities in consultation before the collection season begins. However, one community leader took his group astray and forced Humla Oil to buy material that they had purposely adulterated in order to increase the direct payment to the collectors from the factories. This community also encroached upon a neighboring communities forest area to collect material.
The challenge here was for HCDA and Humla Oil to deal with this group in such a manner that they would not become alienated from the project and company, while clearly stating that this type of dealing was unacceptable in the future. It turned out the chairmen of the community forest had misrepresented the provisions of the community forest to the community at large in order to personally profit from the arrangement. HCDA has since clearly explained the provisions of community forests to the general community members of this area and explained that in the future Humla Oil will not deal with this community unless they get their practices in order.
Humla Oil was faced for the first time with having to make cold, hard business decisions regarding the supply of material. Humla Oil decided to explain, once again, the quality of the material that they would buy from Collectors and stick by this criteria even if it meant excluding certain collectors/communities. This is the only way they can survive as a viable business into the future. This problem only came up in one village area, and this season will give a clear indication of how well they communicated their concerns to the community in question, and how interested that community is in continuing their relation with HCDA and Humla Oil.
Author: Jeff Dickinson is a member of the ATI and ANSAB staffs. Jeff has been working in Nepal on an intermittent basis for 8 years. Jeff and Tsewang Lama, current project manager, identified the opportunity in Humla during 1992 while Tsewang was a member of the Nepali parliament.
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