KATHMANDU, Feb. 13 -- The community forestry program in Nepal helped significantly increase Nepal's forest cover which was steadily declining due to deforestation, encroachment and haphazard cutting down of trees back in the early 1990s. But the same initiative launched by the local people voluntarily has now fallen into a serious trouble as this has been the target of all governments - local, provincial and federal - as the main source of their revenue.
If the taxes imposed by these three tiers of government under the federal setup are taken into consideration, community forestry groups will have to pay as much as 65 percent of their total income to different tiers of the governments under various tax headings.
There are around 22,000 co...