Dhading, March 12:

In less than a couple of years, the Population, Health and Environment Programme (PHE) has been more than successful in attaining its goals of improving the quality of lives of people living in the forest corridors in Dhading and Bardia.

The project uses Community Forest User Groups to ensure sustainable management of the natural resource. PHE is a two-year pilot project supported by USAID Nepal.

A report based on the progress made by the project said it was one of the successful projects.

According to the report, the percentage of couples using modern family planning methods increased from 44 to 63.1 percent in the project area after the implementation of the project. Likewise, the number of households using Improved Cooking Stoves and biogas went up from 22 to 37.2 per cent.

Similarly, the amount of firewood saved from the use of ICS and biogas increased from 2,106 metric tonnes to 3,284 metric tonnes. The number of adults and youths trained by PHE project has reached 375. The total value of cash collected from various resource providers increased from Rs 1,109,900 to Rs 3,657,275 while 10 CFUGs incorporated the PHE agenda into their Community Forest Operations Plans (CFOP).

Rishi Bastakoti, Executive Director of RIMS Nepal, attributed the success to the effectiveness of the PHE approach in general.

The project was launched with the technical support of ADRA-Nepal while RIMS-Nepal and WWF-Nepal were responsible for field implementation.