Meena Poudel's Forest Floor: How Nepal's Women Turn Fire Risk Into Fertilizer and Income

Meena Poudel bends low beneath the Sal and Beech trees in Nawalpur District's forests at first light, her hands rustling through the forest floor's quilt of crisp, bronze-dusted leaves. Their edges are brittle and sun-scoured, curled inward like sleeping insects. Around her, other women move with quiet coordination, slicing through the bramble and deadwood with blades dulled from daily use. The forest breathes easier with each sweep—the tangled underbrush that once fed wildfires is now gathered for something new: a slow alchemy into organic fertiliser.

At 41, Meena serves as Secretary of the Binayi Community Forest User Group, a community collective dedicated to responsible management of the forest. What she and her colleagues are doing represents a fundamental shift in how communities approach environmental threats. The biofertilizer enterprise has transformed the life and economic circumstances of Meena, her family, and many in the Binayi Triveni community. She now funds her son's bachelor's degree in Kathmandu while managing household affairs independently—a stark contrast to the economic dependence that once defined her circumstances. "We women have developed the capacity to manage our households, cover family expenses, and educate our children," she explained.

Twenty women from Binayi Triveni Municipality collect forest litter and transform it into organic fertilizer bought by local farmers and government nurseries. Their efforts produce over 60,000 kilograms of organic fertilizer annually, with plans to double that output. The enterprise now provides income opportunities for 400 people in an area where employment, particularly for women, has been scarce. Most strikingly, Meena's work has contributed to a 70 percent reduction in forest fires over the past year.

The Binayi Community Forest User Group operates within Nepal's decentralized community forestry system, established by the Forest Act of 1993. Community forests are national forests handed over to local user groups for protection, management, and utilization, and have played a vital role in forest conservation and sustainable resource management. According to Nepal's Ministry of Forests and Environment's 2020 estimates, nearly 2.58 million hectares of forestland in Nepal have been handed over as community forests. By 2020 there were 22,266 community forest user groups nationally, which covered 41 percent of national forests and had 2.9 million households as members. What Meena and her colleagues have built is part of a system of extraordinary scale—one that reaches millions of rural Nepalis and shapes the management of nearly half the country's forests.

The forest litter that Meena and her colleagues collect—bark, leaves, and sticks on the forest floor—is precisely the material that fuels Nepal's intensifying wildfires. Nepal faces intensifying climate pressures, experiencing glacier melting, untimely rainfall, floods, landslides, forest fires, and droughts, which collectively impact over 10 million people. Forest fires in the Himalayan region are increasing under climate change, with maximum temperature serving as the primary climatic driver of burned-area extent. By removing this unnecessary material from the forest floor, the women have significantly reduced fire risk while protecting the environment.

The organic fertiliser they produce helps local farmers transition away from chemical inputs, improving soil health and crop yields across the region. One farmer tested three different fertilizers on the same plot; only Binayi's compost produced consistent, vigorous growth throughout the season. Another farmer, Anant Prakash Shrestha, observed the results directly: "After applying it, we observed fewer diseases affecting our food crops. Additionally, we experienced an increase in production capacity, with better growth and development of our crops."

The transformation from forest fire risk to enterprise began with local action but gained momentum through coordinated support. The local municipality matched the group's initial capital. In 2023, the Forest and Farm Facility of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations provided USD 25,000 in catalytic funding. The FFF began by conducting a readiness exercise to assess the group's potential, then supported training in forest management, composting techniques, and market-based value addition. These steps helped ensure the enterprise was not only environmentally sound but also economically viable. The women received support to draft a business plan, conduct market analysis, and meet product quality standards. Participation in cross-sectoral meetings helped them navigate local bureaucracy and build alliances with nearby communities, transforming the group from informal volunteers into credible entrepreneurs.

Research on Nepal's community forestry system demonstrates that women's participation in forest governance produces measurable conservation outcomes. Groups with a high proportion of women in their executive committee show significantly greater improvements in forest condition. Groups with all-women executive committees have better forest regeneration and canopy growth than other groups, despite receiving much smaller and more degraded forests. This beneficial impact is attributable especially to women's contributions to improved forest protection and rule compliance.

The Binayi enterprise is part of a larger movement toward women-led forest enterprises in Nepal. Shanta Neupane, from Panauti Municipality in central Nepal, observed how hard women in rural forest and farming communities worked in their family smallholdings, helping to feed their households. Although they were members of community forest user groups, these same women had little voice in their communities, no assets of their own, and received no personal income from their efforts. Shanta knew that if these women came together as a cooperative, they could pool their skills and efforts to start producing and selling goods, taking the first steps toward economic independence and improving their status in the community. With support from the Forest and Farm Facility, Shanta broadened her vision through international exposure visits to Vietnam, Thailand, and India, where she met with women's groups and learned about business planning, finance, the importance of adding value to products, and the need for multiple sources of income to make a cooperative sustainable.

Convincing the women of Panauti Municipality of her vision required more than words. When initially met with hesitance, Shanta decided to demonstrate the enterprise model herself. In 2015, through the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, she received support from the Forest and Farm Facility to set up a women-led forest and farm producer group, which she called Adhar Ekata Mahila Samuha.

While the Binayi biofertilizer enterprise transforms forest litter into fertilizer, other women-led enterprises in Nepal are creating value from different forest products. A bio-bowl and plate enterprise supported by the non-profit People, Energy and Environment Development Association collects sal leaves as raw materials to produce biodegradable bowls and plates from the Dhulekhar Community Forest in Pyuthan District of western Nepal. An enterprise managed by 22 women, more than half of whom are Indigenous, combines indigenous practices with improved technology and market-oriented production, transforming traditional skills into a sustainable green enterprise. The community forest covering the Dhulekhar area spans 488.68 hectares and is managed by 339 households. It has the potential to annually supply more than 250 quintals of sal leaves, which can produce approximately 5.2 million bio-bowls and 1.5 million bio-plates each year.

In Dangisharan Rural Municipality in western Nepal, 21 women of the Milijuli Tilakanya Dunatapri Udhyami Firm produce leaf plates and bowls using sal leaves stitched together with bamboo fibers. The group is a member of Our Rajakot Multipurpose Cooperative Society Ltd, which provides them with technical and financial support. In December 2023, the women received a new electricity-operated machine manufactured by the National Innovation Center, a partnership fostered with academic institutions. The machine uses a combination of pressure and heat to mold and shape the leaves into bowls or plates. First, the women harvest the leaves, clean, wash, and dry them. Then, they hand sew them together using bamboo fibers before feeding them into the machine for shaping.

The new technology allowed the women to produce more than 108,000 different-sized leaf plates in the past year—three times as many plates as before. As a result, they have seen a huge uplift in their income, earning NPR 155,640 (the equivalent of USD 1,150) per woman per year. Ms. Sita Dangi, Coordinator of Milijuli Tilakanya Dunatapri Udhyami Firm, described the constraints before the new machine: "Previously, we had one basic machine which could produce one size of leaf plate, but this frequently malfunctioned and required maintenance." With the new machine, she explained, "we can produce different plate sizes and so appeal to a wider range customers – from hotels to family celebrations."

Ms. Tila Pun, shareholder of Our Rajakot Multi-Purpose Cooperative Society Limited, explained the market expansion: "Our dunatapari are popular during the Teej celebrations, and they are now being used in local eateries, local government offices, weddings, pujas, schools, fairs, hotels, and events organized by various institutions."

The cooperative has been conducting awareness campaigns to encourage local businesses and organizations to adopt these robust and sturdy natural products as alternatives to single-use plastic. As a result, single-use plastic utensils in restaurants and eateries have been banned in Dangisaran and the neighboring municipality of Tulsipur, and the cooperative continues to promote and campaign for successful compliance with this policy. The local government is also actively promoting the use of sal leaf plates in meetings and at events.

The production of sal leaf plates involves minimal processing or energy use, leaving a low carbon footprint. The plates are made from leaves and bamboo fibers only, making them 100 percent biodegradable. Sal leaves are naturally shed by the trees—each sal tree normally sheds eight to nine fronds annually, and the leaves used for plate production are collected from naturally fallen material without harvesting the tree itself. The collection of leaves from community forests creates economic value from material that would otherwise decompose or be burned.

About 80 percent of the rural population in Nepal depend on non-timber forest products for their livelihood. These products provide rural people with food, medicine, construction materials, and income, and have commercial, socioeconomic, and environmental values in rural communities. More than 700 species of plants are recognized as producing non-timber forest products, and about 150 species of these are commonly used in international trade.

Research on Nepal's decentralized Community Forestry programme demonstrates broader co-benefits beyond income generation. A study evaluating eight health outcomes from 2006 to 2022, using causal mediation approaches to link georeferenced health data from 24,586 households with 18,184 Community Forests, found that effects were clearest for child nutrition. Community Forestry reduced socioeconomic deprivation, particularly in poorer regions, with downstream reductions in stunting and underweight. Scaled nationally, Community Forestry coverage was associated with reductions of 11.3 cases of stunting and 8.5 cases of underweight per 1,000 children under five annually, equivalent to 33,965 and 25,490 fewer cases nationally each year.

In Dangisharan and Tulsipur, the plastic bans have taken hold. The local government actively promotes sal leaf plates at meetings and events. The women of Milijuli Tilakanya Dunatapri Udhyami Firm now earn NPR 155,640 per woman per year—income that flows directly into households where it was absent before. And in Nawalpur District, at first light, Meena Poudel continues to move through the forest floor, her hands gathering the material that once threatened to burn the forest down, transforming it into something that feeds both soil and family.