Just a decade ago, the roof racks of passenger buses arriving in any one of Nepal's cities and towns would be piled high with firewood. All through the tracts of jungle along the highways, stacks of firewood would be on sale. However, no firewood is entering the cities of Nepal today. What is it that has marginalised firewood?
The answer is cooking fuel. Earlier, the only fuel was firewood. Then there was the shift to kerosene three decades ago, and after that, the rapid spread of liquid petroleum gas (LPG) canisters. Now, the red coloured LPG cylinders have become so popular that they are even carried on porter-back and mule-back to remote mountain villages.
Today, the forests of the mountains and jungles of the plains are regenerating in large parts, as is evident not only along the highways but also along the Kathmandu Valley rim. While Nepal's successful implementation of community forestry has been given the credit for this sudden greening, the role of reduced firewood demand around the population centers must be acknowledged. In the absence of alternative fuel, the efforts of local forest user groups alone would not have been enough.
Even though scientifically un-proven and a matter of conjecture, there is a common perception that a lot of the monsoon flooding and siltation, including in Bangladesh, is caused by the loss of tree cover in the central Himalaya. With kerosene and LPG already making such a difference to Nepal's forests, one can visualise the situation if natural gas were to arrive from Bangladesh by pipeline. Available for much cheaper than today's LPG canisters, natural gas would accelerate the shift away from firewood, which would further reduce deforestation.