Towards a Himalayan Bioeconomy

A Presentation by Carsten Smith-Hall

Part of the "Unlocking the Bioeconomy for Nontimber Forest Products" Webinar Series

December 17, 2021 at 9:00 a.m. EDT

While the number of dedicated bioeconomy strategies around the world is increasing, as are the efforts to identify gaps in the current set of strategies, the majority of the world’s countries remain without any nominal bioeconomic laws, i.e., policies and legislation explicitly addressing the bioeconomy. However, all these countries have functional bioeconomic laws, meaning, non-bioeconomic policies, laws, and regulations whose provisions have some relevance for the bioeconomy. Using the case of commercial medicinal plants in Nepal, this talk focuses in on how to build on functional bioeconomic law to support the identification of transition pathways to the forest-based bioeconomy in a low-income country.

Carsten Smith-Hall has directed several international and interdisciplinary research programmes and published in both natural and social science journals. He has raised more than €25 million in external funding for research and development of teaching programmes. His research is focused on environment-livelihood relationships, including the role of forests in preventing and reducing poverty; environment and human health, in particular the role of forests in maintaining and improving welfare; and commercial utilization of biodiversity, with emphasis on trade and conservation issues. He is a member of several international journal boards, co-coordinates the Global Task Force on Unlocking the Bioeconomy and Non-Timber Forest Products (under the International Union of Forest Research Organizations), and serves on the World Conservation Union's Medicinal Plant Specialist Group. He is Head of Studies for the MSc in Environment and Development.

This webinar series is hosted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, U.S. Forest Service, The Forest History Society, Renmin University of China, and the IUFRO Task Force.

This event is made possible in part through funding from the Lynn W. Day Endowment.

Carsten Smith-Hall