The restoration of urban nature is growing in popularity worldwide. The benefits are manifold and largely self-evident, including pollution reduction, biodiversity restoration, improvement in mental health, and urban cooling. And now it has come to Kathmandu, the city with the world’s worst air quality index.
T he restoration of urban nature is growing in popularity worldwide. The benefits are manifold and largely self-evident, including pollution reduction, biodiversity restoration, improvement in mental health, and urban cooling. And now it has come to Kathmandu, the city with the world’s worst air quality index.
When Lily Katuwal KC founded ‘Lily’s Leaves’ in October 2020, she combined two visions. The first offered training and employment to vulnerable young women.
The few deaf women she started training are now fully integrated with ablebodied peers who came to Kathmandu from poor rural areas. The second is to develop and market products derived from the forests of south Nepal, extending benefits to deprived women in those rural communities. Unfortunately, COVID-19 intervened, restricting movements and access to markets. Lily had to settle for training in more traditional skills, such as tailoring and silver jewellery manufacture, until the pandemic ran its course
“I was increasingly alarmed at the rapid deterioration of air quality in Kathmandu, particularly as the mother of a young daughter.”
Lily Katuwal KC, Lily’s Leaves
Forests that grow ten times faster
Meanwhile, she came to know Dev Narayan Mandal, the inspirational Founder of The Mithila Wildlife Trust (MWT), based in Dhanusha District of Madhesh Province. She was fascinated by how the MWT, working in partnership with UKregistered charity Pipal Tree, pioneered the rapid-growth ‘Miyawaki Method’ of reforestation in Nepal.
Devised by a Japanese Professor of Botany, the late Akira Miyawaki, this method claims to produce forests that grow ten times faster, offer twenty times more biodiverse, are thirty times denser and have forty times the carbon sequestration potential of those planted conventionally.Launching the first Miyawaki project in December 2021 and working with the local community, the authorities and the Department of Forestry, MWT transformed an exhausted piece of community land in Dhanusha District into a verdant forest.
Lily says, “I was increasingly alarmed at the rapid deterioration of air quality in Kathmandu, particularly as the mother of a young daughter. When I was her age, I remember enjoying the trees in Kathmandu, which had been stolen from us as the price to be paid for so-called development. I wanted to repair the damage quickly, and the Miyawaki Method seemed to offer a way to achieve that”. Indeed, the dire situation in Kathmandu has suddenly worsened in recent years because of climate change. Failure of springtime rains has meant that toxins are not washed out of the atmosphere. Concurrently, roads are becoming ever wider at the expense of mature trees while urban temperatures are soaring.
The results speak for themselves
In July 2023, Lily negotiated with the local authorities to be allowed to plant Kathmandu’s first Miyawaki forest at a 1,100m2 site on public land alongside the banks of the Bishnumati River. This piece of waste ground had become an unofficial public dumping ground. First, the Lily’s Leaves workforce worked with students from Rato Bangala School to clean the land of rubbish that had been building up for many years. Then, the land was prepared and planted with a combination of native saplings. These comprised a mixture of timberproducing species donated by the Division Forestry Office and fruit and nut-producing species (much loved by wildlife) that must be purchased from private nurseries.
One year later, the results speak for themselves. If anything, growth has been even more spectacular than in south Nepal, probably because of the amount of organic matter in the ground beforehand. Birds and other wildlife have quickly moved into the sites. It doesn’t take much to tip the balance in nature’s favour. Encouraged by this startling success, Lily’s team planted a second forest in June 2024, with a third planted at the time of writing.
Vision
Her sense of vision matches Lily’s energy. She says, “I hope that before long, there will be a near-continuous strip of tiny forests along the Bishnumati River that will form an urban wildlife corridor. We should be able to coexist with wildlife, and I would love to turn the clock back a little to how it was when I was a child. It’s not too late.”
Lily is also excited about setting up her own Lily’s Leaves nursery (UK funding by Pipal Tree permitting) that can provide training and employment to her young women. That nursery can donate ‘free’ saplings to Lily’s future projects while generating income for the social enterprise through private sales. In a concise space of time, Lily has become Kathmandu’s leading expert on urban nature and can offer consultancy services. She does not eschew getting her hands dirty.
The Miyawaki Method differs from conventional reforestation methods in several respects. The landsite is prepared intensively with mechanical excavation to a 1.5 to 2 metres depth. The soil is then enriched by mixing with compost and manure before being replaced. Then, counter-intuitively, saplings are planted close together at a density of six to nine saplings per square metre. This proximity encourages synergistic growth, with the tree roots proliferating through the fertile, loosened soil. The plantation must be fenced off to exclude grazers, and mulching is important to control weeds and retain soil moisture. Irrigation remains vital for the early stages, but after two and a half to three years, a Miyawaki forest is self-sustaining.
