Nepal Enhancing Access to Benefits while Lowering Emissions (ENABLE)
Client: The World Bank / Government of Nepal
Summary: Conducted a rapid economic and financial analysis in 2 weeks for a national program in Nepal focused on improving forest management and sharing benefits from emission reductions.
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Project: Nepal Enhancing Access to Benefits while Lowering Emissions (ENABLE)
Project Overview This World Bank project aims to improve sustainable forest management in Nepal and ensure that marginalized, forest-dependent communities have increased access to benefits from Nepal’s national emission reduction program. The project's core activities focus on institutional strengthening and capacity building for forest user groups, as well as providing grants for community-led initiatives in sustainable forestry and climate adaptation.
My Role & Methodology As the lead economic analyst, my role was to develop a robust economic model to quantify the project's overall value. Given the diverse nature of the project's activities, a benefit-transfer method was employed, using cost and benefit estimates from existing literature on community forestry in Nepal.
The methodology was built on an incremental analysis comparing two scenarios over a 30-year horizon with a 10% discount rate:
Counterfactual Scenario: Assumes continued forest degradation in the absence of active management.
Intervention Scenario: Models the impact of Community-Based Forest Management across 321,203 hectares of community forests covered by the project.
The model incorporated both tangible benefits (e.g., forest products) and intangible benefits (e.g., carbon sequestration, water quality improvement, biodiversity) to determine the net economic impact.
Key Findings & Economic Impact The analysis demonstrated significant incremental value for the Community-Based Forest Management model supported by the project.
The project yields a Net Present Value (NPV) of $3.19 billion, a substantial increase compared to the $887 million NPV of the counterfactual scenario.
The incremental value generated by the project is $2.3 billion.
The project has a highly favorable cost-benefit ratio of 16.0, indicating that for every dollar invested, the project generates sixteen dollars in economic benefits for society.
The incremental benefit per community forest group was calculated to be $1.1 million, highlighting the project's direct value to local communities.
Sample Analysis & Disclaimer
[Download Sample Economic Analysis (PDF)]
Disclaimer: This document is provided as a sample of my analytical work for portfolio review purposes only. It is a draft version and should not be cited or distributed. The final, official economic analysis is contained within the comprehensive Project Appraisal Document (PAD), available on the World Bank's Operational Website.