Can environmental income from wild medicinal plants contributes to annual household income: a case study from Makawanpur district in Nepal

This paper examines the environmental income comes from wild medicinal plant collection and selling, and how does it contributes to total annual household income. The study was carried out during March and April 2012 in Daman Village Development Committee (VDC) of Makawanpur district in Nepal. The data were collected through social science methods such as questionnaire survey, semi-structured interview, focus group discussion and participatory rural appraisal tools to achieve the objective. From the study it was found that many of the households in the study area rely on this resource as it is readily available. About 71% out of 82 households surveyed collected medicinal plants; 68% for own consumption, 24% (21 households) for selling and 8% for healing practice, respectively. The study shows that the villagers have income from collection and selling of medicinal plants where about 24% of the households were involved in the collection of such for selling purpose and this is a good support of their total annual household income. Therefore, the medicinal plants collection and selling was found to constitute an integrated part of household annual income, contributing from 8 to 35% (19% on average) to the total annual household income in the study area.