ABSTRACT
Farmers grow a diversity of crops and varieties with different traits, fulfilling multiple needs in relation to their socio-cultural, economic as well as agro-ecological contexts (Rijal et al., 2000). Even so, they only maintain those crops and varieties that they see as having specific domestic or market use values. Community biodiversity management (CBM), through value addition and product promotion, aims to enhance such values, thereby supporting the continued cultivation and use of threatened or rare varieties and species. The CBM project of Local Initiatives for Biodiversity, Research and Development (LI-BIRD) in Nepal, which is described in more detail by Shrestha et al. in Chapter 1.2, has been working on value addition as one of the strategies to increase the use value of local citrus species. As part of this project, we aimed to create economic incentives for conservation through use of local citrus species, by processing citrus fruits into less perishable products with a high market demand, and by supporting the marketing of these citrus-derived products. This chapter shares our experiences in Ghanteshwor, in Nepal.
