Understanding Rural Poverty in Nepal

Nepal, with an area of 147,181 square kilometers (km), is a land of enormous geographical diversity. The country has three main geographical/ecological regions: the terai region, the hill region and the mountain region, which cover 23.1 percent, 41.7 percent, and 35.2 percent of the total area, respectively. Each ecological region is a narrow strip of land stretching from east to west. These three regions not only manifest immense diversity of geographic features, but also display immense diversity of human settlement patterns; population and land distribution; availability of productive resources; and levels of economic, human and infrastructure development.