Community Forestry Program In Nepal Research Articles

Empowerment or marginalization: a debate in community forestry in Nepal

The impact of community forestry program in Nepal is debated around the potentials for empowerment and risk of marginalization. This article draws some evidences of both scenarios. Evidences in the filed show that community forest management process can be a forum for all users including women, poor and 'lower' castes on the one hand, and equally it can be a vehicle for theelite group of people to legitimize their interests by the unconscious consent of the users, on the other. This articles concludes with a recommendation for monitoring policy implementation and democratizing the Forest User Groups at local level in a way that enables the poor and marginalized to articulate their interests and needs to the decision making process of the forest resourcemanagement.

Household characteristics and common property forest use: complementarities and contradictions

Being limited in supply but accessible for community usage, sustainable management of Common pool resources is still an important question facing both development planners and the academia. Experience from community forestry program in Nepal, and elsewhere, has so far indicated that poorer households are still marginalized even if resources are managed under community ownership. In this paper, I seek to analyze the socio-economic attributes of households that determine labor allocation decisions for forest product collection activities. This will help better understand why poorer groups have not been benefited from the management of community forests. I will then highlight the need for more effective policy and institutional interventions that would help ensure efficient and equitable access to the local level natural resource base.

Stakeholder opinions on scientific forest management policy implementation in Nepal.

Despite its widespread recognition as a successful model of participatory forest management, the community forestry program in Nepal is often criticized for its protection-oriented emphasis. Recognizing the need for more active timber management, the government of Nepal recently adopted a scientific forest management (SFM) policy in the lowland tropical region. In this study, strength, weakness, opportunity, and threat analytical hierarchical process criteria were employed to understand stakeholder perceptions concerning SFM implementation in Nepal. The overall perception was prioritized in the order of strengths (35%), threats (28%), opportunities (22%), and weaknesses (16%). The study results suggest that there is agreement among stakeholders regarding the need for active management of forests in the tropical lowland region. However, the perceptions of academic researchers and non-government organization professionals differed from those of the other stakeholders in that those two groups were more concerned about potential corruption and uncertainties surrounding policy and legal issues. The findings suggest that the long-term success of SFM may depend on the ability of the government to develop a mechanism that is transparent and capable of ensuring equitable benefit sharing among stakeholders. While the stakeholder perception analysis performed in this study was focused on SFM implementation in Nepal, the results could have implications for other countries that practice the participatory model of forest governance as well.

The effects of the Nepal community forestry program on biodiversity conservation and carbon storage.

Approximately 15.5% of global forest is controlled by ~1 billion local people and the area under community control is increasing. However, there is limited empirical evidence as to whether community control is effective in providing critical global ecosystem services, such as biodiversity conservation and carbon storage. We assess the effectiveness of one example of community-controlled forest, Nepal’s Community Forestry Program (CFP), at providing biodiversity conservation and carbon storage. Using data from 620 randomly selected CFP and non-CFP forest plots, we apply a robust matching method based on covariates to estimate whether CFPs are associated with greater biodiversity conservation or carbon storage. Our results reveal a significant positive effect of CFP on biodiversity, which is robust against the influence of unobserved covariates. Our results also suggest a significant negative effect of the CFP on aboveground tree and sapling carbon (AGC) at the national scale (-15.11 Mg C ha-1). However, the CFP has a mixed effect on carbon across geographic and topographic regions and in forests with different canopy covers. Though there were no significant effects of the CFP on AGC at lower altitudes, in the Terai or hill regions, and under closed canopies, there were positive effects in open canopies (25.84 Mg C ha-1) at lower slopes (25.51 Mg C ha-1) and negative effects at higher altitudes (-22.81 Mg C ha-1) and higher slopes (-17.72 Mg C ha-1). Our sensitivity analysis revealed that the positive effects are robust to unobserved covariates, which is not true for the negative results. In aggregate, our results demonstrate that CFP can be an effective forest management strategy to contribute to global ecosystem services such as biodiversity, and to a lesser extent carbon.

Does Collective Action Sequester Carbon? Evidence from the Nepal Community Forestry Program

Does Collective Action Sequester Carbon? Evidence from the Nepal Community Forestry Program

Does Collective Action Sequester Carbon? Evidence from the Nepal Community Forestry Program

Summary This paper uses 620 forest plot measurements taken from a nationally representative sample of 130 Nepal community forests combined with information on forest collective action to estimate the effects of collective action on carbon per hectare and three additional measures of forest quality. We use three measures of forest user group collective action, including membership in the Nepal Community Forestry Programme (CFP). Collective action shows large, positive, and statistically significant carbon effects vis-a-vis communities exhibiting no evidence of forest collective action, which do not necessarily correspond with results for other measures of forest quality. We find that depending on the collective action definition and physiographic region, forests controlled by communities exhibiting no evidence of forest collective action may have as little as 34% of the carbon of forests governed under collective action. We do not, however, find evidence that CFP forests, our narrowest measure of collective action, store more carbon than forests outside the CFP. Our results therefore suggest that it is the collective action behavior and not the official CFP label that offers the largest gains. Carbon benefits from collective action are therefore not found to be conditional on CFP participation.

The Effect of the Nepal Community Forestry Program on Equity in Benefit Sharing

We assessed the effectiveness of Nepalese Community Forestry Program (CFP) in increasing local perceptions of equity in benefit sharing. Our aim is to inform emerging forest policy that aims to mit...

Evidence of User Participation in Community Forest Management in the Mid-hills of Nepal: A Case of Rule Making and Implementation

User participation in Community Forestry (CF) regarding forest-related activities from user group formation to implementation of an operational plan is crucial for evaluating the social and biophysical outcomes of a CF program. This study assesses factors responsible for the participation of member households in the planning and implementation process of a CF program in Nepal. Data were collected through a survey of 116 households from six community forest user groups, key informant interviews, and focus group discussions. Simple random sampling was used to collect both qualitative and quantitative information from 10 % of households participating in CF, utilizing a semi-structured questionnaire. Binary logistic regression was used to analyze the factors associated with participation in planning and implementations of CF activities. Six socio-demographic and biophysical explanatory variables were included in the analysis, of which Caste, Sex, Age, and Forest Condition were found statistically significant. The results indicate that if the condition of the community forest is perceived as satisfactory, User Committees receive higher user participation in regards to forest development activities and fund mobilization. The results also suggest activities involving physical work attract younger participants. The existing equal access to forest products does not promote equity. However, promoting women and disadvantaged user participation in CF activities may help achieve higher equitability of CF user groups.

Incentives and Community Participation in the Governance of Community Forests in Nepal

Increased participation of local users in decision-making about forests and gaining benefits from these forests are major goals of the community forestry program in Nepal. However, there is a lack of real participation in community forest governance amongst users, particularly by poor and marginalised members. By employing a mixed-method approach, this research explores the issue of participation in the governance of community forests, and in particular the role of incentives in increasing participation. A partial least square approach is undertaken to link the participation indicators to the various incentives. Access to benefits, enforcement of legal property rights and social cohesion through building of local institutions are identified as the key influential incentives that determine the effective participation of users in community forest governance. Other incentive—including income supplements, community infrastructure development or payment for environment services—are insufficient to counter the opportunity cost of participation, and hence have a weak but still significant influence on users’ decisions to participate. Power inequality due to socio-cultural norms, together with poor economic capabilities and weak bargaining power, could undermine the meaningful participation of poor and disadvantaged groups in the governance of community forests, unless the community forestry institutions are strengthened in order to be able to deal with the issues of inequitable access and restricted opportunities at the local level.

Does Nepal's community forestry program improve the rural household economy? A cost–benefit analysis of community forestry user groups in Kaski and Syangja districts of Nepal

While the Nepalese Community Forestry (CF) program is a highly prioritized development program with potential social, economic, and environmental benefits, its effect on the rural household economy has not been well examined. Using the cost–benefit analysis, this study examines the impact of the CF program on the household economy of forest users in the mid-hills region of Nepal. Both direct and indirect benefits and costs accrued by three wealth-ranked users were considered while calculating net present values. Results revealed that net benefits of the program were greater in rich households than in poor forest user households across a 50-year period. The poor households realized less direct and indirect benefits, yet they paid highest indirect costs incurred from the CF program. The CF program in Nepal requires prompt policy revisions to ensure cost-effective mechanisms to improve net income of poor households participating in the CF program.

Community Forestry and the Threat of Recentralization in Nepal: Contesting the Bureaucratic Hegemony in Policy Process

Nepal's community forestry program has been touted as a successful case in decentralized forest management. However, the government of Nepal has often constrained the autonomy of local communities as an apparent attempt to reverse decentralization. This article identifies the mechanisms through which decentralized reforms and growing deliberative culture of policy process are attenuated. To this end, we analyze an amendment proposal of the government to revise the Forest Act 1993—a widely recognized legislation for democratic decentralization—with the tacit aim of re-equipping the government forestry staff with substantial power. This article shows that the government often monopolizes the policy process and obstructs community forestry, while failing to address its own governance deficits. While acknowledging the importance of an antagonistic form of resistance, we emphasize the combination of alliance-led resistance and research-informed deliberation as an effective strategy to contest inappropriate policy decisions and promote a deliberative culture.

Community Forestry in Nepal:A Scenario of Exclusiveness and its Implications

Nepal's community forestry program was specifically adopted to address local livelihoods and abate envi- ronmental degradation with due consideration of local-specific conservation and development requirements. Although the program has improved forest condition and livelihoods in many cases, it has several limitations and shortcomings particularly in the context of inclusive forest governance. This paper examines the roles and responsibilities of poor, disadvantaged women, Dalits and socially excluded groups in the community forestry process and the way how they are excluded at the time of benefit-sharing and in decision-making. The study is based on three years (2008-2011) long action and learning research in 58 community forest users groups from three eco-zone of Nepal. The study revealed that more attention needs to be paid in making forest user groups more equitable, inclusive and pro-poor in practice. The poor, Dalits, and socially excluded groups are often deprived from their basic rights on accessing of common pool resources, and are often excluded in decision-making system. The notable challenges related to the community forestry in the studied districts include elite domination, inability to provide significant contribution to livelihoods, persistence of social disparity, and low information flow to the poor and marginalized groups.

Advancing equity in community forestry: recognition of the poor matters

SUMMARY The community forestry program in Nepal has been advancing as a successful means of improving the condition of forests. However, as in other areas around the world, Nepal's community forestry initiative continues to face unresolved equity issues. This paper seeks to explore underlying causes of inequity using contemporary theories of justice. Examining two community forest user groups in the middle hill districts, the study finds that lack of recognition in interpersonal and public spheres exacerbated the powerlessness of marginalized people, reducing their participation in decision-making. The paper argues that, while distributional rules advanced by the program are crucial, the problem of recognition remains an unaddressed but necessary pre-condition for achieving equity. This suggests that policy and practice in community forestry needs to focus on broader political questions, including representation in decision making, making space for the voice of members to influence decisions, and transfor...

Women in forestry: A study of Kenya's Green Belt Movement and Nepal's Community Forestry Program

This literature review evaluates two programs that attempt to involve women in community-based forestry projects: the Green Belt Movement led by Wangari Maathai in Kenya, and Nepal's government-sponsored Community Forestry Program. To evaluate the extent to which each program is a successful community-based conservation venture, the recommendations developed at the Airlie House Community Based Conservation Workshop in 1993 are used. These recommendations stipulate that factors such as culture, participation, resource ownership, and skills and knowledge transfer must be taken into account for a community-based conservation venture to be successful. To evaluate the extent to which each program is successful in securing the active involvement of women, the study evaluates how well they overcome a set of four factors that commonly limit women's involvement in forestry projects, developed by Molnar in 1997; this list includes limited access to productive resources, limited decision-making roles, limited participation in the labor market and lack of incentives for project workers to incorporate women. By evaluating each program's strengths and weaknesses, the paper reveals certain characteristics, such as cultural awareness and the incorporation of civic education and skill development, that community forestry programs must have in order to successfully involve women in their efforts.

Outmigrating men: A window of opportunity for women's participation in community forestry?

Encouraging women to become active participants has been an important goal of the community forestry program in Nepal. Achieving this goal has been elusive, and studies have identified a range of formal structures and informal processes that can exclude women. This study explored whether there is a relationship between men's outmigration and women's participation in community forestry. Data were collected using a semi-structured survey, in-depth interviews and focus group discussions with women from two community forest user groups. The analysis indicated that men's outmigration provides a “window of opportunity” to increase women's participation, as the left-behind wives were more likely to attend and voice their opinions during the general assembly. However, the extent to which outmigration represents an opportunity depends on family type and composition. The women who do not have an adult man in the household are those who become most involved in the community forest user group. By participating in the general assembly, they may achieve increased participation in forest decisions.

Local pricing system of forest products and its relations to equitable benefit sharing and livelihood improvement in the lowland community forestry program in Nepal

The study examines the relationships between local pricing system of forest products and its effects on equitable benefit sharing and livelihood improvement of user households who are living in and around the forests. The community forest user groups of lowland in Nepal have practiced low pricing strategy for high value forest products considering the access of socio-economically poor households. However, the study suggests that even though the low pricing strategy was designed considering poor households, rich households greatly benefited from the forest benefits. The study further enlightens that the low price for high value forest products particularly timber is counterproductive for equitable benefit sharing among the user households in the areas of heterogeneous socio-economic conditions. In addition, the strategy is defective for collecting adequate community fund and carrying out enough livelihood improvement activities at the local level.

Techno-bureaucratic Doxa and Challenges for Deliberative Governance: The Case of Community Forestry Policy and Practice in Nepal

Despite repeated pleas for participatory and deliberative governance of environmental resources, there is still a predominance of technocratic values in environmental decision-making. This is especially true in the context of forest management in the Global South where centralised and technically-oriented colonial approaches of the past continue to be reproduced and exclude affected people to have their say and share in forest related decision-making and benefit distribution. Taking a case study from Nepal's Community Forestry Program, this paper shows that despite major shifts towards practices of participatory forestry, the technocratic domination of forest science in governance has taken new and more subtle forms (considered “doxa” – taken for granted forms – after Bourdieu) of control over forestry practices. In this paper, techno-bureaucratic doxa is problematised as a key challenge to deliberative governance, and specific ways are illustrated through which it constrains deliberation in forest governance. Emerging moments of crisis in this doxa are also identified to explore possibilities for greater citizen-public official deliberation in forest governance.

Facilitating deliberative governance: Innovations from Nepal's community forestry program – a case study in Karmapunya

This paper discusses the use of a deliberative approach to governance of environmental resources at the local-level. Used in conjunction with external facilitation, a deliberative approach to governance at the local-level can be used to build dialogue between diverse perspectives, interests, knowledge, and ideas of different stakeholders. A case study of a community forest user group (CFUG) in the central hills of Nepal is used to analyse the application of deliberative processes for promoting deliberative governance. The findings indicate that there is great potential for deliberative processes to make local governance of community forests more democratic and inclusive. Effective governance at the local-level can contribute to the creation of social equity and to the sustainable management of community forests. Key words: Nepal, deliberative democracy, community forestry, Participatory Action Research, external facilitation

Government-initiated community resource management and local resource extraction from Nepal's forests

This paper considers the effect on local resource extraction of an ambitious, government-initiated community forestry program in Nepal. Beginning in 1993, the government of Nepal began to transfer all accessible forestland from the national government to local communities by creating local groups of forest users. This study uses institutional details about the implementation of this program to evaluate its impact on the extraction of wood for fuel. Transferring forests to local groups of forest users is associated with a significant reduction in resource extraction in communities that receive new forest user groups.

Generation and utilization of community fund in small-scale community forest management in the Terai region of Nepal

It has been widely recognized that constantly increasing community fund is one of the indicators of successful implementation of community forestry program in Nepal. However, a very few people know how the fund is collected under the program and it has been utilized so far. The paper is based on the generation and utilization of community fund of two-community forests in the Terai region. The community forests of the region have collected large amount of community fund annually from the sale of forest products and non-forestry sources as well. The study revealed that along with community fund increasing, office operation cost has been constantly increasing while utilizing the fund, whereas promotion of forest management and community development costs are essential for long-term sustainability of the program. Therefore, the study concluded that only the minimization of office operation cost could increase the forest management and community development costs based on the principle of trade-off, which is crucial to keep the people intact in community forestry program and its long-term sustainability. Keywords: community forestry, community fund, Terai, Nepal doi: 10.3126/banko.v17i2.2156 Banko Janakari, Vol. 17, No. 2, 55-61