Community Forestry in Nepal

Adapting to a Changing World

Richard Thwaites,Robert Fisher,Mohan Poudel

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781315445144
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Technology & Engineering
• Subtopic: Forestry
• Index: Technology & Engineering

Community forestry focuses on the link between forest resources and livelihoods and contributes to forest conservation and reforestation. It is widespread in Nepal, with a very high proportion of the rural population involved, and is widely recognized as one of the most successful examples of community forestry in Asia. Through a combination of literature reviews and original research, this volume explores key experiences and outcomes of community forestry in Nepal over the last four decades as a model for improving forest management and supporting local livelihoods.

The book takes a critical approach, recognizing successes, especially in forest conservation and restoration, along with mixed outcomes in terms of poverty reduction and benefits to forest users. It recognizes the way that community forestry has continued to evolve to meet new challenges, including the global challenges of climate change, environmental degradation and conservation, as well as national demographic and social changes due to large-scale labour migration and the growing remittance economy. In addition to examining the changes and responses, the book explores ways that community forestry in Nepal might move forward. Lessons from Nepal have relevance to community forestry and community-based approaches to natural resource management around the world that are also experiencing global pressures and opportunities.

1 Community forestry in Nepal

Origins and issues

Richard Thwaites, Robert Fisher and Mohan Poudel

Introduction

When community forestry (CF) was first introduced in Nepal in the late 1970s, it was established in local communities that were, to a large part, isolated from outside in terms of local economy and livelihoods. Most rural people lived semi-subsistence lifestyles heavily dependent on local forests and farmlands for their livelihoods. The initial concern of CF was to provide for local management of forests that would contribute to forest conservation and reforestation, later expanding to include the link between forest resources and livelihoods. CF is now widespread in Nepal, particularly across the region of the Middle Hills, with a very high proportion of rural population involved, and is widely recognized as one of the most successful examples of community forestry in Asia. While noting these successes, the handing over of responsibility for forest management from government to communities has presented new challenges associated with local autonomy and decision-making, institutional governance, tenure and rights, as well as raised issues of equity in decision-making and benefit distribution. The establishment of local Community Forest User Groups (CFUGs) has resulted in a variety of environmental, social and economic outcomes for local communities. In many communities, CF provides a central institutional focus, bringing the community together around a common purpose, developing networks and skills, and building local expectations and capacities. In some cases, these groups have gone beyond the focus only on forest management to contribute to a broader development agenda in the local community.

Since the late 1970s and 1980s when CF emerged within the localized semi-subsistence economies of rural Nepal, the broader context of CF has changed greatly. Today, CF finds itself embedded in a more complex global economy and confronted by rapidly changing global and national pressures and priorities. Climate change and international policies such as REDD+, as well as contemporary social change, including extensive labour migration and feminization of rural agriculture, all present new challenges and opportunities for CF. The skills, structures and experiences of CF institutions present local communities with the capacity to respond to these challenges and opportunities in ways that may not have been otherwise possible. While bringing opportunities for individuals and for CF groups, these changes also place new pressures on CF and the local CF institutions, introduce new stakeholders and expectations, and could provide new challenges and threats to the operation of locally based CF institutions, especially the pressure to meet externally imposed objectives, such as carbon capture. As a program embedded in local institutions, CF requires ongoing local commitment to be sustainable and successful, yet these global ‘pressures’ could have implications for local autonomy and local benefits.

The purpose of this book is to explore, through a combination of review and reporting on primary research, some of the experience of CF in Nepal as a model for improving forest management and supporting local livelihoods, as well as the experience of CF in adapting to a rapidly changing world, how it has responded to the opportunities and challenges presented, and how it might move forward. As a relatively ‘mature’ approach to community-based natural resource management (NRM), the outcomes and implications of these responses in Nepal have relevance to community forestry and community-based approaches to natural resource management around the world that are also experiencing global pressures and opportunities. We approach the writing of this book from a critical political ecology perspective, based on empirical evidence, and whereby change is investigated not just from an environmental perspective, but from a social and political perspective that recognizes fundamental inequalities and power relationships within society.

The specific aims of this book are to:

• Provide a historical perspective on the development of community forestry in Nepal, and the experience of community forestry in delivering on fundamental environmental and social objectives;
• Explore the implications of the dynamic global context of community forestry in Nepal, and the responses of community forestry institutions to these global influences; and
• While providing specific information from Nepal, identify issues and responses or strategies that have global relevance and application.

People and forests

It has been well established that forests are crucial to the maintenance of life on earth, containing over 75 percent of the world’s terrestrial biodiversity (FAO 2016), providing protection for soil and water resources, providing a source of timber and a range of other products that support life and livelihoods for forest-dwelling people as well as people living beyond the forests. As the ‘lungs of the planet’, forests also filter pollution from the atmosphere, provide a source of oxygen and a sink for carbon, thus making an important contribution to achieving a balance in the atmosphere that makes the planet amenable to life as we know it. Forests also have cultural and spiritual value for human populations, as well as providing recreational opportunities. But in addition to providing a wide range of services, forest ecosystems play an important economic and livelihood role, providing direct employment to over 10 million people worldwide (FAO 2010). Further, Munang et al. (2011) report that about 410 million people are highly dependent on forests for subsistence needs as well as income and the livelihoods of 1.6 billion people depend to some extent on forest goods. So, forests provide many benefits essential to life on Earth, as well as supporting the quality of human life.

It follows that any loss or degradation of forests will have many consequences for ecosystem function and biodiversity, and for delivery of services at the global level such as carbon regulation associated with global climate change, at the regional level such as regulating temperature and humidity to modify climate, and at the local level such as flood mitigation, water supply, and provision of livelihood resources and tradeable goods. Loss or degradation of forests could have dramatic consequences for the lives and livelihoods of forest-dependent peoples, as could expansion or improvement of forests.

While there are many factors causing forest degradation and loss – including anthropogenic fire, unsustainable management, over-grazing, urban expansion and development of infrastructure – FAO (2016) has identified the most significant direct factor as conversion of forests for agricultural use (FAO 2016). This can occur with the expansion of industrial agriculture, but is also associated with small-scale subsistence agriculture. FAO (2016) reports that 5,000 years of human activity converting forests to other land uses has resulted in a loss of 1.8 billion hectares (ha), a decline of almost 50 percent in forest area. In addition to the direct factors, there are a number of underlying factors that may cause forest degradation and loss. These include perverse incentives associated with lack of or insecure tenure and lack of recognition of subsistence and public good benefits from services that sustainable management of forests would deliver and that result in the liquidation of forest assets to realize immediate market value for short-term gain over these longer term subsistence and public good benefits (Barbier and Burgess 2001; Munang et al. 2011). In recent decades the greatest net loss of forests has occurred in tropical and low-income countries where populations are growing. Between 2000 and 2010, FAO (2016) report an annual net loss of tropical forest of 7 million ha, almost matched by an annual net gain in the same regions in agricultural land of 6 million ha. In the tropics and sub-tropics, large-scale commercial agriculture accounts for about 40 percent of deforestation, with local subsistence agriculture accounting for 33 percent and the remainder a result of infrastructure development, urban expansion and mining.

Keenan et al. (2015) reported that in 2015, 3,999 million hectares (ha) of land was covered by forest, equivalent to 31 percent of global land area, with a further 1,204 million ha designated as ‘other wooded land’. The area of forest was down from 4,128 million ha in 1990, a net decline of over 3 percent, though the rate of net forest loss had more than halved over this 25-year period from a loss of 7.3 million ha per year from 1990 to 2000, to 3.3 million ha per year between 2010 and 2015. However, over the 25-year period from 1990 to 2015, the area of natural forest declined by 6 percent from 3,961 million ha to 3,721 million hectares, offset by an increase of planted forests of 66 percent from 168 million ha to 278 million ha.

The sustainability of forest use and management, forest condition and local livelihoods are closely connected. The challenge of feeding the growing world population is made more difficult by ongoing land degradation, water and land scarcity and climate change (FAO 2016). The FAO (2016) points out that as well as supporting local livelihoods, forests are fundamental for food security, harbour over 75 percent of the world’s terrestrial biodiversity and contribute to climate change mitigation. These diverse benefits are also recognized by the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (UN 2015), agreed to at the United Nations Summit on Sustainable Development in 2015, which identify 17 ‘universal and transformative’ goals which seek to achieve sustainable development in a balanced and integrated manner. SDG 15 is explicitly relevant to the management of forests: “protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss”. Other goals are also relevant to the roles that forests play: SDG 1, ending poverty; SDG 2, achieving food security and promoting sustainable agriculture; SDG 6, availability and management of water; SDG 7, access to energy; SDG 13, combating climate change.

While the 17 identified goals are described as being ‘integrated and indivisible’, the great challenge for forest management will be to contribute to ending hunger, achieving food security and promoting sustainable agriculture (SDG 2), without compromising the protection of forest ecosystems and biodiversity promoted in SDG 15, or contributions to water supply, energy, poverty alleviation and climate mitigation (FAO 2016).

Community-based forest management and community forestry

Community-based approaches to forest management started around the world in response to recognized failures in government management of forests. Government management of forests was often found to be inefficient, ineffective and corrupt, as well as resulting in widespread loss of forests, forest degradation and reduced forest productivity.

Much of the global loss and degradation of forests outlined above has occurred under formal government management of forests, and there has been a general understanding that government management has not been successful in halting deforestation. There is also recognition that loss of forests under government management regimes has placed great pressure on the livelihoods of those people who depend on the forests. Numerous authors have concluded that a government-centred forest management approach cannot achieve sustainable forest management and poverty reduction amongst rural communities. In response, projects around the world have introduced more participatory approaches of community-based forestry (CBF), in which local communities that have a stake in the forests act collectively in the management and extraction of resources from local forests. Such participatory or collective approaches have been implemented in many different ways, with...