Reimagining community forestry institutions in the changing forest and people relationships in Nepal

Keywords: Community forestry, institutions, poly-centric governance, commons, Nepal
Abstract Type: Virtual Paper Abstract

Abstract

Community forestry has been considered as one of the successful decentralization policies (and decentralized forest governance program) making remarkable achievements in both ecological and socio-economic sustainability in the Nepalese Himalaya. However, in four decades of the community forestry journey, there has been a profound change in the socioeconomic, political, and ecological contexts. These evolving changes are generating notable shifts in forest-people relations in the country and putting challenges on the CF institutions. In this context, as we show in this chapter, business-as-usual community forestry institutions are becoming redundant and increasingly unable to sustain local collective action. We argue that reimagining and conceptualizing new community forestry institutions can help community forest institutions better adapt to the changing contexts and revitalize Nepal’s community forestry. We acknowledge that community institutions alone, at least in the current form, are not able to effectively deal with the growing resource management challenges. We support the argument that a polycentric approach involving collaboration/partnership with entrepreneurial sectors and local governments can help revitalize the CF. However, as we show in this chapter, the collaboration of community institutions (Community Forest User Groups) with other stakeholders, particularly the forest bureaucracy and private sector seems not to be working well. Commercial management of forests in the resources region is faced with the challenges of increased bureaucratic influence in forest management and powerful actors dominate the forest governance undermining local collective action and equitable governance. Hence, we suggest reimagining forestry institutions towards revitalizing Nepal’s community forestry.