Nepal-UK Community Forestry Project (NUKCFP)
Case Study C0069
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| Date | 1998 |
| Agency | Department of Forests, Nepal |
| Donor/support agency | DFID |
| Project type | Implemented by agency |
| Context(s) | Productive landscape |
| Geographic coverage | Nepal |
| Locality | Seven districts in Eastern and Western Regions of Nepal |
| Biodiversity focus | Ecosystem/landscape |
| Development focus | People living in seven districts in Nepal |
| Conservation goals | To reduce forest degradation in seven districts in Nepal |
| Poverty reduction goals | Improve the living conditions of people in seven districts in Nepal |
Summary
The 1993 Nepal Forest Act gave legal authority to forest user groups (FUGs) to assume management of forest areas in the hills of Nepal. Land ownership remains vested with government but the management control rests solely with the FUGs, which legally own the trees, develop their own management plans, set prices for forest outputs and determine how surplus income is spent.
NUKCFP, covering a sixth of all hill districts, has supported capacity building within organisations such as the Forestry Department, NGOs, CBOs and, increasingly, within informal networks of FUGs to enable effective implementation of the legislation. FUGs within the NUKCFP supported districts currently manage between 40% and 70% of these districts forests –excluding those in protected areas.
As a capacity building project, NUKCFP has focused on issues related to power relations, chiefly at the local level, by creating a more empowering environment in which local people can manage their own resources to increase their livelihood strategies. Beside its primary purposes, which were to reduce forest degradation and improve the living conditions of the people living in seven disricts in Nepal, the project also counted a number of secondary objectives:
- help hill communities meet their needs for tree products on a sustained basis;
- increase popular participation in decision making and the sharing of benefits (with special reference to full involvement of poor and women);
- enhance the capacity of the Department of Forests (DOF) to undertake community forestry;
- enhance the capacity of communities (user groups) in seven districts to manage selected areas of forest on an equitable and sustainable basis;
- support HMGN in the further development and implementation of its national community forestry policy.
Conservation impact
The environmental aspect of community forestry has been an unambiguous success throughout Nepal. Surveys show that forest quality is improving in nearly all forest areas under FUG management, although still deteriorating in all other forest areas as pressure transfers from the protected to the unprotected forest.
Poverty reduction impact
Positive poverty impacts have been more variable than environmental impacts. Restricting access particularly affects poorer households that are more reliant upon the resource. Abating this potential negative impact requires that poorer households be able to express their needs and compensatory measures be identified and implemented by the FUGs.
Strategy for Conservation/Poverty Linkages
Enabling local participation in policy-/decision- making processes
Reference 1
www.undp.org/seed/pei/share/forest4.htm
Reference 2
http://www.livelihoods.org/lessons/Asia/NUKCFP_Reports.DOC
More information
http://www.livelihoods.org/lessons/project_summaries/for4_projsum.html
Springate- Baginski, O., J. Soussan, O.P. Dev, N.P. Yadav, E. Kiff (1998). Community Forestry in Nepal: Impacts on Common Property Resource Management, Environment and Developm
Related records above this one:
- Department for International Development (DFID), UK (Organisation O0018)