Basundhara Bhattarai; Sindhu Prasad Dhungana. 2008. How Can Forests Better Serve the Poor? A Review of Documented Knowledge on Leasehold and Community Forestry in Nepal. ForestAction Nepal In collaboration with: Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR).

Summary:

The study compiled and analyzed the key literature on Community Forestry (CF) and Leasehold Forestry (LF) to distil evidence and insights on how the two programs facilitate creating pro-poor livelihood impact. It identified two major constraints to enhancing livelihoods: elite domination in decision-making and its general orientation to meeting subsistence needs. The study recommends democratizing FUGs so that the poor and marginalized groups have an increased stake in the choices of forest management strategies and arrangements for benefit distribution; and promoting a shift from subsistence to entrepreneurship-oriented management of forest resources. For LF, there is a need to go beyond the community as a whole (community means lumping poorest and marginalized with the local elites) to focus upon the poor directly, and that there is a need to target the well-stocked resource for the poorest.

1. Livelihoods outcomes are determined by complex relations such as favourable linkages among NGOs, between the poor and the market actors not simply determined by direct intervention of the program or policy.

2. The heterogeneous structure of communities lead to a dilemma between the two approaches: exclusive groups of identified poor under LF and mixed groups under CF. Rather than thinking of the structure of group at the policy domain, emphasis should be on facilitating negotiations between the poor and the well off as part of fostering equitable resource distribution arrangements and democratic institutional structures.

3. The effectiveness of policy and program depends on how and to what extent they allow and promote engagement of civil society and market-based actors, away from techno-bureaucratic and paternalistic delivery of services.

The study identified opportunities in improving livelihoods of the poor through a) enhancing political space of the forest dependent poor to challenge existing relations of power and inequality surrounding the processes of resource access and benefit sharing, and b) promoting genuinely participatory and inclusive approaches to policy and program development and implementation. It identified various and specific recommendations to strengthen and develop pro-poor forest management of LF and CF as well as various possible measures to seek synergy between the two programs..

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