Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Box 7.6
Community forestry in Nepal.
Nepal has one of the longest-established natural resource co-management sys-
tems, based around community forestry. The system has been evolving since the
1970s, when in response to wide-spread degradation, the government introduced
the Community Forestry Development Programme (CFDP). By 2002, about
25% of Nepal's forests had been handed over to 13,000 community forest groups,
who represent about 35% of Nepal's population. This is no small-scale pilot
project but a mainstream government policy which has had huge amounts of
international donor support and interest. A community can apply to set up a
forest user group (FUG) by submitting a plan for approval to the District Forestry
Officer. The plan needs to include restrictions on access and spending of a pro-
portion of the proceeds of timber sales on community development activities
(about 36% in 2002). Although there are always issues associated with such a
large-scale programme, particularly that the poorest are not getting the benefit
that they should, the general view is that the programme has been successful,
particularly in terms of improved forest extent and density. This qualifies as
co-management because the FUGs manage the forest block on a day-to-day basis,
but the Forestry Department provides the supportive legislative framework.
Source
: Gilmour
et al
. (2004).
between the state and local people. It is particularly well advanced in fisheries
(Arthur and Howard 2005; Pomeroy and Rivera-Guieb 2006), but has also been
used for caribou management in Canada (Gunn 1998; Hurst 2004).
The whole ethos of participation in conservation and resource management
suggests that
co-management
is a particularly good approach for implementing
conservation in the modern world. In theory it should give the best of both
worlds—the state involvement giving legitimacy, technical expertise, facilitation
and access to funding, the community involvement giving local knowledge and
the buy-in of the resource users. It is a natural follow-on from participatory
research and monitoring—once communities are engaged, the logical next step is
that they should be involved in ongoing management (e.g. Box 7.6).
All the issues that are raised about community-based conservation approaches
and participatory monitoring in Chapter 6 and this chapter are also relevant to co-
management. Some additional issues include:
●
The concern that co-management covers a
range of community involve-
ment
, from the communities being informed or consulted about management
issues but having no formal power, right through to full community control
but with the community being able to consult experts and obtain resources
when they need them. There is the possibility that the term co-management
can just dress up business as usual through the holding of a few consultations.
