Two decades of community forestry in Nepal: What have we learned?

Two decades of community forestry in Nepal: What have we learned?
rights related to access to natural resources can be exercised in practice.
“The project through its poverty reduction and livelihood improvement approaches has
been successful in starting a process of structural transformation in the CFUGs and not
just delivering welfare provision. It has reached the extreme poor where most projects
do not even recognise these people as a separate group and so they remain invisible to
development support. The individual coaching of extreme poor households (often
extremely socially excluded) has begun to build confi dence and remove some elements of
their exclusion.”
Mary Hobley, NSCFP External Reviewer 2007
The holistic concept of poverty in all its social as well as economic dimensions
that is used by NSCFP must be stressed, as the specifi c livelihood plans and
provisions for the bipanna is only one part of the way in which poverty is addressed.
The misconception that it is the main way has led to some criticism, as indicated by
the following comments.
“Through providing very little support NSCFP has aimed at having a big impact on poverty
reduction. Does this really help?”
Bishnu Lal Ghimire, DFO, Okhaldhunga
“After much intervention, the population of the poor in the project districts is still over 40%
whilst the cash investment of the project funds to directly reach the poor is less than 5% of
the total budget.”
Damber Tembe, NORMS
Community forestry promotes wood, food and fodder together
From the project
perspective, the main
way in which poverty
is addressed is by
raising awareness and
willingness amongst
CFUG members to do
something themselves
about the poorest and
most disadvantaged,
starting by treating
them with respect and
dignity. The LIP is then one
particular mechanism
for channelling support
– one that is administratively
complex to
manage, and difficult to increase
in volume without attracting negative dynamics (such as jealousy and fund misappropriation).
From 2000 onwards, NSCFP has monitored the extent to which CFUGs
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