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

9. FOREST BASED
ENTERPRISES
Two decades of community forestry in Nepal: What have we learned?
“NSCFP was successful in broadening the vision of economic development and establishing
pro-poor enterprises ensuring shares for the poor. This kind of experiment is very
exciting, because if it works, it has the capability to transform rural people’s lives.”
Mike Nurse, NSCFP CTA mid 2002 – mid 2004 (and working for NAFP 1990 – mid 1993)
“NSCFP has identifi ed the poor and helped them become forest entrepreneurs. Despite
NSCFP being ahead in forest policy infl uences, it still needs to work on economic
transformation of the CFUGs for their sustainability.”
Parbat Gurung, Forest-based entrepreneur and social activist, Dolakha
Forest-based enterprise development under NSCFP is perhaps the most
controversial of all project components. Project staff recognised quite early on in
the project’s history that for CFUGs to become fully independent and self-fi nancing,
they needed to be able to generate substantial income from their forest resources.
The best way to do this was identifi ed as being through better processing and
marketing of forest products, at the same time creating local employment
opportunities. Non-timber products were considered to have particular potential
given that timber harvesting was and remains a sensitive issue. The diffi culties of
supporting the establishment of viable commercial enterprises in remote locations
where those concerned have very little business experience or market information
should not be under-estimated. Indeed, at one stage there was a proposal to
develop a separate project focusing on this issue (see quotes), but it did not
materialise. Instead, NSCFP itself took up the challenge.
“SDC missed, in 1994 and again in 2003, and despite strong and justifi ed demand by the
project, the opportunity to effectively and suffi ciently support the much greater potential for
income generation by the FUGs and rural population by refusing to specifi cally increase
and proactively target support for “Forest product promotion and marketing”…”
Patrick Robinson, forestry adviser to SDC Nepal 1989-1995 including CTA NSCFP 1990-
1995
“Forest-based enterprise development was an issue on which there was a division of
opinion between the COOF and SDC-Bern. We in the COOF [SDC-Nepal] pushed strongly
for a separate project on Forest Products, with a strong marketing component…. However,
the Forest Products project never came about.”
Karl Schuler, NSCFP Team Leader (for SDC) Sept 1995 – April 1999; Assistant (later
Deputy) Country Director of SDC in Nepal to Feb 2004
NSCFP’s initial approach in supporting forest-based enterprises, from 2000 to
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