English - Support to Participatory Constitution Building in Nepal ...

Forestland reformet al. 2004; Nurse et al. 2004; Ojha and Subedi 2004; Poudyal and Thapa2004; Hobley et al. 2007; Luitel et al. 2009). Though these successes aredisproportionately confined to small areas where donor projects havea physical presence with high financial and technical investments, itdemonstrates that the weight of structural barriers to inclusion can belifted to some extent. It is possible if careful considerations are given toidentify the barriers and pro-poor and inclusive provisions and practicesare adopted.Community forestry has been a vehicle to ensure access to forest resourcesto local communities as their customary and inherent rights. Such rightsinclude the use of forest resources they have lived close by since thebeginning. This has also been reinforced recently by the provision of ILOArticle 169. Community forestry has also been proven a viable approachto reverse the rate of deforestation and degradation. In addition, despiteits original conservation objective, Nepal’s community forestry has beenable to demonstrate mainly three outcomes.Firstly, for poor households, community forestry regime is the closestavailable local institution to help them in poverty mitigation. In this,community forest land resources, products and community fund serveas the subsistence ‘safety nets’ or low income gap-fillers. It also assist inpoverty reduction in which forest resources help lift the household outof poverty by functioning as a source of permanent increase in income,assets, services, civil and political rights, voice and the rule of law (Acharyaet al. 2008; Pokharel and Carter 2007; Pokharel et al. 2008). Communityforestry has also contributed for the enhancement of public services,gender equality and empowerment (Hobley et al. 2007; Pokharel et al.2008; Luitel et al. 2009).Secondly, community forestry regime has been a tool for halting or evenreversing trends in deforestation and forest fragmentation (Gautam etal. 2003; Nagendra et al. 2008). Forest cover and quality in communityforests are improved significantly compared to the forests under thestate management regime (Kandel and Neupane 2007). Children andwomen who have to search far and wide for fuel wood and fodder haveless time for school or redressing gender inequality. The legal access andbetter availability of forest products in the community forests for basicsubsistence forest products not only save time, but also allow them to usesaved time for other productive works. National and international reviewworks show how forestry within a broader framework of sustainable120