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

The Remake of a Statetime taken to reach this point may vary, but quick results cannotbe expected – findings supported by research in other countriessays.Promoting good governance• Representation of women and DAGs in committees needs notonly to be encouraged in itself, but supported through coachingand capacity building, so that those elected individuals areempowered to participate fully in decision-making. In thisrespect, the tool of governance coaching supported through theproject appears to have had positive effect.• When elites have often played a negative role in dominatingdecision-making and capturing benefits from community forests,they can also contribute in a positive manner as role modelsto social transformation. Well-governed CFUGs provide anopportunity for this. At the wider national level, it should alsobe noted that many of those calling for good governance andpro-poor change, especially in community forestry circles, arethemselves members of elite groups.Implication to national political levelThe State in transition has to learn from the local governance processesof grass-root level institutions such as CFUGs from where citizen groupsare practising local democracy even in a difficult national political context.These groups have constantly been exerting pressure and making demandfor change. Community forestry for example has evolved locally over timeand policies are being made based on local practice, not the other wayround. We argue that good practices of community forestry can be usefulfor the current national process of state restructuring and socio-politicaltransformation. Some of the key learning is detailed in the coming lines:• Practice of piloting first, the policies later – The current legislativeframework in forestry was enacted only after seven years ofpiloting 8 . This has proven community forestry a viable approachdeveloped through an evolutionary process of project toprogramme to a local system and finally a model of sustainabledevelopment based on local practices. There are now thousands8About 30,000 ha forest was already handed over provisionally to about 500 Community Forest UserGroups even before the enactment of the Forest Act 1993.81