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This paper explores the forest bureaucracy's practices of implementing community forest policies in Nepal and how this shapes the realities of community forestry for forest user groups. To this end, we conducted a content analysis of community forest management plans; surveyed 74 community forest user groups; conducted intensive field observation in six community forests and interacted with executive committee members and forest bureaucrats from two western hill districts. Our results show that forest user groups were hardly aware of their formal rights, including the obligations of forest bureaucrats to deliver free-of-charge services and technical support. Nobody holds forest bureaucrats accountable for failing to fulfil this part of their official duties. Rather, the forest bureaucrats have established different legal and extralegal processes and mechanisms through which they regain and maintain control over community forest resources. We call this 'bureaucratic recentralisation', and it allows forest bureaucrats to reap personal benefits, including unofficial revenues for delivering statutorily no-cost services.

Chure landscape is important and valuable because of its topography, geology, geo-morphology and climate. It provides several ecosystem services to the areas downstream, and also, has direct influence on the quality of the environment. The Government of Nepal (GoN) declared Chure landscape as Chure Environmental Protection Area in 2014, and also, formed President Chure-Tarai Madhesh Conservation Development Board (PCTMCDB) to look it separately. In the last four years, the government has entrusted to invest NRs. 6.15 billion in achieving the targeted objectives. This paper looks at whether the investment is worthwhile by assessing the effectiveness of the policies and programs in Chure landscape to achieve its target or goal. The information was gathered through consultative meetings, key informant interviews, focus group discussions and household surveys in the concentrated and distributive sites of river basin systems. The findings show that the formation of a separate body i.e., board and the designed programs, such as river training, soil and water conservation and livelihood support programs are highly relevant. However, the board has not been effective in holding the authority to implement the programs. The programs are being implemented in an ad hoc basis. Similarly, a blanket approach is not appropriate to implement the conservation and development programs due to different physiographic and variation in socio-economic conditions and resource use practices. There is a need of establishing an office with full legal authority along with integrated policy, and also, creation of an independent Chure conservation fund for its sustainability.

Exactly how do forest bureaucracies manoeuvre to regain power and maximise benefits in the bewildering legal, financial, and administrative field of forest decentralisation? Based on a review of thirty management plans, stakeholder consultations, intensive interactions with six forest user groups, forest officials, and donor project employees in Nepal, we document the mechanisms of legal-sounding re-centralisation. The central tenet is that bureaucratically established procedures, which are not required by law but treated as if they were, are used to impose regular revisions of community forest management plans. Meagre government or more generous donor budgets financed the revisions. Forest bureaucrats and/or consultants did the work and benefitted financially. None of the approaches, however, lived up to technical, scientific standards or followed stipulated participatory processes. The revised plans were almost identical to their previous versions and differences mostly a result of mere desk exercises to fulfil donor requirements and government orders, at least on paper. While legitimised by a perceived promotion of rational, technical sound, and equitable forest governance, the main function of plan revisions appears to be strengthening or re-establishing the forest bureaucracy's control over community forest resources which allows forest bureaucrats to tap into donor project and forest product value chains.

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This paper explains how powerful actors use scientific forestry narratives to regain power over decentralised forest resources. Through elements of trust, incentives, coercion, and avoidance forest bureaucrats convince forest user groups of the need to implement so-called scientific management and planning principles to obtain predictable harvests. In reality, however, these principles replicate colonial-style Indian forest management and expand the involvement of forest bureaucrats in all aspects of community forestry to re-gain resource control and establish rent-seeking opportunities for forest bureaucrats. In this process, forest user groups lose authority over and income from their forests. We define this as “technical-sounding re-centralisation” since the forest bureaucracy has re-captured decision-making power over forest resources and associated revenue through narratives of scientific forestry. We argue that today's colonial-style re-centralised governance of community forests must give way to forest management principles, which devolve decision-making powers to local communities while ensuring conservation through utilisation, and reasonable taxation.

Technical forest management plans have become a precondition for transferring authority to local institutions in processes of participatory forest management. The plans are intended to safeguard environmental values and are justified by their relevance in daily forest management. To serve these functions, the plans must be informed by accurate information about the forest and be actively used by local communities. Based on studies in Nepal, this paper seeks to further our understanding of the role of so-called scientific planning in community-level management through time series analyses of remote sensing images, detailed forest inventories and interviews with community forest managers and public forest authorities. Results indicate that technical forest management plans have been elaborated haphazardly and that local communities base their management on other sources of knowledge. Further, community-level managers appear well-informed about forest condition and their practices contribute to sustainable forest development. We suggest the need to further scrutinize the regime of scientific management planning as its practical relevance appears questionable.

Community based forestry is seen as a promising instrument for sustainable forest management (SFM) through the purposeful involvement of local communities. Globally, forest area managed by local communities is on the rise. However, transferring management responsibilities to forest users alone cannot guarantee the sustainability of forest management. A monitoring tool, that allows the local communities to track the progress of forest management towards the goal of sustainability, is essential. A case study, including six forest user groups (FUGs), two from each three community based forestry models—community forestry (CF), buffer zone community forestry (BZCF), and collaborative forest management (CFM) representing three different physiographic regions, was conducted in Nepal. The study explores which community based forest management model (CF, BZCF or CFM) is doing well in terms of sustainable forest management. The study assesses the overall performance of the three models towards SFM using locally developed criteria (four), indicators (26) and verifiers (60). This paper attempts to quantify the sustainability of the models using sustainability index for individual criteria (SIIC), and overall sustainability index (OSI). In addition, rating to the criteria and scoring of the verifiers by the FUGs were done. Among the four criteria, the FUGs ascribed the highest weightage to institutional framework and governance criterion; followed by economic and social benefits, forest management practices, and extent of forest resources. Similarly, the SIIC was found to be the highest for the institutional framework and governance criterion. The average values of OSI for CFM, CF, and BZCF were 0.48, 0.51 and 0.60 respectively; suggesting that buffer zone community forestry is the more sustainable model among the three. The study also suggested that the SIIC and OSI help local communities to quantify the overall progress of their forestry practices towards sustainability. The indices provided a clear picture of forest management practices to indicate the direction where they are heading in terms of sustainability; and informed the users on issues to pay attention to enhance sustainability of their forests.

Following a case study approach, this paper explains how scientific forest management plans were developed and implemented in community forests of a mid-hill district in Nepal. Field observations were carried over a period of two years (December 2014 to December 2016) in two community forests. User group members, forest officials, forest technicians and executive committeemembers were consulted. The plans were prepared simply by compiling the administrative requirements where management prescriptions were defined either based on forest technicians‘ knowledge or taken directly from the government guidelines with little reference to the actual site quality, management objectives, and forest stand conditions. Apart from harvesting of trees, usershardly implemented the plans‘ silvicultural prescriptions and forest restoration activities. Moreover forest officials administratively reduced the number of trees that users could harvest to around half of what the plans allow. Accordingly, forest user groups face a paradoxical forest administration that promotes timber harvesting according to so-called scientific principles, which it then brushes aside to satisfy bureaucratic demands. The study concludes that the concept of scientific forestry is merely used as a "brand" or a seemingly sound "narrative" in community forestry,while it is of little practical relevance because administrative decisions are more powerful in guiding forest management decisions. Hence, the study suggests a replacement of the current schizophrenic mix of so-called"scientific forest management" and sweeping administrative orders with adaptive management practices in community forests. Following a case study approach, this paper explains how scientific forest management plans were developed and implemented in community forests of a mid-hill district in Nepal. Field observations were carried over a period of two years (December 2014 to December 2016) in two community forests. User group members, forest officials, forest technicians and executive committeemembers were consulted. The plans were prepared simply by compiling the administrative requirements where management prescriptions were defined either based on forest technicians‘ knowledge or taken directly from the government guidelines with little reference to the actual site quality, management objectives, and forest stand conditions. Apart from harvesting of trees, usershardly implemented the plans‘ silvicultural prescriptions and forest restoration activities. Moreover forest officials administratively reduced the number of trees that users could harvest to around half of what the plans allow. Accordingly, forest user groups face a paradoxical forest administration that promotes timber harvesting according to so-called scientific principles, which it then brushes aside to satisfy bureaucratic demands. The study concludes that the concept of scientific forestry is merely used as a "brand" or a seemingly sound "narrative" in community forestry,while it is of little practical relevance because administrative decisions are more powerful in guiding forest management decisions. Hence, the study suggests a replacement of the current schizophrenic mix of so-called"scientific forest management" and sweeping administrative orders with adaptive management practices in community forests.

There is a variety of forest management institutions ranging from state management to community and private management. This article attempts to identify the conditions under which one institution outperforms the others in the efficiency of forest management based on a review of the literature, empirical evidence on the dominant forest management institutions, and theoretical arguments. In conclusion, we argue that the community management system performs best for nontimber forests, whereas a mixed management system, in which forest protection is carried out communally and tree management is carried out individually, is likely to work best for timber forests.

This paper argues that timber is the most valuable product of community forests and forms the largest share of the income for community forest user groups (CFUGs). This paper assesses the sources of CFUGs’ income in general and income through timber sale, in particular. Drawing information from one hundred CFUGs in three mid-hill districts of Nepal, shows that the contribution from timber is significantly higher compared to other sources such as non- timber forest products, membership fee, penalty, and renting meeting hall. Moreover, the CFUGs with timber sale collect a lesser amount of membership fee, which is one of the major incentives for the members. The research findings emphasize the need to put timber in CFUGs’ key forest management priority.DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3126/jfl.v9i1.8588 Journal of Forestry and Livelihood Vol.9(1) 2010 16-20

Forest governance has received considerable attention in recent years because good governance in community forestry is deemed to be one way of harnessing its potentiality to contribute to poverty reduction. This study aims to examine forest governance by assessing whether the executive committees of Nepal's Community Forest User Groups (CFUGs) are inclusive in terms of gender, caste, and wealth class. The study relies on primary data from 84 CFUGs in five different districts of Nepal, where structured questionnaires were used for collecting information. The findings suggest that the executive committees are more or less inclusive of gender and wealth class, and the project-supported CFUGs tend to have more executive members that are either female, or poor. Inclusive committees in a CFUG may not reflect good governance, as there is a chance that marginalized groups will be exploited in the name of inclusion. Therefore, there is a need to build capacity of marginalized groups before asking them to represent...

Nepal is one of the first developing countries to adopt community forest management which gives authority to forest user groups to manage forest resources. Over one quarter of Nepal's forests is under community forest management. This study aims to examine whether management regime adopted by the Community Forest User Groups (CFUGs) is pro-poor and also what factors influence the management regime of Nepal's community forestry. The study relies on primary data from 100 CFUGs of three different mid-hill districts of Nepal. A set of questionnaire was developed and administered to a small group of 100 CFUGs. The CFUGs adopt rigid and less rigid regimes to manage the community forests. The CFUGs tend to favor poor by adopting less rigid management regime. The age of CFUGs, number of households using community forests, and percent of sal tree species composition in the forests tends to influence the management regime of CFUGs. A higher age of CFUGs, higher number of households and lower percentage of sal in the forests are likely to increase the CFUGs adopting rigid regime to manage the community forests.

Community forest user groups (CFUGs) in Nepal generate income over US$ 10 million annually through community forestry. The income generated is invested in different development activities, including pro-poor programs (PPP). This paper seeks to understand to what extent CFUG funds are being invested in PPP, what factors determine whether investment in PPP is made, and whether the amount of CFUG income matters for making an investment in PPP. The paper relies on primary data from 100 CFUGs distributed in 3 different midhill districts of Nepal. A set of questionnaires was developed and administered to a small group of 100 CFUGs. The study findings show that PPP is the second major expenditure of the CFUG funds examined. It suggests that investment in PPP tends to depend on the amount of CFUG income. In addition to CFUG income, the chairperson's age, the secretary's exposure, and the number of dalit households are likely to influence whether investment of CFUG funds in PPP is made: an older chairpers...

Summary Processes to develop criteria and indicators (C and I) for sustainable forest management are often expert driven. Although the long-term objective of the Nepalese forest policy is sustainable forest management, no national level C and I specifi cally for this have been developed. However, the Ministry of Forests and Soil Conservation awards an annual prize to successful community forest user groups (CFUGs) based on evaluation according to 10 criteria. This study explored local C and I for successful forest management in Nepal through six meetings with CFUG members. A total of 14 local criteria and 52 indicators for awarding a prize to successful CFUGs were identifi ed, and comparison with offi cial C and I was undertaken. Most conspicuously, local C and I focus more on environmental and governance-related aspects than the offi cial list, and the offi cial list leaves much to the discretion of the evaluator. The study concludes that development of a national level C and I for sustainable forest management could benefi t from involvement of local forest users.

Community forestry promotes the management of forests as Common Pool Resources (CPRs) (Ostrom, 1992; Acharya, 2002). A common pool resource refers to a natural or manmade resource system that is sufficiently large as to make it costly to exclude potential beneficiaries from obtaining benefits from its use (Ostrom, 1990). All CPRs share two attributes: it is costly to exclude individuals from using the goods either through physical barriers or legal instruments, and the benefits consumed by one individual subtract from the benefits available to others (Ostrom and Ostrom, 1977; Ostrom et al., 1994). There are some problems in managing CPRs. The problem of CPR is overuse which is described by Hardin (1968) as "Tragedy of the Commons". Hardin uses meaning of commons as open access i.e., everybody's property and everybody's property is nobody's property (Gordon, 1954). Resources managed as common property are not necessarily open access. They are managed by a community or social group with exclusive rights to use resources. The rights to use resources are limited to the group; not to everybody. One feature of common property is a right to use something in common with others (MacPherson, 1978). As property is in common, the property rights are assigned to a community or social group where the rules of appropriation of resources are assumed to safeguard the community or social group. Members of the group agree to limit their individuals claim on resource by subscribing to rules governing the use of resources. Hardin’s notion of the commons was scrutinized under the conceptual differences between resource types and property rights governing their use (Ciriacy-Wantrup and Bishop, 1975). The property rights and governance are closely intertwined and it is one reason that several studies have examined common property institutions to produce different attributes that are conducive for collective action and also for successful governance of resources (Ostrom, 1990; Baland and Platteau, 1996; Hobley and Shah, 1996; Ostrom, 1999; Agrawal, 2001).

Community forestry in Nepal strives for forest conservation and sustainable forest management. Evaluating progress towards this end requires periodic measurements, and currently there are no standard tools for undertaking evaluations in a participatory way. The purpose of this paper is to suggest a standardized way for measuring effective forest conservation through the use of locally set scores. A village-to-village approach was used to assign scores on criteria and indicators developed earlier for forest conservation. A total of eight small meetings with forest users were conducted to elicit their perspectives and quantify their progress towards conservation by means of scores. For the 14 criteria specified, local forest users assigned higher scores to four criteria: two for social and one each for socio-economic and environmental spheres. This paper argues that a score of 59 or above is an effective cut off for determining "effective" forest conservation. Keywords: Community forest, criteria, forest management, indicator, village doi: 10.3126/banko.v19i1.2177 Banko Janakari, Vol. 19, No. 1, 11-15

Community forestry is a well established management form in Nepal. The success of community forestry in improving the forest condition encouraged the government to initiate some developmental works beyond the fulfillment of only basic forestry needs. This paper seeks to explore the investment made by CFUGs in community infrastructures and their priorities as well. Primary data from three mid-hill districts of Nepal were collected from questionnaire survey of 100 CFUGs. The results suggested that community infrastructure was the largest category of expenditures of CFUG funds wherein the majority of the CFUG accorded investment priority to schools. This paper concludes that higher CFUG income has led to a proportionately higher investment in community infrastructures and suggests that it was necessary to increase CFUG income to promote investment in community infrastructures. Investing CFUG funds on schools is a good harbinger of local development that contributes to the achievement of the Millennium Development Goal of universal primary education. Key words: CFUG; CFUG funds; community forestry; community infrastructures DOI: 10.3126/banko.v20i1.3508 Banko Janakari , Vol. 20, No. 1 pp.44-50