CAN COMMUNITY FORESTRY PLAY A MAJOR ROLE IN THE SOCIO-ECONOMIC ENHANCEMENT OF POOR USERS IN NEPAL? (original) (raw)
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Journal of Forest Planning, 2004
More than two decades have been pa$sed since the introductien of the people participatory community forestry in Nepal. This paper explores changes in rural livelihoeds with changed circumstances that have been 1argely brought by the community forestry. Chaubas-Bhumlu community forest of Middle Mountain was taken as a case study fer the analysis. Based on the case study, the situation befere community forestry intervention and the present situation after Community forestry have been analyzed at the household level. Households as units of analysis were chosen based on the systematic random sarnpling and were interviewed with structured questionnaire. Twe key informant groups, one consisting of ten vi11age elites and other ten elders, were formed and were discussed te access the comrnunity level information. The result indicates that community forestry is successfully achieving its objectives from reseurce$ demand fu1fi11ment to increased econemic benefits. However, economic improvement has been visible at the communily level but not at the household level. It means only the access te resources use is not enough for the household economic development. On the other hand, thc farm activities are gradually declining with increasing ofUarm activities. This situation has led the "complex" farming system from a stable state, though stagnant, to a vulnerable state. This paper concludes (1) the present community forestry model lacks mechanism to utilize the income from the forest te househelds' economic benefits; (2) the farming system which has a major rele in household economy has not been integrated to and supperted by community forest; (3) the socioeconomic development activities should go simultaneeusly with the development of community forest to multiply the tota1 benefit from forest. Kdyworzts: Community development, Community forestry, Forest products rnarket, Ofifarm inceme, Rural livelihood
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DHRUBA BIJAYA, G. C., Cheng SHENG-KUI, Gao QIJIE, Xu. ZENGRANG, Wang. LING-EN, Jyoti BHANDARI, Liu XIAOJIE, Gao LIWEI and Cao XIAOCHANG, 2015. Can community forestry play a major role in the socio-economic enhancement of poor users in Nepal? Bulg. J. Agric. Sci., 21: 378-383 Nepal is increasingly gaining world-wide recognition in participatory forestry and natural resource management, primarily through “Community Forestry” program which has a well documented history over three decades. This study was carried out in Tibrekot Community Forestry in Nepal focused on the local poor forest users with the objective to fi nd out the changes brought by the community forestry in the socio-economic enhancement of local forest users, to analyze the level of participation in community forestry management activities and to assess the ecological/economical aspects of the forest. The Participatory Rural Appraisal tools were used to collect the data from sampled households, key informants interview ...
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The study was conducted to evaluate the distribution of benefits from Community Forestry (CF) to three economic and two social strata of four community forest user groups in Pyuthan District, Nepal. The benefits of CF were compared in terms of forests products' availability, income and employment generation, and contribution to farming system among the socioeconomic strata of the population. The study compares users' perceptions of availability and reported consumption of forest products now and before CF. The participation and perception of users in decision-making and benefit-sharing system has been assessed in respect to economic and social status of the respondents. Economic stratification of user households into poor, medium and rich was based upon participatory wealth ranking. Social stratification was based on castes; the lower or untouchable castes (so-called) were categorized as a disadvantaged group (DAG) and others as a nondisadvantaged group (NDAG). Both formal a...
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The system of community forest management (participatory forest management) seeks to initiate the process of eliminating the main causes of forest depletion through participation of local communities. In this paper we have attempted to analyze the participatory forest management in Dendi Destirict of Oromia region through households' socio-economic and forest conservation lenses. The findings of the study reported that participatory forest management enhanced the livelihood, the conservation measurements and the social assets of the local communities. It was found that this regime of forest management could attain the sustainability of the forest and accelerate the standard of participant household's livelihood; hence, the program is an efficient management option towards sustainability of the forest resources.
International Journal of Sciences
The study was carried out in three Community Forest User Groups (CFUGs) in Achham district of Nepal. This paper examines the benefits and costs incurred by three income class households (HHs) from Community Forest (CF) over a period of 10 years using semi-structured interviews with 212 randomly selected HHs and 3 subgroup discussions. The findings of the research reveal that the rich HHs derived the highest mean annual gross benefit (35.23%) followed by middle (32.47%) and poor (32.30%) income class HHs respectively. Likewise, rich HHs incurred the highest mean annual gross cost (49.82%) followed by middle (30.47%) and poor (19.71%) income class HHs respectively. Overall, benefits gained by the HHs was 17 times the cost incurred. While benefits from forest products constituted the highest share (97.26%) of benefits, conversely, forest product collection costs constituted the highest share (53.33%) of costs. The results of the research also suggest that rich HHs received the highest Net Present Value (US$ 2537.80) followed by poor (US$ 2504.11) and middle (US$ 2463.89) income class HHs over 10 years at 10% discount rate. The Benefit Cost Ratio for poor, middle and rich income class HHs was found to be 25.52, 16.32 and 11.14 respectively. Household level income from CF is significantly influenced by many bio-physical, economic and demographic variables. The analytical results suggested that education of HH head, distance to CF boundary from user"s home, age of HH head, and HH economic status were statistically significant and showed the negative linear relationship wth HH income from CF. On other hand, livestock unit and HH labor force were statistically significant as expected a priori and showed linear relationship with HH income from CF. Based on these findings, appropriate cost-benefit sharing mechanism were suggested with regular silvicultural operations to empower poor households in CF activities.