Socio- economic Impact of Community Forestry (A Case Study of Tokme Danda CFUG of Fungling and Dokhu VDC of Taplejung District)

Abstract

Nepal’s community forestry has become an example of progressive legislation and policies in the decentralization of forest management. It has attracted international attention because in Nepal, decentralization is linked with emerging issues – sustainable forest management, forest governance, policy advocacy, equity, gender, poverty and the role of civil society in community forestry. In particular, the role of the forest user group network in legal advocacy, capacity building and the establishment of democratic governance on a wider scale shows the unique strength of the community forestry approach in Nepal. Since the enactment of the Forest Act in 1993, the government of Nepal has gradually been handing over parcels of national forest, particularly in the mid-hills, to local communities based on an agreed forest management plan between the District Forest Office and local forest user groups. The concept of community forestry is not new anymore, but there is a growing interest among policy makers, donors, and development practitioners to understand the extent to which community forestry contributes on economy of individual households and nation in general. Nepal’s community forestry is a unique model of devolution in Asia and has experience of more than two decades. Therefore, it is time to assess the economic implication of community forestry in Nepal, for self learning and scaling up of good practices to other countries. In this backdrop, this paper presents an analytical view of community forestry from economic perspectives, particularly looking on the contribution towards people’s livelihood and income generation. Nepal has increasingly gained worldwide recognition in participatory forest management, primarily through “Community Forestry” program. This study sketches trajectory of forest management practices in Tokme Danda Community Forest User Group of Fungling and Dokhu VDC of Taplejung District and analyzes achievements and pitfalls associated with Community Forestry. The focus is on analyzing the relations amidst good forest governance, sustainable livelihoods and forest conservation. My analysis indicates that Community Forestry program has been successful to meet the twined goals of forest conservation and socio-economic transformation through power devolution, participation and good governance. Encouraged with such achievements, Nepal has envisioned attaining the national goals of poverty alleviation and the global goals of Sustainable Development by strengthening good forest governance, sustainable forest management, and livelihood improvement. Though, there are adequate challenges, mostly socioeconomically, Community Forestry has been a ‘Learning platform’ that empowering people and recognizing their rights over the resources is the most viable approach of sustainable forest management for a country like Nepal. This Tokme Danda Community Forest is located at Fungling and Dokhu VDC of Taplejung district. This forest covered 14.10 hector land and around 240 households are engaged for their livelihood. 850 number of population is directly related with the socio-economic activities of Tokme Danda Community Forest. This forest is considered as the habitat of all scarce animal and plants having high attitude. This forest has various economic and environmental potentialities with having high bio-diversity maintenance. This research is targeted to identify these entire mechanisms. This study is focused on their problems to strengthen the idea to reduce the problems. This research targeted to solve these problems through identifying the solution and destination of good natural resource management. The general objective of this study is to identify the economic and environmental activities through development of community forest. The specific objectives are to identify the economic activities of user group in Tokme Danda Community Forest of Fungling and Dokhu VDC, to analysis the FUG participation in bio-diversity conservation, and to identify the impact of Tokme Danda Community Forest on socio-economic and environmental life of local community. The main economic activates of FUG in this forest are particularly agricultural, livestock farming and other home based industries. The entire FUG is involved in agricultural and livestock farming with the help of fodder, irrigation channels, compost manure, fuel wood and other resources from this forest. With the support of these things agriculture and livestock, farming is getting success. Other economic activities related with forest as the home-based industries signify economic activates of FUG with the help of community forest. Iron based, furniture and bamboo based industries are making based to this forest for raw materials which are indicator of economy and are also acquired for additional income from forest. These are main findings of this research. Another aspect of this research is the environment of forest. The bio-diversity is conservation very effective through various activities. Except these relations, the social relation with this forest of FUG is highly attached where most of them are worshiping as incarnation of God.