Contribution of Community Forestry in Rural Development ("A Case Study of Community Forestry of Nawalaparasi District")

Abstract

Major chunks of National forest in Nepal are being increasingly handed over as community forest to fulfill the basic needs of forest products along with income and employment to the rural people. With changing context, community forest has broadened itself as important activity for rural Development. The need of identifying rural development through community forestry with emphasizing the employment opportunity, researcher has chosen this study topic Contribution of community forestry in rural development" in Nawalparasi district. Five CFUGs were purposively selected for this study as study site. Focus group discussion, face-to face intreierview and study of relevant secondary literature were the basic tools to gather the information. Both qualitative as well as quantitative data were used to draw the conclusion. Quantitative data were analyzed with the help of computer, Excel 1998. Majority (83 %) of respondents had agricultural occupation. Land holdings has positive correlation with well-being status in agrarian society, thus it was tried to find out the landholdings of the respondent. The majority of the respondents had possessed medium level landholdings (0.33 to 1.6 ha) size. Livestock rearing practices was changing towards stall-feeding system from conventional open grazing system after the handover the forest patches as community forestry. It has created positive impact on regeneration in community forest. Alternative energy was found at initial stage in the study area. Only 19 % respondents have installed Bio-gas plant for cooking purpose. This figure indicates that, there is great potentiality of bio-gas installation. Some forest management activities were practiced in CFUGs but they were still passively managed with strict protection. The resources were underutilized. Neither, the forest operational plan was positive towards active forest management nor the users were aware about the importance of active forest management for sustainable benefit. Recently, some NTFP promotion activities were introduced in 3 selected CFs, but the users were facing the problem of selling their products due to weak marketing linkage. More than 50 percent respondents attain meeting rarely and 56 % respondents responded that the forest products were distributed as needed. It means that the distribution system was according to decision of executive members. This study reveals that community forestry has remarkable contribution in livelihood assets generation but the assets were not equitably accessible to the poor people. The disparity of poor in human, financial, and social assets were identified. The recommendations for user group level are equitable benefit sharing system should be adopted during the distribution of forest products and group fund, and It is very important to include poor, women and other disadvantaged members in the decision making position of CFUGs. Similarly at the district level; technical support for active forest management needs to be provided through DFO and/or other partner organizations. NTFP cultivation should be promoted with sufficient technical knowledge and well-established marketing mechanism should be improved in district level. Identification and promotion of viable forest based enterprises needs to be established in a way that provide sustainable benefits to the poor users