An Assessment of Institutional Strengthening Process of Community Forest User Group for Sustainable Forest Management” “A Case Study of Shree Jan Jyoti Community Forest User Group" of Sarlahi District

Abstract

The Thesis entitled "Institutional Strengthening Process of Community Forest User Group for Sustainable Forest Management" is a study done in Shree Jana Jyoti Community Forest User Group (CFUG) in Sarlahi District. The general objective of the study was to assess the institutional strengthening of CFUG for sustainable Community Forest (CF) management. The specific objectives of the study were to identify the present structural and functional arrangement of CFUG and to sketch the level of participation in both Community Forest User Committee (CFUC) and CFUG with respect to caste, sex and economic status and to find out the fund mobilization process. Data collection was primarily done by visiting the field and making the individual contact with the CFUG and CFUC members from the different strata. Among the 354 Households 118 Households (one-third of total) respondents were selected using simple random technique considering that respondents are from all ethnic group. The selected sample was questioned about the prospects, situation people involvement and their interest on community forest conservation. Likewise, different tools of Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) such as Semi-Structured Interview (SSI), Household Survey, Focus Group Discussions and Direct Observation were applied during the study. The finding of the study shows that among 354 households of Shree Jana Jyoti CFUG 239 HHs (67%) were from Brahmin/Chhetri representing the majority while 7 HHs(2%) are from dalit community indicating the least. The economic condition of people of the study area is quite good as major portion of the households fall in middle class family. Because of sound economic condition many households can afford for the education of their children,hence the literacy rate in this area is found to be good i.e 72.10%. The representation of Dalit community is not satisfactory (only one) in the old users committee. Despite the significant number of women seen in the old user's committee, their role in decision making is not significant. However, the people representation from remaining groups is satisfactory. In the newly formed CFUC, the participation of dalit has been maintained at 7% while the numbers of women stand 57%. Likewise, women's role was extremely limited to the physical work e.g. nursery construction, forest product harvesting and collection, plantation, fencing but they are not involved in the decision making e.g. nursery site selection, how much and what to harvest, where and what to plant etc. Mobilization of fund for different purposes and selection of forest management activities were limited to the men. Hence it is recommended to apply the participatory approach in decision making irrespective of sex, caste and ethnicity