Contribution of Community Forestry in Rural Development ("A Case Study of Community Forestry of Nawalaparasi District")
Date
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Department of Rural Development
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