Community Based Forest Management in Nepal: Current Status, Successes and Challenges

Community based forest management in Nepal has been widely acclaimed as the most successful approach for participatory forest management and its governance. So far, about 2,831,707 hectares of forests of Nepal have been managed under the regime of community-based forest management. During four decades of its implementation, the program has undergone a considerable shift from state dominated top-down approach to community-based participatory approach to forest management through organizational and policy reform in Nepal. The success of community-based forest management approach is described in terms of improving the supply of forest products, generating green employment, improving rural livelihood, empowering women, poor and disadvantage groups, rehabilitating degraded land and habitat and also increasing biodiversity. Yet, community-based forest management approach continues to face some organizational and policy challenges during its implementation, and this cannot be overlooked. Social exclusion, inequitable benefit sharing, elite dominance in decision making are the major challenges that are to be resolved in the years to come. Furthermore, this paper intends to illustrate the lessons learnt and the current challenges in making the decentralized forest governance more successful in the changing context.