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Bookmark & ShareTerai Forestry E-Conference - How Did the Participants Argue and How Serious Was the Difference?
Recently there was an electronic debate on the pros and cons of Community Forestry (CF) and Collaborative Forest Management (CFM) in Nepal Terai. I analyzed views of the participants in the debate to distil a) substantive arguments for and against the two options, including any alternatives proposed, and more importantly b) explore the culture of argumentation as reflected in the ways participants sought to make their claims or criticize others' claims. I admit that this note is a bit academic and abstract but hope provide some reflections on how the participants argued, and what prospects exist for reconciliation.
By and large, the whole debate went around CF versus CFM although there were some claims to recognize the need to broaden the debate beyond the boundary of the two programs. Proponents of CF argued that it was the time-tested innovation in Nepal forest sector, and should be continued in the Terai as well. Proponents of CFM advocated for the continuation of CFM on the ground that there can be more than one program in Terai where high value forests of local and national importance exists. Some of the arguments for and against CF and CFM are summarized in the Tables below.
The arguments sought to justify their claims on a number premises - experience, empirical evidence, contesting the established boundary and invoking rights to self-governance. Some of the arguments in support of CFM drew their legitimacy from empiricist privilege to experiment (a disposition to try and test before making any judgement), often reducing the political ideological questions (such as who should be the manager and what proportion of benefits should be divided) to technical-empirical ones.
Table 1. Arguments raised electronic discussion participants in favour of Community Forestry and Collaborative Forest Management
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Community Forestry |
Collaborative Forestry |
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For Reference to proven experience "Community Forestry is known all over the world. Nepal is known as a country of community forest. I am surprised why people are putting collaborative as against community forestry. There is enough room to improve community forestry which all of us should try rather than discredit it."
-"'Community Forestry' is an example of the successful local ommunity based autonomy in governance and development that we have already experienced."
Claims over impact "Please do not forget that it is the community forestry which has brought greeneries in Nepal and stabilized forest degradation in the country".
Contesting the general inference from particular "Please do not take one case study as generalization to all of the CFUGs. This is very dangerous and against research ethics. Everywhere there are good and bad, and it also depends on perspectives".
Citizen as sovereign "The CFUGs are representatives of real people not the forest officials".
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For Belief without justification "In the case of Terai, CFM is the best among existing participatory forest management modules in my personal opinion"
"I do not agree with the claim that local peole are not favouring CFM"
Invoking empiricist privilege to experiment "Dramatic achievements from CFM in short period of 5/6 years can not be expected when the program itself is in piloting phase and the country is in severe crisis with conflict".
'Bad' is better than 'worse' "If we are maintaining our national parks employing army personnel, why should we not develop technicians to take care of CFM".
Reducing moral/ideological/transcendental questions to empirical reasoning "It is important to see things with your own eyes and to discuss things with the people directly involved"
Interests in the technical knowledge enterprise "Since long back we are not exercising technical aspect in the forest management, we are also empowering only the social activities in CF in the name of forest managemetn activities. Is the social mobilization sufficient for the forest management? So, those people who are lobbying in favour of CF or who are provoking in favour of CFM, the main thing to consider is the application of scientific knowledge and incorporate the local and indigenous knowledge of forest management in whatever named programme. As I know, CFM is intended to incorporate scientific exercises i.e. forest measurement, block formation, use of remote sensing, aerial photo and GIS technologies rather than the trend of CF till now."
Contesting the established boundary "When we talk about the real people; why our vision is not going beyond the surrounding of the forest. My question is: what about the people who are living in the down stream."
Threats to counter arguments "If any act or any plan is not defining the rights of the downstream people"¦ then the people will burn those documents in same manner as many of the points of our constitution has already burnt".
Claims based on right to self-governance "Hill people should not say CF should be laden in Terai."
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Figure 1. Arguments raised by electronic discussion participants against CF and CFM
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Community Forestry |
Collaborative Forestry |
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Constructing context and difference "I don't know why some people want to wear leather jacket in Terai in this terreble hot season. I mean what may be important for himalayan or hilly region may not fit in the Terai. In this case I would like to express the unsuitability of Community Foresty in Terai. The obvious region is the huge and heterogenous mass of users against the limited forest areas in blocks only at one fringe (mostly along east west highway)".
"Community forestry is not the panacia in solving the forest management issues in the country although it has been proved as the gateway to the community development. It has its better implication in the hills where the forest patches are accessible to the limited number of people and the forest lands can be parcelized into separate CF units which has been also supported by the physiographic features. If such the situation persists in the terai, I think, CF is the best option".
Presupposition of face to face deliberative community "In my view, community forestry, which has been a blanket approach for a long time, has not showed up accomodating the exclusion issues raised by the traditional users."
"Under such cicumstances, how one (forester, or...?) can identify the real users or mangers of forest who actually are distributed more that 10 mile away in some cases. If we try to identify forest user for a patch of say 100 ha near east west high way, we may need to incorporate thousands of people from more than 20 VDCs till India border in the south".
Reference to important source of legitimacy "I haven't seen anywhere in the master plan on the promotion of CF in Terai".
Reference to scientific legitimacy "Please find an article that talks about how some of the CFUG in terai are operating. It clearly suggests that there is a dangerous trend emerging under the guise of managing productive terai forests by CFUG".
Constructing "we" and the "other" "Unfortunately, some pseudo forester and employees of CF are leading campaigns against other forestry management systems in the country. Many players behind the screen are urging for CF as panacea and many opportunists are backing the mass. Genuine realization is that such mass is benefiting from CF either in the name of forestry expert or manager or user or whatever."
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Relating particular to the general
"In fact, it is the worst form of so called joint forest management which are blocking participatory forest management all over the world".
Claims based on the judgement of what sovereign citizen think
"it is not approved by local people as claimed. People especially users n Terai are totally against it".
Use of empirical proof
"In spite of project being implemented for six/seven years there is no example of good CFM".
Procedure not substance
"As I have been saying I am not aginst the system. But I am against the way and mechanisms under which CFM guidelines and policies were developed. Let's be transparent, democratic and inclusive".
Revealing intentions not the content of the argument
"we need to be clear that government's motive for promoting CFM is not to address the issues which is at 'face' - distant users, national equity, etc rather it is intended by the process of corruption and control over forest resources as such"
Premises of counter-argument holding true with the premises of argument
"In CFM too which is planned to be implemented in Terai has so many uncertainities that may prevent traditional and currently distant users may be prevented from being really benefitted from and included in the mainstream. For example, there is also possiblity of influences by elite to the "polites" as in the CF there." |
The debate simultaneously went on to criticize the rival approach to forest governance. Arguments to refute the applicability of CF in the Terai used a number of validation strategies "“ highlighting the difference between the hills (from where the concept of CF emerged) and the Terai (where the concept is being imported), presupposition of a small face to face deliberative community which can work (thus excluding the possibility of CF model in the situation where many users need to interact), reference to important sources of legitimacy such as classic policy document and scientific article, and revealing the hidden intention of the community forestry advocates. Likewise, opponents of CFM sought to draw legitimacy of their claims by "“ relating the Joint Forest Management (in India) as one form of ill-famed category in the wider context, basing claims on the testimony of sovereign citizens, using empirical proof (that no concrete success of CFM in 6 years), expressing commitment to the process of democratic deliberation rather than pre-conceived substantive ideal, revealing intentions of the holder of the counter arguments, turning the premises of the counter argument for the argument as well ("if elite domination in CF is a problem, then there is every reason to believe that this will be more so in CFM").
I also distilled statements in the CF-CFM debate, which I found more self-reflexive, and oriented to public reason, beyond particular self-interests. This indicates that there are at least some such statements in any discussion involving rival debate, which could be captured by social scientists and then injected into the debate itself (but this did not happen in the discussion).
Box 1. Third Way views and Reflections expressed by the Participants of CF-CFM electronic discussion
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Views that expanded, reconfigured and modified the CF-CFM debate invoked a number of premises - “ accepting that "we" as the dominant actors are not doing good and thus need to think alternatively, picking up generalizable principles of the rival propositions and then highlighting the need to be more self-critical, suggestion to make the agenda more inclusive (forest governance in Terai rather than CF versus CFM), revealing "technocratic doxa" and emphasizing the democratic process rather than advocating substantive prescriptions.
This brief analysis is based on what is said explicitly but as an insider of the forest governance practice in Nepal, I suspect there are more entrenched tensions in relation to symbolic and material benefits that accrue from allegiance from one or the other regime. Looking only at how participants argued, with what forms of legitimacy or knowledge claims, there does not appear to be any significant deadlock or impediment in the process of arriving at consensus. So the question is if the expressed views are close to consensus, the problem lies not in stated reason but most probably in unstated premises upon which the participants articulate their interests and benefits in relation to particular position in argumentation.
| Attachment | Size |
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| Terai-econference-note.pdf | 36.78 KB |
About the author
Full Name
Hemant Ojha
Position
Founder/Board Member
Organization
Forest Action Nepal
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