In a paper presented at 'International Conference on Managing Forests for Poverty Reduction: Capturing Opportunities in forest Harvesting and Wood Processing for the Benefit of the Poor', Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, James Bampton and Bruno Cammaert explore the existing situation of Community Forestry (CF) in Nepal's Terai in relation to timber rents.

The authors argue that Nepal's model of CF goes a long way to mitigating the fundamental 'anti-poor' characteristics of timber enterprise. Nevertheless, the poor are still unable to benefit sufficiently from timber rents.

This is because many poor, particularly in the Terai, are not even members of Community Forest User Groups (CFUGs), and even within CFUGs there are a number of constraining factors preventing 1) optimal productivity of CFs, 2) minimisation of costs, 3) maximum realisation of rents, 4) CFUG value addition, and 5) equitable distribution of benefits.

Nevertheless, in comparison with other existing forest management modalities in Nepal's Terai, CF offers considerable potential for contributing to poverty reduction if a number of systematic reforms are undertaken.

Bampton, J.F.R.