Indicators for Measuring the Success of Nepal’s Community Forestry Program: A Local Perspective

This paper explores locally agreed upon indicators to determine the success of Nepal’s community forestry program. A workshop for community forest user groups (CFUGs) representatives and local forestry professionals was organized to develop the indicators. An interview schedule was developed to solicit CFUG members’ views on the identified indicators. A stratified random sample of CFUG members was taken, and 487 members were randomly selected for personal interviews. Descriptive statistics were used to analyze data. Findings show that access to fuel wood, fodder and timber; amount of community funds; incidence of forest fire; use of compost; women’s participation in forestry meetings; forest status; and quality of drinking water were the most often agreed-upon indicators to determine the success of the community forestry program. There tends to be congruency between the local people’s perspectives and the views of scientific communities on many indicators of the success of the community forestry program.