Inclusion of Poor and Women in Community Forest Management
The study entitled 'Inclusion of Poor and Women in Community Forest management' was carried out in five community forest user groups of Dhading district with an aim to find out participation of women and poor in decision making of community forest management and information sharing mechanisms and their effectiveness. For getting household information, a set of questionnaire was built and used for interviewing randomly selected 148 respondents. Chi-square test of independence, weighted mean of Likert scale and percentage were mainly used for the analysis purposes. The study findings show that the representation in executive committee from poor is very low, however the representation of women in the committee is found to be satisfactory. Presence of poor and women in meeting and assembly is lower than that of non poor and male respondents. For the dissemination purpose public notice, hamlet (tole) meeting, letter to individual and home to home visit and a combination of two methods are used. Educated people mostly use public notice but illiterate use home to home visit. Economic wellbeing and sex of the respondents do not show differences in the practice of these methods. The number of poor and women in executive body should be proportional to the total household and population so that inclusion in the sense of leadership development may be possible. Making tole level subcommittee to transfer information related to community forest management would be useful. Study related to why some ethnic and lower caste peoples residing near the forest are excluded from the community forest user group and how poor, women and excluded groups could be involved more in decision making should be carried out.


