Community Forest User Group

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.

The objective of the study was to assess the existing decision making processes of community forest user groups and women's role in it. Besides, it was also intended to elaborate whether socioeconomic and cultural or FUG-related parameters, inter alia, were more responsible in this aspect. It was a case study of four CFUGs including two women-CFUGs from Syangja, a mid hill district of Nepal. The research was descriptive in nature. The sources of data have included societal as well as FUG characters, which were collected both qualitative and quantitative from primary and secondary sources.

This paper demonstrates that a transition from passive to active and equitable management of community forest is possible by adopting joint learning processes among local forest user groups, forest officials and local non-governmental service providers.

Although community forestry is recognized as a successful programme in terms of rehabilitating forest condition, its contributions to local community development are not recognized adequately by the national policies, lagislations and regulatory frameworks.