Community Based Natural Forest and Tree Management in the Himalaya - ComForM Newsletter No. 9 Autumn 2009

The Community Based Natural Forest and Tree Management in the Himalaya (ComForM) Newsletter reports on project progress. This issue features highlights from farm tree surveying, the ComForM mid-term evaluation workshop and two research fund studies.

The Farm Tree Survey: Farm trees are important sources of fodder, fruits, firewood and small timbers for rural families. These trees are, however, ignored in accounting the assets of households for livelihood support and it is imperative to understand the role of these trees in household incomes. To address this issue, survey of these trees has been initiated in the ComForM long term research sites along with socioeconomic and biophysical studies. The prime objective of this survey is to improve our understanding of forest-people interaction in terms of forest dependent institutions of rural communities.

A research fund study on good governance: This study was carried out in five community forest user groups in Gorkha district of western Nepal with the overall objective to assess the status of good governance in community forestry. The study identified local criteria and indicators of good forest governance and tested the already set indicators of good forest governance at community level.

The ComForM mid-term evaluation: The 6th of July 2009 ComForM held the mid-term evaluation workshop to evaluate its second phase of activities. The progress of the ComForM Project was reviewed and reflected on.

National Conference on forest-people interaction: ComForM will support IOF national conference on forest-people interaction to be held in June 7-8, 2010. The purpose of conference is to disseminate research outputs of the project and of forestry and NRM based research and share the knowledge and ideas among wider audience including policy makers, planners and academia.

The ComForM is a collaboration between the Institute of Forestry (IOF) of Tribhuvan University, Forest and Landscape (KVL) of University of Copenhagen, and Department for Forest Research and Survey (DFRS), Nepal. ComForM is funded by DANIDA’s ENRECA programme.