The international conference on Rights, Forests and Climate Change was recently held in Oslo, Norway from October 15-17, 2008. The conference was jointly hosted by the Rainforest Foundation Norway and the Rights and Resources Initiative with support from the CGIAR Systemwide Program on Collective Action and Property Rights (CAPRi).
From Nepal, Dr. Keshav Kanel, Director General of Department of Forests, and Ghan Shyam Pandey of Federation of Community Forest Users of Nepal (FECOFUN) participated in the conference.
Dr. Kanel presented a talk on Nepal’s national adaptation plan and the role of land rights. Nepal’s adaptation strategy includes action linked to forest reforms, in particular the handing over of state-owned forest areas to the management of local communities. Unlike other countries, forest communities already have a lot of rights including the freedom to spend part of the revenues for the benefit of the villages. Another important area is improving natural resource governance, whereby government sees itself as a facilitator and the communities as resource managers. Other areas of action are access to information and impacts, capacity and increasing resilience, and land reform to private land.
Presentation of Dr. Kanel:
More information about the conference is available at rightsandclimate.org