Unintended outcomes of community forestry intervention in Nepal: some implications

This paper presents controversial views on community forestry intervention in Nepal, and illustrates how this intervention, despite good intention, may produce unintended outcomes. The reason is mainly attributed to the practice, which tends to consider intervention as a blueprint approach than as a process. This is in contrast to the policy, which essentially considers intervention as a process for devising a fair and equitable system, based on consensus derived from a number of informal dialogue and discussions. Arguments are put forward in favour of a process approach that do not necessarily limit itself to the problem of intra-community level but would go beyond and attempt to embrace wider issues pertaining to the inter-community or the region. It is pointed out that unintended outcomes do not necessarily limit themselves to the community forestry sector but extend to the field of development intervention in general.