1.0 Background

Forests are among the most important and frequently available natural sources in the country for the livelihood improvement and economic benefits of the rural, marginalized and forest dependent communities. Management, utilization and alienation rights have been successfully devolved since early eighties to the local communities against conventional forest management practices in Nepal to enhance their livelihood and forest conditions. Various community based forest management regimes are in practice in Nepal and other countries. Nepal is known for pioneering successful model of the community forestry and leasehold forestry programme in the world.

Pro poor Leasehold Forestry (LF) is the only poor focused participatory forest management approach that has been developed over a period of two decades in Nepal. This has been demonstrated as a highly successful management approach that has resulted rejuvenation of degraded forests and income diversification of rural poor. About 43,000 hectares of the degraded forests has been handed over to more than 7,000 Leasehold Forest User Groups (LFUGs) involving 74,000 poor households. With the success of the programme, other community based forest management systems (CBFM) such as Community Forestry (CF) has borrowed the fundamentals of the leasehold forestry and started to adopt the allocation of the degraded lands to the ultra poor families of the community, as the leasehold forestry within Community Forestry programme in recent years.

Leasehold Forestry National Workshops have been conducted on regular basis to review the issues, identify the lessons and share and promote innovations of leasehold forestry. The first and second National Workshops were held in August 1997 and October 2007, respectively. The third National Workshop was held in May 2009 with the objectives of reviewing the issues and outputs of the project and disseminating the findings to the wider audiences. The recommendations of those national workshops were duly considered in subsequent policy changes by the Government of Nepal.

2.0 Objectives of the workshop

Extensive sharing of the experience, knowledge, skills and information on the forestry contributions to the sustainable livelihood of ultra poor among forestry communities, practitioners, forest officers, policy makers, support agencies and donors, and international experts, to come up with the comprehensive understanding and recommendations in order to promote pro-poor forestry programmes in the region; is the main aim of the workshop. Additionally, the proposed workshop on pro poor forestry will draw on the latest progress in projects and finding from assessment, to consolidate the pool of insights and recommendations that can contribute to the future direction of leasehold forestry. Other specific objectives of the workshop are:

• Review and share the national level pro-poor forestry initiatives and assess its cross boundary adoption potentials,
• Review the experiences of pro-poor/ leasehold forestry and identify the lessons that can be helpful for scaling up in wider areas/sectors,
• Identify, share and promote innovations of pro-poor/ leasehold forestry that can support for the livelihood improvement of rural poor,
• Review the strength and opportunities of leasehold forestry and identify their potentials and challenges that need to be addressed.

3.0 WORKSHOP THEME

3.1 Thematic areas

Important themes that the workshop will address during its sessions are as follows:

3.1.1 Governance/Policy

• Social mobilization for improving community level governance
• Developing rural finance institution for financial sustainability
• Policy and practices: Macro-micro linkages
• Inter-sectoral linkages for the sustainable development of the forests

3.1.2 Economic contribution/impact analysis of the leasehold forestry

• Contribution of leasehold forestry in economic development
• Livelihood improvement planning for poverty reduction
• Household level economic impact of leasehold forestry
• Value addition and marketing of leasehold forestry products

3.1.3 Sustainable Forest Management and Environmental services

• Leasehold forestry in other management regime (community forestry, public land forestry etc.)
• Leasehold forestry and climate change mitigation and adaptation
• Sustainable management of degraded forests, options for landscape approach
• Gender and social inclusion issues to be addressed in all the themes

4.0 Call for papers/posters

The paper in the impact analysis of the leasehold forestry will be presented from the project team. Besides, the organizing committee invites the papers/posters for presentation in the above mentioned themes and sub themes. The interested person should submit a half page abstract (~300 words) on the content and method of presentation to the workshop secretariat. Different presentation styles will be welcomed to make the presentation lively. Presentation time should be less than 20 minutes (aside from keynote speeches). The submitted abstracts will be reviewed by the organizing committee or the technical team assigned by the organizing committee. The selected presenters will be notified along with the suggestions (if any) for the submission of full paper/poster.

Few reputed scholars available in the country and abroad, will be requested to prepare and present the theme paper.

5.0 Participants

The workshop is targeted primarily for the national and regional (South and South East Asian countries) participants who have been involved at implementation, management, research, academia and policy formulation of community based forest management. The workshop is open also for the interested participants from other regions. The organizing committee invites interested persons form the government, non-government including civil society organizations, academic institutions, local communities, researchers, donors, policy makers and international organizations to participate in the workshop. There will be approximately 100 participants in the workshop.

It is planned that there will be a few international visitors – from regional countries with interest and similar initiatives (Philippines, Laos, Myanmar, India and others), and also representing key institutions in the region on forestry and livelihoods, and community participation (such as ICRAF, RECOFTC, CIFOR, ICIMOD, IUCN, etc. Agencies interested in co-sponsoring the workshop are welcome.

6.0 Date of the workshop and time frame

The tentative date of the three-day workshop will be second week, most probably 11-13 June, 2014.

7.0 Registration

Interested persons should complete the registration form and submit to the workshop secretariat. The organizing committee will finalize the list of participants. The principal author of the paper/poster will be registered once their paper/poster accepted for the presentation. The organizing committee may invite distinguished person recognizing their contribution in the forestry sector.

Registration form is attached!