NFA-NEFUG-ACOFUN-RAN-JFAN's press release on ongoing "Community Forestry International Workshop"

Currently Nepal is facing a political transition and hence many people from different part of the country and people from different level of community are fighting for the right and role to take participation in the development of the country. This has widely influenced the natural resource sector as well. As it is well known to everybody that Nepal has very old tradition of managing natural resource through community base approach for example the community forestry is one of them. Curently the community forestry is one of the effective management system adopted by nation to ensure the users right and sustainability of the forest particularly in the mid-hills of Nepal. In due course of its development it has achieved an excellent success pregnant with many un-addressed problems and anomalies within it. Slowly the frustration of the excluded started to come in the surface. This has raised several questions related to use right of traditional users and participation of distant user of Terai and himalaya (sherpas and others) in decision-making process. However the issue of inclusion is tried to be addressed partly through collaborative forest management scheme in terai from last 7 years which has already developed its net work in 14 districts of terai but still the legal status of this scheme is not clear. The people of Himalayas are still waiting to be included in community based forest management process. The issue of exclusion in community forestry is multi dimensional since the whole process is heavily politicized in decision-making level and the decision making power is influenced by certain party. In current situation the community forestry has two face; dejure it represents community as whole and defacto this entirely represents a sister organization of certain party. This also nieans that the people from other ideology are prone to be excluded in decision-making process, which is evident from the ongoing community forestry international workshop (Sep 15-18,2009 at Pokhara), where the representative from Nepalese Federation of Forest Resource Users group (NEFUG), Association of Collaborative Forest Users Nepal (ACOFUN), Nepal Foresters Association (NFA), Rangers Association Nepal (RAN), Association of Junior Foresters Association of Nepal etc. were systematically excluded from taking participation in the workshop. This hints a very dangerous turn in the history of community forestry process in the country. It is a deliberate action to prohibit the voice of the stakeholders, which have different ideologies, or the professionals who can contribute technically in the workhop. This has raised several questions for example:

• Is it a justice to the professional organizations, who have devoted there whole life time to the development of community forestry, by excluding them to participate in the decision making process?
• Is it Socially correct and moral to run the community forestry according to the manifesto of certain pafty?
• Does a Single party representation in CF system is acceptable to all?
• Is a Single scheme of forest management is possible to impose all over the country?
• Is it justice to all the users by favoring some of the organization and is favoring their organization working in the community forestry sector especially in the decision making process?
• Is it moral for the donors to assist certain party to favor the political process associated with it?
• Are donors deliberately politicizing by' assisting to exclude the NEFUG, has a strong net work in more than 52 districts of the country and ACOFUN, which is working in 14 terai districts representing the traditional users(in distance users), in:ongoing workshop at Pokhara and other activity as well?
• Does Government of Nepal; Ministry of Forest and soil conservation has right to prohibit the voices coming from users through different stakeholders network in the ongoing workshop?

These are some of the critical questions that should be answered forthe sake people who are seeking it. The crystal clear thing about community forestry intemational workshop going on at Pok'hara is that the unilarteral representation-of certain party will not represent all the user of Nepal and they will not come up with widely accepted conclusion. Since the whole piocess of organization of workshop is cunning and unjustfull, the validity of the outcome also will be questioned.

Therefore, we the following organization strongly regret the process of organizing this workshop.

Ramrup Prasad Kurmi, President ACOFUN

Shakar Malla Thakuri, President NEFUG

Devesh Mani Tripathi, President NFA

Binod Kumar Singh, President RAN

Ganesh Bahadur Basnet, Vice-President JFAN