Actors' Interactions at the Policy Level and Implications for Exclusion: Nepal's Community Forestry

This paper explores why community forestry (CF) policy has not been changed to address the problem of exclusion, despite the increasing attention to people and poverty in the CF discourse. One potential answer to this question is that the dominance of eco-centric ideas in the CF discourse has not shifted. Ideas and policies are shaped by the interaction of powerful national and international actors, and the structure and organisation of these interactions and embedded power relationships tend to reinforce techno-scientific and instrumental ways of doing things. As a result, there is little acknowledgement that CF policy and practice needs to change to address persistent exclusion.

With this hypothesis in mind, this paper analyses the key actors engaged in the operation of CF policy, their perceptions of exclusion, and institutional factors that contribute to developing these perceptions. The analysis is based on interviews, observations, and a literature review and documentary analysis done in 2006. People interviewed included forestry and non-forestry professionals, members of non-state actors engaged in CF, key CF actors within the forest ministry, the DoF, key CF donors and the staff of CF projects in Nepal.