Community forestry in Nepal: achievements, opportunities, and challenges: a case study of Gadibaraha Community Forest in Dang

Although community forestry has made commendable achievements and provided unprecedented opportunities to rural communities, attempts to address the issues of empowering women and marginalized groups and to alleviate poverty achieved only limited success. Currently, the insurgency situation prevailing in many areas is hindering the smooth implementation of the programme and affecting the functioning of many community forest user groups (CFUGs), including that of the Gadibaraha CFUG. Both the security personnel and the insurgents are vying for control of the forests because of the income that they bring or for security reasons. The local people are afraid to enter the community forest, primarily due to threats from the conflicting parties. Although the policy and legal environment in Nepal is very favourable towards community forestry, its implementation is seriously jeopardized due to the lack of recognition and respect for the CFUGs as legal entities by the responsible sectors and actors in the field.