Abstract
Viewing resource management essentially through a biophysical lens has provided too restricted a perspective for understanding complex political processes surrounding forest management. The case of community forestry in Nepal demonstrates a range of experiences of complex political processes, including conflicts and collaboration, especially between technical forest officials and local forest dependent people. Despite innovative legislative and institutional frameworks already in place, community forestry in Nepal still experiences the effects of techno-bureaucratic control. Such control is manifested in the entire range of processes related to planning, management, and monitoring of forestry activities. To understand this situation, we apply the conceptual lens of deliberative governance, that is, governance whose arrangements have been devised from both scientific and local knowledge. This chapter provides practical examples to offer insights into the application of deliberative governance in forestry practices. We identify how different aspects of managerialist, techno-bureaucratic domination (legitimated by principles of positivist science) are deliberatively challenged by local people, civil society activists, and action researchers to improve governance practices. We also identify situations and deliberative processes through which forest managers themselves begin to realize the limits of an antideliberative scientific approach, and apply more reflexive and deliberative approaches to knowledge and decision-making in forest management. In doing so, we eschew taking an absolute position for or against indigenous knowledge or scientific enterprise, but seek to demonstrate that neither technocratic prescription nor reliance on local knowledge alone is adequate for sustainable management of forests. What is needed, as Fischer (1998) argues, is a deliberative engagement between the claims to knowledge by both scientists and citizens. In our experience, this deliberative process provided a foundation for less constrained dialogue, greater collaboration, and mutual learning in the direction of more evidence-based decision-making. This approach is however not free from challenges related to power and techno-bureaucratic control.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Research facilitators used critical causal questions such as: Who has the ultimate power in community forestry? Who prepared the OP and constitution? Who should prepare these documents? What is in these documents? Are they following the provisions of OPs and Constitutions? What does the information in the inventory mean? These questions helped them reflect upon their own practices as well as prompting users and leaders to critically review the OP and constitution.
References
Backstrand, K. (2004). Scientisation vs. civic expertise in environmental governance: Eco-feminist, eco-modern and post-modern responses. Environmental Politics, 13(4), 695–714.
Banjade, M. R., & Ojha, H. (2005). Facilitating deliberative governance: Innovations from Nepal’s community forestry program – A case study in Karmapunya. Forestry Chronicle, 81(3), 403.
Blaikie, P., & Brookfield, H. (1987). Land degradation and society. London: Methen and Co Ltd.
Bohman, J. (1999). Democracy as inquiry, inquiry as democratic: Pragmatism, social science, and the cognitive division of labor. American Journal of Political Science, 43(2), 590–607.
Bohman, J. (2000). Practical reason and cultural constraint: Agency in Bourdieu’s theory of practice. In R. Shusterman (Ed.), Bourdieu: A critical reader. Oxford/Massachusetts: Blackwell.
Bourdieu, P. (1984). Distinction: A social critique of the judgement of taste. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Bourdieu, P. (1990). In other words: Essays towards reflexive sociology. Cambridge, MA: Polity Press in association with Blackwell.
Bourdieu, P. (1991). Language and symbolic power. Cambridge, MA/Oxford: Polity Press.
Bourdieu, P. (1998). Practical reason: On the theory of action. Cambridge, MA: Polity Press.
Bourdieu, P. (2004). Science of science and reflexivity. Cambridge, MA/Oxford: Polity Press.
Buck, L. E., Wollenberg, E., & Edmunds, D. (2001). Social learning in the collaborative management of community forests: Lessons from the field. In E. Wollenberg, D. Edmunds, L. Buck, J. Fox, & S. Brodt (Eds.), Social learning in community forests. Indonesia: SMK Grafika Desa Putera.
Cameron, J., & Ojha, H. (2007). A Deliberative ethic for development: A Nepalese journey from Bourdieu through Kant to Dewey and Habermas. International Journal of Social Economics, 34(1/2), 88–102.
Chhetri, R. B. (1999). The rhetoric and realities of people’s participation in conservation and development in Nepal. In R. B. Chhetri & O. P. Gurrung (Eds.), Anthropology and sociology of Nepal – Cultures, societies, ecology and development (pp. 192–211). Kathmandu, Nepal: SASON.
Cleaver, F. (2004). The social embeddedness of agency and decision-making. In S. Hickey & G. Mohan (Eds.), Participation – From tyranny to transformation? Exploring new approaches to participation in development (pp. 271–277). London/New York: Zed Books.
Crossley, N. (2003). From reproduction to transformation: Social movement fields and the radical habitus. Theory, Culture & Society, 20, 43–68.
Dev, O. P., Yadav, N. P., Springate-Baginski, O., & Soussan, J. (2003). Impacts of community forestry on livelihoods in the Middle Hills of Nepal. Journal of Forest and Livelihood, 3(1), 64–77.
DeWalt, B. R. (1994). Using indigenous knowledge to improve agriculture and natural resource management. Human Organization, 53(2), 123–131.
Escobar, A. (1995). Encountering development: The making and unmaking of the Third World. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Fischer, F. (1998). Beyond empiricism: Policy inquiry and post-positivist perspective. Policy Studies, 26(1), 129–146.
Fischer, F. (2003). Reframing public policy: Discursive politics and deliberative practices. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press.
Forester, J. (1999). The deliberative practitioner: Encouraging participatory planning processes. Cambridge, MA/London: MIT Press.
Fung, A. (2005). Deliberation before the revolution – Toward and ethics of deliberative democracy in an unjust world. Political Theory, 33(2), 397–419.
Gilmour, D. A., & Fisher, R. J. (1991). Villagers, forests and foresters: The philosophy process and practice of community forestry in Nepal. Kathmandu, Nepal: Sahayogi Press.
GON/MFSC. (1995). Forest Act 1993 and Forest Regulations 1995. Kathmandu, Nepal: Government of Nepal.
Habermas, J. (1996). Between facts and norms – Contributions to a discourse theory of law and democracy. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Hayward, C. R. (2004). Doxa and Deliberation. Critical review of international social and political philosophy, 7, 1–24.
Hobley, M. (1996). Participatory forestry: The process of change in India and Nepal. London: Rural Development Forestry Network, Overseas Development Institute.
Kumar, N. (2002). The challenges of community participation in forest development in Nepal. Nepal: World Bank.
Lyotard, J. F. (1993). Political writings. London: University College London Press.
Mahapatra, R. (2001) Betrayed: Nepal’s forest bureaucracy prepares for the funeral of the much hailed community forest management programme. Down to Earth, 9(22), 20–22.
Malla, Y. B. (1997). Sustainable use of communal forests in Nepal. Journal of World Forest Resource Management, 8, 51–74.
Malla, Y. B. (2000). Impact of community forestry policy on rural livelihoods and food security in Nepal. Unasylva, 51(202), 37–45.
Malla, Y. B. (2001). Changing policies and the persistence of patron–client relations in Nepal: Stakeholders’ responses to changes in forest policies. Environmental History, 6, 287–307.
McDougall, C., Ojha, H., Banjade, M., Pandit, B. H., Bhattarai, T., Maharjan, M. (2008). Forests of learning: Experiences from research on adaptive collaborative approach to community forestry in Nepal. Bogor, Indonesia: CIFOR.
Mosse, D. (1997). The symbolic making of a common property resource: History, ecology and locality in a tank-irrigated landscape in South India. Development and Change, 28(3), 467.
Nightingale, A. (2005). “The experts taught us all we know”: Professionalization and knowledge in Nepalese community forestry. Antipode, 37, 581–604.
Ojha, H. (2006). Techno-bureaucratic doxa and the challenges of deliberative governance – The case of community forestry policy and practice in Nepal. Policy and Society, 25(2), 131–175.
Ojha, H. (2008). Reframing governance: Understanding deliberative politics in Nepal’s Terai forestry. New Delhi: Adroit Publishers.
Ojha, H., Cameron, J., & Bhattarai, B. (2005). Understanding development through the language of Habermas and Bourdieu – Insights from Nepal’s Leasehold Forestry Program. International Development Planning Review, 27(4), 479–497.
Ojha, H. R., Cameron, J., & Kumar, C. (2009). Deliberation or symbolic violence? The governance of community forestry in Nepal. Accepted by Forest Policy and Economics, 5–6(11), 375–382.
Ojha, H., & Kanel, K. (2005). 25 years of community forestry in Nepal – A review of fourth national workshop proceeding. Forest and Livelihood, 4(2), 56–60.
Ojha, H., & Pokharel, B. (2005). Democratic innovations in community forestry – What can politicians learn? Participation, 7(7), 22–25.
Ojha, H. R., Timsina, N. P., Kumar, C., Banjade, M. R., Belcher, B., Chhetri, R. B. (2008). Community-based forest management programmes in Nepal: An overview of contexts, policies, practices and issues. In H. R. Ojha, N. P. Timsina, C. Kumar, M. R. Banjade, & B. Belcher (Eds.), Communities, forests and governance: Policies and institutional innovations from Nepal. New Delhi: Adroit Publications.
Ostrom, E. (1999). Self-Governance and Forest Resources. Occasional Paper 20. Bogor, CIFOR.
Paudel, N. S., Banjade, M. R., & Dahal, G. R. (2008). Handover of community forestry: A political decision or a technical process? Journal of Forest and Livelihood, 7(1), 27–35.
Peet, R., & Watts, M. (1996). Liberation ecologies: Environment, development, social movements. New York: Routledge.
Phuthego, T. C., & Chanda, R. (2004). Traditional ecological knowledge and community-based natural resource management: Lessons from a Botswana wildlife management area. Applied Geography, 24, 57–76.
Rechlin, M., Burch, W. R., Hammett, A. L., Subedi, B., Binayee, S., & Sapkota, I. (2007). Lal Salaam and Hario Ban: The effects of the Maoist insurgency on community forestry in Nepal. Forests, Trees and Livelihoods, 17(3), 245–254.
Reich, R. B. (1990). Public management in democratic society. Englewood Cliff, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Robbins, P. (2000). The practical politics of knowing: State environmental knowledge and local political economy. Economic Geography, 76(2), 126–144.
Scott, J. (1998). Seeing like a state: How certain schemes to improve human condition have failed. New Haven, CT/London: Yale University Press.
Shrestha, N. K. (1999). Community forestry in danger. Forests, Trees and People Newsletter, 38, 33–34.
Shrestha, N. K. (2001). The backlash – Recent policy changes undermine user control of community forests in Nepal. Forest, Trees and People Newsletter, 44, 62–65.
Sillitoe, P. (1998). The development of indigenous knowledge – A new applied anthropology. Current Anthropology, 39(2), 223–252.
Subedi, B. P. (2006). Linking plant-based enterprises and local communities to biodiversity conservation in Nepal Himalaya. New Delhi: Adroit Publishers.
Vernooy, R., & McDougall, C. (2003). Principles for good practice: Reflecting on lessons from the field. In B. Pound, S. Snapp, C. McDougall, & A. Braun (Eds.), Managing natural resources for sustainable livelihoods: Uniting science and participation (pp. 113–141). London: EarthScan/IDRC.
Young, I. M. (1997). Difference as a resource for democratic communication. In J. Bohman & W. Rehg (Eds.), Deliberative democracy: Essays on reason and politics (pp. 383–406). Cambridge, MA/London: MIT Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2010 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Ojha, H.R., Paudel, N.S., Banjade, M.R., McDougall, C., Cameron, J. (2010). The Deliberative Scientist: Integrating Science and Politics in Forest Resource Governance in Nepal. In: German, L., Ramisch, J., Verma, R. (eds) Beyond the Biophysical. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-8826-0_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-8826-0_8
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-90-481-8825-3
Online ISBN: 978-90-481-8826-0
eBook Packages: Earth and Environmental ScienceEarth and Environmental Science (R0)