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Social Heterogeneity and Community Forestry Processes: Reflections from Forest Users of Dhading District, Nepal

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Abstract

Community forestry has been characterized as a successful model of community-based forest governance in Nepal that shifts forest management and use rights to local users, often socially heterogeneous in caste, gender and wealth status. This heterogeneity forms the basis of social groups, which differ in their needs, priorities and perceptions regarding community forestry implementation processes. This paper explores the dynamics of three community forestry processes—users’ participation, institutional development, and decision-making and benefit-sharing—among forest user groups as perceived by three social groups of forest users—elite, women and disadvantaged—from eight community forests of Dhading district, Nepal, using qualitative and quantitative techniques. It is found that social groups have differing levels of perception about community forestry processes occurring in their user groups. In particular, social elites differ from women and disadvantaged members of the group in users’ participation in community forestry activities and institutional development of forest user groups. An important policy implication of the findings is that social inclusiveness is central to the effective implementation of community forestry processes, not only to safeguard its past successes but also to internalize the economic opportunities it poses through reducing deforestation and forest degradation in the future.

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Notes

  1. The group of people who belong to the upper profile in society as a result of one or more of the caste system, economic status and access to information and resources.

  2. The disadvantaged group is defined here as the occupational group of people who are generally in the lower profile in society, due to either economic status or lower position in the Hindu caste system.

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Acknowledgments

We acknowledge the support and suggestions received in completion of this work from William Bentley and Valarie Luzadis of SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry, and Peter Castro of Syracuse University. We would also like to thank Ravi Pandit and Loknath Lamsal for their support in fieldwork, and anonymous referees and the editor of this journal for their constructive comments and suggestions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Agricultural and Resource Economics, University of Western Australia, 35 Stirling Highway, Crawley, Perth, WA, 6009, Australia

    Ram Pandit

  2. College of Environmental Sciences and Forestry, SUNY, Syracuse, NY, 13210, USA

    Eddie Bevilacqua

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  1. Ram Pandit
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  2. Eddie Bevilacqua
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Correspondence to Ram Pandit.

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Pandit, R., Bevilacqua, E. Social Heterogeneity and Community Forestry Processes: Reflections from Forest Users of Dhading District, Nepal. Small-scale Forestry 10, 97–113 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11842-010-9136-9

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