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Law Enforcement in Community Forestry: Consequences for the Poor

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Abstract

Decentralised forest management is believed to hold potential for increased economic and social equity. Implications of the associated local forest law enforcement on livelihoods, however, are not well understood. This paper explores the impacts of local forest law enforcement with a focus on the poorest forest users in community-managed forests. A case study including 14 community forest groups in western Nepal was conducted in 2008. Methods included review of archival data, a stakeholder survey (n = 211), and recall of forest crimes by a random household sample (n = 252). Local forest law enforcement was found to detect far more crimes than district-level enforcement. Crimes are primarily small-scale unauthorised appropriation of products for subsistence use by poorer households and rules are lightly enforced. It is argued that local law enforcement, while apparently not economically harmful to the poorer in the short term, may be used to perpetuate existing wealth and cast-based social inequities.

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Notes

  1. The Nepalese society is predominantly Hindu. The Hindu caste system, according to which occupational caste members (e.g. tailors, cobblers, blacksmiths) are considered inherently inferior, is deeply entrenched in daily life, including in community forestry management (Nightingale 2002).

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Acknowledgments

We thank the people of Simjung and Gyachchok who responded to the survey and the many other stakeholder representatives for their participation. Officers at Gorkha District Court and District Forest office provided valuable assistance. Two anonymous reviewers provided constructive comments on the paper. Funding was provided by the University of Copenhagen and the Consultative Research Committee (FFU) at the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Grant No. 104.Dan.8.L.716.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Forestry, Pokhara Campus, P.O Box: 43, Hariyokharka, Pokhara, Nepal

    Bir Bahadur Khanal Chhetri

  2. Centre for Forest, Landscape and Planning, University of Copenhagen, Rolighedsvej 23, 1958, Frederiksberg C, Denmark

    Helle Overgaard Larsen & Carsten Smith-Hall

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  1. Bir Bahadur Khanal Chhetri
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  2. Helle Overgaard Larsen
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  3. Carsten Smith-Hall
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Correspondence to Bir Bahadur Khanal Chhetri.

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Chhetri, B.B.K., Larsen, H.O. & Smith-Hall, C. Law Enforcement in Community Forestry: Consequences for the Poor. Small-scale Forestry 11, 435–452 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11842-011-9194-7

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