Forestry Advance Access originally published online on April 2, 2007
Forestry 2007 80(2):183-192; doi:10.1093/forestry/cpm005
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Local vs official criteria and indicators for evaluating community forest management
1 Department of Social Forestry and Forest Management, Institute of Forestry, Tribhuvan University, PO Box 43, Pokhara, Nepal
2 Danish Centre for Forest, Landscape and Planning, Faculty of Life Sciences, University of Copenhagen, Denmark
* Corresponding author. E-mail: ridishp{at}yahoo.com
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Summary |
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Processes to develop criteria and indicators (C and I) for sustainable forest management are often expert driven. Although the long-term objective of the Nepalese forest policy is sustainable forest management, no national level C and I specifically for this have been developed. However, the Ministry of Forests and Soil Conservation awards an annual prize to successful community forest user groups (CFUGs) based on evaluation according to 10 criteria. This study explored local C and I for successful forest management in Nepal through six meetings with CFUG members. A total of 14 local criteria and 52 indicators for awarding a prize to successful CFUGs were identified, and comparison with official C and I was undertaken. Most conspicuously, local C and I focus more on environmental and governance-related aspects than the official list, and the official list leaves much to the discretion of the evaluator. The study concludes that development of a national level C and I for sustainable forest management could benefit from involvement of local forest users.
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Introduction |
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TopSummaryIntroductionMethodologyResultsDiscussionConclusionsAcknowledgementsReferences |
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With sustainable forest management as a globally accepted goal since the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in 1992, several parallel processes of policy initiatives and certification schemes have been defining and standardizing this notion by formulating criteria and indicators (C and I) (e.g. Prabhu et al., 1996
; MPWG, 1998; FSC, 2000; Poschen, 2000; Castaneda et al. 2001; MCPFE, 2003; ITTO, 2005). In several countries, national initiatives have further developed C and I to suit local conditions of monitoring and planning of forest management (Spilsbury, 2005). The formulation of C and I has taken place mainly as expert consultations, occasionally with some involvement of local forest users (Sherry et al., 2005; Fraser et al., 2006). Initially C and I processes focused on forest management as a national or corporate activity, reflecting practices in Europe and North America. Recently, management by local communities is being included. An example is the Forest Stewardship Council's Small and Low Intensity Managed Forests streamlined certification procedures (Robinson and Brown, 2002) by which 150 communities worldwide had received forest management certification by 2005 (FSC, 2005).
This paper explores local views on forest management, and Nepal was chosen as a case country. Community forestry started in Nepal in 1978, and is by now a well-established management form in the country with significant importance for livelihoods in rural areas (Acharya, 2002) and with progressive supporting national legislation (Acharya, 2002). Two-thirds of the Nepalese forest area are scheduled to be handed over to community management (CPFD, 1991), and currently use rights of 
30 per cent (1.18 million ha) have been transferred to 38 per cent of the country's population (DoF, 2005). The community forest handover process in principle includes identification of all users of a specific forest area, a forest inventory and the formulation of a forest management plan based on people's needs for forest resources and sustainable harvest. The management plan must include necessary forest management activities and benefit distribution procedures. A community forest user group (CFUG) assembly endorses the management plan and empowers an executive committee to implement it (Bartlett, 1992; Acharya, 2002).
Sustainable forest management is the declared aim of the community forestry programme (Acharya, 2002), as well as the overall Nepalese forest policy (HMG, 2000). However, no national level C and I for sustainable forest management have been developed. Discussions of the need for C and I have started (Shrestha, 2004) and the forest authorities are awarding an annual prize, the Ganeshman Singh Forest Conservation Award (GSFC Award), to the three most successful CFUGs at the national level according to a set of guidelines (MFSC, 2004). One of the cornerstones of community forestry in Nepal is the participation of local forest users in planning, implementation and general decision making (HMG, 2000; Springate-Baginski et al., 2003). In line with this, some exploration of locally suitable C and I has taken place (Smith et al., 2003; Shrestha and Khanal, 2004), but local perceptions still need to be included in the overall forest management assessment.
The purpose of this study is to contribute to the development of locally relevant and acceptable C and I for sustainable community forestry management in Nepal. This is done (1) through the exploration of what C and I Nepalese CFUG members would apply to grant an award of successful community forest management and (2) by analysing to what degree C and I formulated by CFUG members are congruent with those officially used when awarding the national GSFC Award for successful CFUGs.
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Methodology |
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TopSummaryIntroductionMethodologyResultsDiscussionConclusionsAcknowledgementsReferences |
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This study explores local perceptions of successful community forest management in Nepal by asking CFUG members what C and I they would include in the evaluation for the national GSFC Award for successful CFUGs provided by the Ministry of Forests and Soil Conservation. As the Nepalese forest policy long-term objectives clearly fall within sustainable forest management, it is the assumption that the C and I for the GSFC Award are applicable to this notion. Community forestry practices and perceptions may vary with physiographic region in Nepal (Chakraborty, 2001
; Nagendra, 2002; Nagendra et al., 2005), and therefore two CFUGs in different districts of three physiographic regions of Nepal (Mid-hills, Inner-Tarai and Tarai) were selected for the study. The included physiographic zones feature most of the handed-over community forests as well as high population densities (Springate-Baginski et al., 2003), and are therefore regarded particularly relevant. A total of six CFUGs (Kaski and Tanahu from the Mid-hills, Makwanpur and Chitwan from the Inner-Tarai and Saptari and Parsa from the Tarai) were included (Table 1). Purposeful selection of CFUGs was done with the assistance of the relevant District Forest Officers, and the main selection criteria were (1) that the CFUG members should have a tradition for discussing in meetings; (2) that CFUG members should be interested to share their ideas with others, e.g. researchers and (3) that uninterrupted meetings would be possible given the political unrest of the country (a Maoist insurgency with disruption of public meetings has been commonplace over the past decade, but especially in the last 5 years) . Six meetings were held with 12–20 users from six different CFUGs individually (Table 1). Participants were selected with the assistance of the CFUG executive committee chairman or secretary.
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The six meetings each lasted 3–4 h. The meeting venue was either in the CFUG office building or at a chautari (resting place with tree shade), depending on the convenience of participants. First participants were asked if they knew the GSFC Award, and then the details about this were explained without providing the C and I used for awarding the prize. Participants were then asked what criteria they thought should be applied when granting a prize like the GSFC Award for successful forest management, and suggested criteria were listed by the researcher on a flip chart until no criteria were suggested. When a criterion was mentioned, the researcher asked how changes in the situation that the criterion reflects could be specified and in this way indicators were developed. After finishing the list of C and I, the researcher read out the list aloud and the participants discussed the relevance among themselves. The researcher especially encouraged women to voice their opinion during the discussions. Two types of indicators arose from the group discussions: non-cumulative and cumulative. For non-cumulative indicators, only one indicator among the suggested can apply to a given situation, while for cumulative indicators, more than one indicator can apply to a given situation. When no more C and I were suggested, the list was read aloud for discussion. Only C and I that reached consensus among participants were included in the final list.
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Results |
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A total of 14 criteria and 52 cumulative and non-cumulative indicators were suggested by local forest users to evaluate community forest management. Of these, two are related to environmental conditions and four to socio-economic aspects, while seven relate to social aspects. The first criterion is related to both social and environmental aspects as the state of a forest before handover to a community reflects the work involved in producing forest resources (Table 2).
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The criteria developed by the Ministry of Forests and Soil Conservation for awarding the GSFC Award are provided in Table 3. The list includes seven criteria with non-cumulative indicators and two with cumulative indicators (5, 7). Five are related to socio-economic aspects, one is of social nature, two are related to both environmental and social aspects, one is related to the location within the country and one can be used if any special features are considered very positive by the evaluator.
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Discussion |
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TopSummaryIntroductionMethodologyResultsDiscussionConclusionsAcknowledgementsReferences |
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This study used a national prize for successful community forest management as a basis for developing local C and I. Although the notion of sustainable forest management was not introduced to local forest users, they clearly indicated that the rationale for awarding a prize should be sustainability of the forest resource and management institution, and C and I were developed accordingly. Therefore, the presented results can be used as input to a national process of formulating C and I for sustainable forest management.
Similarities between local and official C and I
Three criteria are basically identical in the two sets of C and I: those related to the state of the forest before handover to the community, the forest product distribution system and the degree of female participation in the general assembly/forest management activities. Nine criteria concern the same three topics of the state and management of the forest, the use of CFUG funds and the size of the CFUG fund.
The findings from this study indicate that both community forestry users and authorities tend to focus on social and socio-economic aspects when evaluating the success of community forestry in Nepal. This is opposite to most international level C and I systems where environmental indicators dominate (Poschen, 2000). The reason for this may be that Nepalese CFUGs face immediate problems in relation to distribution of forest products and gender inequalities (Agarwal, 2001; Malla et al., 2003), whereas so far the community forestry programme is regarded environmentally beneficial (Gautam et al., 2002; Karna et al., 2004). The strong Nepalese emphasis on socio-economic aspects of forest management is probably partly a consequence of the Nepalese economy being largely a subsistence economy. The majority of the Nepalese population engages in subsistence or small-scale commercial agriculture where forest products are a vital input in the production cycle (Schreier et al., 1994) and forests are therefore vital for economic well-being.
Divergence between local and official C and I
The local list includes criteria regarding governance and the forest protection system that are lacking in the official list. The strong local focus on governance is likely a reaction to elite dominance in the CFUG executive committees (Malla et al., 2003; Pokharel, 2003; Pokharel and Niraula, 2004). Official criteria for the GSFC Award put less emphasis on environmental parameters than locals do. The Department of Forest has included only one indicator combining forest management activities and outcomes of these, while the local list includes four. The official indicators are arguably not as detailed as the local, leaving much to the discretion of the evaluator.
Methodological considerations
The criteria for selecting CFUGs for the study mean that relatively well-functioning groups were preferred above not-so-well functioning ones, the participant selection was done by the chairmen and secretaries of the CFUG executive committees and the chairmen of the CFUGs selected for this study except one were all male members of privileged groups. Regarding the first two, these mean that potential relevant C and I from conflict-ridden CFUGs were not included and that potential strong critique of the CFUG committee may have been avoided. The strong emphasis on governance aspects does not indicate the latter, however. Regarding the third, while not the target of the Nepalese forest policy, this reflects the actual situation as illustrated by information from Dolakha District where in 2003/2004 the chairpersons of only four CFUGs out of 264 were Dalit, and only 14 were women (Koirala, 2006). Participation in the meetings was generally very active. Participants all held opinions on community forestry management, and especially female participants were very vocal. This was probably due to their relatively high number.
This study has made an important first step towards involving users in evaluation of sustainable community forest management. The potential sources of bias mentioned, and the fact that only six out of more than 14 000 CFUGs were consulted, imply that the presented list of local C and I is far from final. However, it shows that local forest users are capable of designing C and I and that CFUGs across three physiographic zones have common views on how community forests should be managed. In a participatory forest management programme like the Nepalese, these local capabilities should be taken into consideration during evaluation.
Participatory approaches
Within the very short time provided, local forest users were able to develop C and I covering to some degree ecological, economic and institutional aspects. Given more time, and asked to develop an exhaustive list, the result could likely be a quite comprehensive national list of C and I for sustainable community forest management. Additionally, other approaches such as participant observation could possibly better enable expression of underlying local values that are difficult to express in formal meetings. The importance of including forest users in the development of C and I for sustainable forest management should not be underestimated. In addition to adding relevance to the C and I (Sherry et al., 2005), local involvement will contribute to a perception of a ‘fair’ development process likely to make forest users more committed to sustainable forest management (Hunt and Haider, 2001). However, there are also potential problems related to the use of participatory approaches. Local knowledge generated by local people may in fact be structured by experts, and the participatory activity risks ending up legitimizing an imposition of external control. Participants in this research may have been influenced by previous trainings and norm dissemination, i.e. their views could have been influenced by District Forest Officers, development organizations or others. This may have been the case especially in relation to C and I concerning equity, a newly introduced concept in Nepal. Community forestry is being criticized for continuing the feudal power distributions from the past, meaning that the poor and disadvantaged are not involved in decision making regarding forest management (Banjade et al., 2006), and the poor and disadvantaged groups are also said to benefit less in absolute terms from community forestry than more advantaged groups (Adhikari, 2005). The C and I included in both the local and the official lists emphasize forest product distribution to the needy as better than distribution based on equality, indicating at least an emerging understanding of the need to change past tendencies. Participatory approaches to natural resource management have been applied in protected areas in Nepal. Here the experience shows that consultation and involvement of local users in management of protected areas in ways that produce tangible benefits have led to positive attitudes towards the protected areas (Mehta and Heinen, 2001), and thereby also better protection (Budhatoki, 2005).
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Conclusions |
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TopSummaryIntroductionMethodologyResultsDiscussionConclusionsAcknowledgementsReferences |
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The findings from this study confirm those of Sherry et al. (2005)
in that local and expert indicators are different. C and I suggested by local forest users in this study differ from or are more detailed and specific than official ones, although it is acknowledged that official norms for ‘good’ forest management are to some degree disseminated to members of CFUGs through trainings. Nepalese forest users are increasingly being formally involved in forest management, and their participation in designing C and I for sustainable management would ensure that relevant interpretations of ‘sustainability’ are incorporated. As suggested by Fraser et al. (2006), using local knowledge as a starting point from which scientific tools are used to extend the local to wider areas not only increases the relevance of the C and I, the process in itself empowers the community. In Nepal, collaboration between foresters and local communities can possibly produce highly relevant C and I for sustainable forest management, but it is important that local views are driving the process whereas foresters and other technicians need to build on and complement local views. The C and I produced from this study focus relatively little on environmental parameters. A longer process going more into depth with the individual aspects of sustainability and where it is acknowledged that local interpretations of sustainability may differ from western scientific ones is recommendable. Among the issues that need consideration in the search of national C and I for sustainable forest management is also the question of scale. The CFUGs consulted in this study displayed quite similar attitudes and values in relation to forest management, but that need not be the case. Had the study, for example, included more conflict-ridden CFUGs different perceptions might have been the result, and to develop national level C and I, it is advisable to consult a larger and more heterogeneous sample. Finally, while this study has produced a list of local C and I for sustainable forest management, it is important to stress that further work in this line must seek incorporation into the formal decision-making level to have an impact on forest management. |
Acknowledgements |
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The authors are grateful to the local community forest users who took the time to provide their valuable insights. The assistance of the District Forest Officers of Chitwan, Kaski, Makwanpur, Parsa, Saptari and Tanahu is much appreciated, as are the comments of Carsten S. Olsen (Danish Centre for Forest, Landscape and Planning, Faculty of Life Sciences, University of Copenhagen) and two anonymous reviewers. Funding was provided by the Danida funded ComForM project aiming to enhance research capacities at the Institute of Forestry by funding research of high standards addressing national Nepalese priorities.
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Received 31 August 2006.
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