Concept of community forestry in Nepal began in 1970s with a focus on the environmental aspects of forest conservation along with satisfying the basic forest product needs of the local people through their own active participation and cooperation. It emerged as a result of the failure of government centric policy and has found to be meaningful and capable in leading to more effective natural resource regulation and protection since its initiation [1-4] During the initial phase, community forest management was focused on local participation, utilization of resources from community forest, and planning and capacity development of the users’ group. Later the scope of management was expanded to understand the impact of policies and resource mobilization in community forest [5-8]

For the forest sustainability, better integration of ecological, social and economic dimensions becomes inevitable [9]. Therefore, with the course of time, community forestry started working also in many cross-cutting issues like institutional sustainability, gender mainstreaming, good governance, sustainable livelihood, social inclusion, community development, democratic civic engagement and so forth in order to address all the dimensions [4] 

Social dimension is imperative component to focus in community forestry management practice. Communities are heterogeneous entities, and there are many different resource users within one Community Forest User Group (CFUG), which have different social and economic status, knowledge systems, objectives and needs [10]  When failing to equally include the different users, this will have implications both for the economic and social aims included in community forestry, as well as the goals regarding natural resource conservation and protection [11] The attributes of different groups affect the structure of constitutional and collective-choice arenas within which users decide how to organize themselves and which rules to adopt to allocate right and duties as well as cost and benefits.  The successful groups overcome stressful heterogeneities by crafting innovative institutional arrangements well-matched to their local circumstances [12].Therefore, dynamics of the society involved in the management will influence the controlling of community forest (CF), which in turn impact on its services and wellbeing of the people.

Knowing this fact, lately, issues related to equity aspects of forest management (e.g.  distribution of costs and benefits, access to decision-making) has also received wide attention - what researchers refer to as second generation challenges of community forestry in Nepal [13-14].The government has also started showing attention in this area. Its’ commitment about addressing gender and social inclusion issues has been clearly reflected in all the national development plans, policies and strategies developed after 2002. For example, the policy documents for forestry sector, Forest Policy (2014), Forest Sector Strategy (2016-2025) has also considered Gender and Social Inclusion (GESI) as one important pillar. Ministry of Forest and Soil Conservation (MoFSC, 2008) has been implementing GESI Strategy. More recently amended Community Forestry Development Programme (CFD) Guidelines 2014 is in the favor of equity and inclusion and DoF has given responsibility to DFO to ensure the policy provisions are incorporated in CF OP and constitution. In other words, new constitution of Nepal (2015) which is a significant milestone for GESI and enshrines equal rights for women, the poor, the vulnerable and people from different social groups and in order to address this component, all the legal documents of forestry sectors have been more progressive. Similarly, most other non-government agencies who work on forestry sector also have gender and social inclusion policies. The Federation of community Forestry Users Nepal (FECOFUN), for example, has established rules to include women in the decision making process and it encourages local forest user groups to include women and excluded groups for involvement in the committee and participation in every activity of CFUG.

Despite the many positive signs in nondiscrimination, gender equality, and social justice in community forestry, there are still many social issues related to equity and inclusion unsolved and have been widely questioned [15-17,11] There is need of alleviating all those issues. While community forestry can reduce all these social challenges, it generally does so by generating positive change at community and higher levels, rather than by delivering benefits directly to poor and marginalised households[18] Furthermore, coping with those issues of community forestry system can contribute directly and indirectly in addressing many aspects of sustainable development goals such as poverty reduction, gender equality, sustained biodiversity and ecosystem services [19]. This review paper has been designed to discuss community forestry from the power control, equity and social inclusion perspective to understand the constraints and solutions.

A large number of the published documents and literatures were collected using Google Scholar and Ministry of Forest and Environments’ website and thoroughly reviewed for the study keeping in mind the power control, equity and inclusion aspects of the social dimension in community forest management system of Nepal. As part of this study, we reviewed 150 papers published between the period of 1990s and 2020.  The analyses were done and the discussion was obtained based on the existing literatures on power control mechanism and excluded groups namely, women, poor people and lower caste only. 

Challenges in community forestry in terms of social dimension 

Poor people and community forest

There is the growing interest for the role of community forest as a vehicle for poverty reduction [20] But, the potentiality of poverty reduction have been reduced because they are prone to elite capture; focus on low value and degraded forests; emphasize forests rather than integrated natural resource based livelihood development [20-21].Despite having some successes, many studies on community forestry in Nepal have indicated that poor people are still not benefited equitably.  The net benefits of the CFs program are greater in economically rich households than in poor forest user [22].Other studies also show quantitatively that the poorest households in the communities studied, who do not have enough land to support their basic subsistence needs and are thus more reliant on forest products than other community members, receive disproportionately smaller livelihood benefits from community forestry than the wealthier households [10,23-24]. They are exposed to low levels of nutrition, poor education, and poor communication within the village and with external agents In addition, the poorest are the one who are left out and forgotten from the capacity development programs of CF, because they are illiterate therefore are under-valued[25]. In some cases, their livelihoods have even been adversely affected [26-28].

As the representation of the poor and disadvantaged groups in the executive committee is meager, the sharing mechanism could hardly fulfill the demands of forest products for the poor and disadvantaged groups[29]. In many cases, the technical aspects of the CF inventory has further disadvantaged the illiterate, who are generally the poor and extra-poor, in their effort to negotiate forest management arrangements as informed user/decision-makers [30].

Some reviews have called for a stronger enabling policy framework to promote pro-poor forest management in Nepal[31-32]. One strategy for this could be to lease out parts of community forest land to the poorest groups for short-term cash crop cultivation or agro-forestry, but community forestry legislation does not allow the planting of annual crops on community forest land. Poor users are encouraged by DFO staff to plant forest or wild crops that are not always preferred by the poor or compatible with their requirements. Furthermore, LFP experience demonstrates [32-33] land tenure security remains a critical issue in relation to providing sustained incentives to the poor to invest in the forest land allocated to them. In the land allocation schemes, tenure is currently defined through an agreement between a poor household (or group of households) and the CFUG committee, but there is no regulatory provision to facilitate and provide legal security to such pro-poor transactions. Given that there is high demand for forest land among households of all wealth categories, [32] fears that community-level agreements with poor and excluded groups may easily revert back under local pressures and politics.

Gender and Community Forest

It is essential for women to be an active part of the CFUG, not only in the interest of equality, but also to ensure that the initiatives of the CFUGs are sustained and women are able to fulfill their roles in the community [34] Since women are primary users of the forest resources in Nepal and have a broad knowledge that lead forest destruction, their contribution to Forest protection could be very valuable [35] has also reported comparatively higher ecological condition of community forest which was led by higher proportion of women in the Executive Committees (ECs) than CFUGs of fewer women representation in ECs. Although gender concerns have long been ignored in community forestry,[36]  Luintel and Timsina (2008) suggest a rising trend of women’s participation in community forestry. Community forestry program is also responsible to provide ground for learning of empowering women groups related to the forest resources management [37] Despite this fact, the study made by [11,38]show women participation in community forestry management system is less satisfactory. Several factors including their socio-cultural roles in society as well as limited prior deliberative experience illuminate the little participation of women in CFUG for decision-making [16,39] For example, traditionally, women are in charge of gathering resources from the forest, silviculture, forest management and other such tasks[34] and these conventional tasks consumed most of the time and energy and limit the amount of time and effort of women that can be spent on active participation in CFUG activities [34]

Furthermore, some initiatives were also launched to encourage women to participate in the decision-making of CFUGs. When community forestry was first introduced, the Ministry of Forest and Soil Conservation (MoFSC) created a policy that women should make up 33 percent in the Community Forest Users Committee (CFUC). Despite the policy initiatives from the MoFSC, women’s roles in decision-making in mixed CFUGs are not still reflected well because very few women are elected to key positions and gain tenure in those positions [34].Women comprise about 25 percent of executive committee positions within CFUGs [29] but are still struggling to rise to decision making positions in the community forestry sphere [16,39-40].This indicates that the policy provisions have not been fully implemented.

Similarly, men have the highest rates of employment in CF, except in office assistant and facilitator [41] and women have greater access to revolving funds than men and also take up a higher proportion of income generation activities (IGAs) and leasehold land in CFUGs (GoN, 2012). Besides this, economically elite men are taking community forestry decisions within the household than women except in the extreme poor where it is more evenly balanced between women and men [37] 

In Nepal, CFUGs composed entirely of women were also formulated[42-43]There were 1,035 community forests which had been solely represented and managed successfully by women until 2012 [44,42] and the number is still increasing gradually. However, women from the larger sized households, reside close to the forest and market, showed their strong and positive influences on participation in forest resource utilization [45] So, the decisions in women’s community forest were made according to the interest of women from economically elite and/or high-caste households.

Caste and community forest

Like other parts of south Asia, Nepal demonstrates a distinct social stratification based on the caste system and encompasses a wider socio-economic heterogeneity [46] and acting as an obstacle in the development of communities belonging to the lower social class such as lower caste people are facing a multitude of disadvantages in land endowment, socio-economic marginalisation, participation in decision making processes and employment opportunities [47] access to vital forest products [15,48.50,10] Even if a person from the lower caste group is represented on the committee, their views are often disregarded and have less bargaining power at community meetings and assemblies.

Furthermore, local elite, either from the higher caste groups or from indigenous groups, capture forest resources on the basis of existing community-based forestry laws[50]. There is no inclusiveness in formal employment opportunities in CF to highly excluded households [41] The key factors identified for the low participation of indigenous ethnic communities in decision making are education and traditional customs which resulted their low representation in CFUGs [51] 

By law, one-third of the executive- committee members of community forest user groups must be women, but there are no stipulations for lower caste. However, in order to ensure the representation of lower caste to address equity,  awareness programme among the users groups regarding the CF management practices was also promoted to include marginalized and excluded but genuine users in CFUC .This practice from different program implemented by CFUG resulted the improvement in the empowerment of disadvantage and ethnic community of rural areas [44] But, intra-caste competition resulted the dominance of indigenous people within their own network [37]. 

Power and control in community forest

Local participation becomes more meaningful and effective when peoples are involved not as cooperating forest users but as forest managers and even owner-managers in their own right[50]. Though the primary aim of establish community forest is influenced from the utilitarian attitudes, where the state managers have direct role in decision making [52-53] Before handing over the CF the DFO staff acts as the state authority but after hand over they will be advisor and facilitator to help the FUGs [54]However, most of the CFUG decisions regarding forest product use and forest development activities are made only with the consultation and consent of DFO staff due to their less level of knowledge and awareness[30]. Similarly, offences right for wild animals are not handed over to the community even after handing over the forest to CFUG. So, the decision about the wildlife offences will also be done from DFO officials[55]Forest users are aware only about their OP expiries and that it must be renewed to further manage the forest and use forest products. However, they do not understand why their OPs cannot be renewed[30]. Users’ group still consider inventory of CFs for handing over as a bureaucratic requirement rather than a management tool. This insists them to invite DFO officials to most of their executive committee meetings to take decisions relating to forest management and harvesting [30,56,57] This indicates monopolized control over communication, decision-making and resources and finally decreased CFUGs independence. 

In principle, the control over community forest rests with CFUGs. But, in reality, the CFUC makes most of the decisions on behalf of CFUGs and this indicates the dominance of committee members over CFUG in decision-making[29,30]They make decision either at the committee meeting or at the CFUG general assembly which merely fails to involve all the CFUG members effectively. The decisions of the CFUC meeting are usually not communicated to all the members of CFUGs. Similarly, CFUG general assembly is often too large for the women and other disadvantaged members to communicate and contribute. Furthermore, based on the analysis of financial transactions and decision making procedures in CFUGs in Nepal, community forestry is adapting techno-bureaucratic and corporate culture, replacing indigenous ways of community governance and by placing market elements into existing hierarchies and power asymmetries of local communities[58]. Though it is the role of general assembly in deciding distribution mechanism, the executive committee takes most of the decisions regarding benefit-sharing mechanisms  [29].. So, many landless and occupational caste people are forced to dependent on fuel wood from the adjoining natural forests [29].

In addition, economically well-being households have the high levels of participation in CF meetings, and in decision making process of CFs, they have high influences than other indigenous people, extreme poor and Dalit households [29,37] The issue of control and access depends to some extent on the construction of socioeconomic structure of the particular CFUG. If it is not too differentiated by the class and caste compositions, it is more likely to be represented also by the women, the poor and the oppressed.

What next?

From the literature review, it is clear that the mainstreaming poor, women, lower caste and other disadvantage groups in community forestry is still not complete and has been facing problems due to many reasons such as weak implementation of gender equality and social inclusion policies, weak institutional structure and capacity, inadequate awareness, inadequacy of gender disaggregated data, insufficient inclusion of gender and social inclusion criteria in monitoring and evaluation or in budgeting programmes and so on. Since the execution of equity and inclusion provisions in CF secures access to all livelihood assets for disadvantaged people [43] it  becomes necessary to take all the actions that address those issues. One important action is to implement inclusion and equity related policy provisions fully and only then representation of women and excluded groups in key positions will be satisfactory. However, increasing  their number  in key position or decision-making might be problematic and incomplete because it does not address the struggle person face in joining the existing male, caste or elite dominant institutions[59].  Therefore, there is necessity of important strategies to be formulated by systematically tracing the lineage of related discussions, thereby deriving insights from the past forest research and policy, and implemented strongly to strengthen equity and social inclusion component in community forestry. Besides this, social and cultural norms and values of various caste and ethnic groups towards gender roles should also be understood in order to find out the factor which may facilitate or inhibit women's active and effective participation in community forestry [51]

Many important activities such as provision of formal and informal education to improve literacy rate is important, so need to continue. In addition, regular support and motivation from local males and elites might also play vital role to encourage women along with other excluded or disadvantaged groups in raising their social status as well as confidence, which is essential for decision making process in any development activities in general and forestry in particular [51].

Promoting the national/local debates and media campaigns as well as human rights education to sensitize the population in order to avoid social exclusion based on caste, finance, gender prejudices might be helpful. International development organizations and aid agencies could also assist in this effort through putting some pre-condition on development assistance and supporting economic and social empowerment of disadvantaged groups and their representation in decision-making process. Different stakeholders in forestry sector need to come up with appropriate strategy and facilitate as an independent actors to make aware forest users, most particularly disadvantage group (DAG), about their rights to limit the forest officials’ role as an advisor or facilitator, challenge inequality. At the same time, it is also important to work on the issues which ensure the voice representation of all forest users to strengthen the benefit sharing mechanism and equity. Similarly, all the socioeconomic characteristics that are related to inequality could undermine the success of community-based approaches to resource management as well as inequitable outcomes of poverty alleviation measures unless local institutions are strong enough to tackle the inequity in access and opportunities for all segments of society to benefit at the local level Moreover, periodic assessment of policy, implementation and the revision is also equally important along with the provision of adequate fund. 

Active participation of poor, women, lower caste and other disadvantaged groups in decision-making is critical for effective community forest management and equitable benefit distribution among the users. Despite many positive outcomes in around half decade past history, community forestry in Nepal has faced mounting challenges, limitations and shortcomings, particularly in mainstreaming of all those disadvantaged groups appropriately in forest management. Notable challenges are firstly, elite capture. Male dominancy (elite or well-being household) are in key position, decision making process, employment opportunities and access to vital forest products along with land endowment and socio-economic marginalization.  Even if there is representation of women then it consists of higher representation of women from economically elite and/or high-caste households rather than from poor and low caste family. Same scenario can be experienced even in case of low caste inclusion. For example, intra-caste competition results the dominance of indigenous people within their own network. Secondly, control over community forest rests with CFUC rather than CFUGs because it makes most of the decisions on behalf of CFUGs either at the committee meeting or at the CFUG general assembly which merely fails to involve all the CFUG members effectively. Thirdly, DoF officials’ monopolized control over communication, decision-making and resources is widespread which decrease CFUGs independence and self-decision. These deficiencies are believed to be in existence due to many reasons. Some of them are poor education, illiteracy and awareness, socio-cultural roles in society as well as limited prior deliberative experience of disadvantage groups including poor, women and lower caste. These weaknesses need to be figured out and for this different initiations can be taken. For example, implementation of inclusion and equity related policy provisions fully is uttermost. Similarly, the key for the success of the community forestry rests within the CFUG formation process and therefore, strategic procedure such as compulsory involvement of poor, women and other disadvantaged groups  in planning and decision making needs to be designed and promoted to ensure their proper representation and help them to realize their authority, responsibility and accountability. Strengthening the institution from this way can include all segments of society to benefit at the local level maintaining the equity. In addition, systematically tracing the lineage of related discussions, thereby deriving insights from the past forest research and policy and promoting the national debate to produce and implement appropriate strategies might also be helpful to get rid of all these challenges. For the implementation of such strategies, different stakeholders should play role in coalition rather than individually. Finally, periodic assessment of policy, implementation and the revision is also equally important along with the provision of adequate fund. 

Declaration of interests

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Author(s)’ Contributions

Mr. Thani was the principal author and Mr. Kandel provided necessary and related documents during the preparation of article. 

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest

No funding sources

The study was approved by the Yogi Naraharinath Study and Research Academy, Surkhet

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