Locally Perceived Social and Biophysical Factors Shaping the Effective Implementation of Community Forest Management Operations in Nepal

Despite an ostensibly conducive policy environment in Nepal, community forest management has stagnated at a suboptimal level in delivery of the benefits stipulated in operational plans. This study assesses the current state of forest management against the backdrop of locally relevant factors that influence management strategies in 13 community forests in the mid hill region of Nepal. It adopts a mixed-method approach utilizing data collected from forest inventory and operational plans of these community forests, household survey and focus group discussions. The results reveal that the current state of forest management is very basic and largely confined to bush cutting and removal of low quality trees. We identified three primary factors influencing user groups' motivation to enhance forest management, namely: livelihood dependency on forests; forest incomes and benefits; and the capacity to technical forest management. Accordingly, there is a low incentive to adopt silvicultural systems to manage forests. Even though timber is considered as the main source of income, its production is constrained by terrain condition, regulatory procedures, accessibility to road and market and inadequate capacity to undertake silviculture-based forest management. The study concludes that the current level of benefits is insufficient to stimulate forest user groups to enhance forest management. We suggest policy imperatives that: (1) promote enterprise-based forest management to increase forest-based incomes; and (2) adopt collaborative action research to experiment and demonstrate beneficial effects of silvicultural systems to increase forest productivity.