Project Name: Fostering Health and Livelihoods of Conflict Affected People in Nepal
Project Period: March 2008-February 2010
Financial Support: European Commission

This project was designed to assist conflict affected vulnerable communities to acquire better health and livelihoods opportunities. The specific objective of this project is increased access to essential health care services and livelihoods opportunities to most disadvantaged and conflict affected communities in the selected districts of Nepal. The primary beneficiaries of the proposed action are conflict victims, Dalits, Janajatis, Madhesis, people with disabilities, rural poor, women, youth, children, and other marginalised and excluded groups. The final beneficiaries are the larger communities of 11 project districts covering about 18 percent of Nepal’s population. The 11 action districts of this project include Morang, Dhankuta, Panchthar and Khotang from Eastern Region; Kavre and Chitwan from Central Region; Nawalparasi, Arghakhanchi and Kapilvastu from Western Region; Kalikot from Mid-West Region; and Achham from Far-Western Region. The project is successful in developing self-esteem and trust among excluded and vulnerable communities, NGOs and Community Based Organisations (CBOs); and to open up new opportunities towards promoting peace, social integration, capacity building, rehabilitation, reconstruction, reintegration, inclusion, and revitalisation of the health services and livelihoods improvement.

This project is implemented by a consortium of one INGO, two national NGOs and 11 district based NGOs. The project was started with baseline survey using Rapid Need Assessment (RNA) tool.  Altogether 168 different events related to livelihood, capacity building and health support were carried out within the particular district during the project period, March 2008-December 2009.

This action research project was executed to provide strategic inputs to the forest policy process towards strengthening community rights in Nepal. The political transition, especially the discourses of state restructuring has encouraged forest-sector stakeholders towards a fundamental transformation of forest policies and institutions. In this context the project aimed at generating a brief yet holistic review of Nepal’s forestry sector, analyse the drivers of change and identify the points of departure for a more productive, sustainable and equitable forest governance in Nepal.

The analysis identifies rural livelihoods and environmental sustainability as the twin goals of forest management and foresees a strong role of local communities and local governments in forest governance and management. Therefore it suggests for reducing the sole reliance on state forest bureaucracy. It also identifies the need for an independent and autonomous institution for providing various needed technical and institutional support to the forest user groups. A landscape level comprehensive management with clear and equitable tenure arrangement is crucial for new forest policy strategy in order to meet the dual goals. The study has developed a report providing a strategic analysis with recommendations for transforming the forest sector.

This project assesses the status of community rights across the three ecological zones in Nepal and provides a comprehensive picture of rights situation in different geographical landscapes particularly focusing on the situation in high altitude and Terai (lowlands). Forest tenure reform in Nepal for the last three decades has focused on participatory and community based management. Consequently, almost one third of the total forests are under different forms of community based management regimes where locals are involved in the sustainable management and use of forest resources. However, the forest area handed-over to local institutions vary across the ecological zones. While large part of mid-hill forests is under community forestry, much of forests in the high altitude and Terai are still largely under government control.

The study reveals that community rights are more secure in the mid hills, primarily due to community forestry programme. The high altitude region suffers from remoteness, slow regeneration of forests, lack of required services and institutional conflicts between sedentary community groups and transhumant pastoralists. Similarly, communities’ access in Terai forests is constrained as most of the forest there is either under strict protection or state management. Besides, elite capture has been the key local phenomena in Terai and marginalisation of weaker social groups in decision making and benefit sharing. The study analyses four key determining factors that shapes the tenure arrangements: resource abundance and accessibility, tenure regime, regulatory framework and institutions that mediate access to forests and benefits from forest management. The underlying factors for the variations in community rights across ecological zones are found to be exclusionary historical political processes, economic incentives, forest distribution and settlement patterns and techno-bureaucratic control.

Project Period: August-December, 2009
Financial Support: Rights and Resources Initiatives

The necessity of a productive and equitable management of community resources for generating higher level of pro-poor outcomes, especially the maximisation of economic opportunities at local level, is well recognised. Accordingly, community forestry has shifted its focus from subsistence use to commercial appropriation to generate increased financial benefits. As a result, CFUGs have increased their financial transactions tremendously over the last ten years. Paradoxically, such increased financial transaction at local level has not generated a proportional pro-poor outcome. At the same time, there is a serious lack of comprehensive analysis of the phenomena. Analysis of current fund management is thus expected to help explore innovative and productive mechanism for CFUG fund mobilisation and help deal with issues of increased inequality and poverty at local level. The objectives of the study are:

1. Identify the sources of income of CFUGs,
2. Distribution patterns of expenditure, and
3. Dynamics of decisions making, particularly on formulating investment policies.

In this research, the distribution of expenditure in CFUGs has been analysed focusing on actual financial investment patterns, decision-making procedures, and disbursement mechanisms in six different aspects:  (i) grants and other financial supports to the identified poor households, (ii) investment on commercialisation and pro-poor enterprises, (iii) expenses in forest development activities, iv) costs incurred by CFUGs in infrastructure and community development, (v) institutional and managerial expenditures, and (vi) financial costs involved in democratic practices and decision making arrangement at district and local levels.

With an objective to promote LFP innovations, lessons and insights in the wider policy and practice domains Livelihood and Forestry Program (LFP) and ForestAction had signed a partnership agreement in May 2008. The idea was to capitalise the professional compatibilities and publication experience/windows of ForestAction to capture and disseminate LFP innovations. Within a period of one year, several products were developed jointly by consultants from ForestAction and staff within LFP. The outcomes delivered by the project include:

• • One community forestry good practice paper entitled Community Forestry in Nepal: Promoting Livelihoods, Community Development and the Environment.
  • Published a Journal of Forest and Livelihood: Special Issue on Lessons from Livelihood and Forestry Programme.
  • Published a Hamro Ban Sampada (Nepali journal) focusing on Forestry Program for Livelihood.
  • Published an article entitled Exploring Local Knowledge of Climate Change: Some Reflections in Journal of Forest and Livelihood: Special Issue on Climate Change, Forestry and Local Livelihoods.
  • Four policy briefs (in English) on various topics related NRM and livelihoods.
  • Published two policy briefs in Nepali entitled Challenges of Climate Change and Way Forward, and  Transformation of Terai Forestry in Nepal: A Proposal for National Consensus.
  • Development of a book proposal on community forestry.
  • Organised writing workshop for LFP staff and partners in Kathmandu and Pokhara.

Project Name: Support Dialogue for Strategic Policy Input in Securing Community Rights in Nepal
Project Period: September 2008-August 2009
Financial Support: Rights and Resource Initiatives

This project was implemented in collaboration with FECOFUN. In the context of state restructuring and new constitution building, ForestAction and FECOFUN had agreed to facilitate a national dialogue on the role of local communities in the management of natural resources. ForestAction carried out a strategic analysis of the community rights over natural resources and FECOFUN leads the interaction and lobbying in favor of community right. The major objectives of the project were:

1. To prepare a synthesis overview on the state of art on community rights on forests,
2. To compare various models of resource management and highlight the pros and cons of those models in relation to people’s livelihoods,
3. Draw lessons from three decades of community forestry that could be scaled out and translated to other sectors – health, irrigation and primary education,
4. Expand and strengthen civil society networks to reflect and consolidate voices in favor of community rights, and
5. Promote constructive engagement with policy communities in producing an analytical policy document on community rights over natural resource management.

The project has brought a strategic policy document explaining the situation of security of community rights on forest, land and water resource management which also contains policy recommendations to ensure security of rights, sustainability and livelihoods of local communities. A series of national and regional level workshops were jointly organised with FECOFUN. This initiative has brought community rights and NRM in the forefront of constitutional debate.

Wetland conservation programme was implemented in the Chitwan to conserve the wetlands in the area. The bridging project implemented from April 2007 to January 2008 was funded by the IUCN Netherland under the Ecosystem Grants Programme. The objectives of this project were to strengthen the capacity of the local stakeholders, institutionalise wetland conservation strategies among local institutions and enhance the livelihoods of the local and indigenous communities. While two wetland areas, namely Shanischare and Lamichaur, are specifically targeted in this project, a wide range of stakeholders have been invited to reflect upon and support wetland management issues in Chitwan Valley. The major stakeholders were CFUG, Buffer Zone User Committees, Village Development Committees, the Chitwan National Park, local NGOs and People’s Organisations. Poor households have been identified and have been given priority in income generation activities.

This project was funded by International Development Research Center (IDRC), Canada; supplemented by Centre for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), Indonesia and International Institute of Rural Reconstruction (IIRR), the Philippines.

This project was carried out with the financial support provided by IDRC, Canada. Beside ForestAction’s leading role on the ACM project, it took a secretarial, often coordinating, and final reflection and reporting role in the national component also.

Funded by ActionAid, Nepal, this project aimed to enhance the capacity of indigenous people by protecting their rights over local resources and their knowledge to manage and use those resources. The project specifically studied the importance of local people's knowledge on biogenetic resources so as to develop strategic measures to protect such knowledge.

This project was implemented from July 2003 to March 2006 in collaboration with the Environmental Change Institute of the University of Oxford, UK and the Foundation for Revitalization of Local Health Tradition, India with the financial support of the Forestry Research Programme of the Department for International Development, UK. The project was employed in two countries, viz. India and Nepal.

A participatory action research on linking people to policy was conducted in Nepal during May-December 2006. Supported by International Institute of Rural Reconstruction (IIRR), the Philippines, the project was a collaborative initiative of ForestAction and CIFOR. In a growing concern of how grassroots communities are better connected with the national policy process as well as, the processes at different levels, this project aimed to document and synthesize lessons generated from the 'Multi Stakeholder Learning Fora’ particularly those applying adaptive and collaborative approach as strategies for catalyzing and enhancing pro-people and equity oriented policy-making processes.

In collaboration with CHANGE-Nepal, this program was implemented in Royal Chitwan Naitonal Park’s buffer zone in Nawalparasi District with the financial assistance of the Small Grants Programme of The Netherlands Committee for The World Conservation Union (NC-IUCN) within the wetland development scheme.

This project had been awarded to ForestAction by International Development Research Centre (IDRC) through Research on Knowledge Systems (RoKS) competition 2002-2003. The study had adopted case study approach and was undertaken in three different levels: community, sub-national and national levels.

This survey was an update of a previous survey carried out by ForestAction in 2003. The survey was conducted in four districts in Nepal incorporating the views of 52 poor people. Interviews with NGO/CBO representatives, both at district and national level, and high-level government officials in Kathmandu were also taken to understand their current views on what they see as the main causes of poverty and how they felt about the poor in the context of conflict. The survey identified the priority problems of poor people in the conflict situation. The study showed that all the respondents interviewed suffered from the unfavourable policies and support services relevant to their livelihoods. More severe than this, they have suffered badly as a result of the armed insurgency, which has hijacked their mental peace and social security.  In addition to this, lack of peace and security, regular Bandha and strikes, declining basic health care, and lack of employment opportunities were some of the other priority problems mentioned during the interviews.

This project was funded by the Dutch Ministry of Development Cooperation (DGIS) through the Poverty Reduction and Environmental Management Programme (PREM) and in collaboration with Environmental Resources Institute, the School of Resource and Environmental Management at Simon Fraser University, Canada, and the Institute of Environmental Studies of Vrije Universiteit, the Netherlands. This research was initiated to conduct an economic analysis of poaching of the one-horned rhinoceros in Nepal and to explore a multitude of management and policy alternatives to combat poaching and to provide economic incentives at the local level.

ForestAction jointly with Nepal Australia Community Resource Management and Livelihoods Project (NACRMLP) had facilitated the self-monitoring (it is also known as ‘action learning’) process at selected CFUGs of Kabhrepalanchowk district, Nepal and drawn lessons from these CFUGs to use them in other CFUGs as well as within partner organizations. The governance reform process was proposed based on the core principles of PAL in forest management planning and monitoring processes. The PAL process, which views monitoring as an integral part of community forest management planning activities, involves a continuous process of action and learning in a more systematic and organised manner. The project was able to sensitize local people towards more inclusive and learning focused processes and resulted into more democratic interaction and self-monitoring process within CFUGs. In two CFUGs such as Bhumesthan and Karmapunya of Kabhrepalanchowk district, this process helped the CFUGs develop tole (hamlet) based plans, reflection on the activities and processes and created livelihood opportunity to the users, particularly, poor and marginal groups.

With the collaborative assistance of the Nepal Australia Community Resource Management and Livelihood Project (NACRMLP), the primary focus of this project was to facilitate planning, self-monitoring and learning processes to reform the existing governance of selected forest user groups located in Kabhrepalanchowk and Sindhupalchowk districts. The project has sensitized local people towards more inclusive and learning-focused processes, resulting in more democratic interactions and increased self-monitoring processes within CFUGs. This process had helped two CFUGs, to develop tole-based management plans, reflecting on the activities and processes and created livelihood opportunities of the users, particularly those of poor and marginalized groups.