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From October 3, 2017 to October 6, 2017, a team from Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) headed by Dr. Steven Lawry, Director of Equal opportunities, Gender, Justice and Tenure at CIFOR, visited four community forest enterprises in Chitwan and Nawalparasi districts of Nepal. These visits and subsequent meetings at the four locations were facilitated and organized by Mr. Anukram Adhikary and Mr. Kamal Bhandari of ForestAction Nepal. The purpose of the visit was to gain a better understanding with regard to how forest and land tenure rights devolution triggered investments in forest enterprises in Nepal. Furthermore, with the aim of disseminating Nepal’s unique cases, CIFOR and ForestAction will release four short documentaries highlighting four community forest enterprises that were visited by the end of 2017.

A half day interaction was held with ward members, mayor and deputy mayor at Chhyanath, Rara Municipality, Mugu on 11th September, 2017. The main objective of the training was to impart knowledge on constitutional arrangements; governance structure, roles, responsibilities and rights of the local government, strategies to influence decision making process related to food security, agriculture, land and climate change at different levels. There was active participation of mayor, deputy mayor, chairpersons of all 14 wards and other concerned stakeholders in the interaction. Karishma Gurung presented the concept of chemical and pesticide free agriculture to be incorporated in local agriculture act. Similarly, Krishna P. Paudel presented the detail of constitutional arrangement of governance, roles, key responsibilities and rights of the local government and their functions. Also, they were made aware on assigned roles, responsibilities and rights of the local government in relation to food, agriculture, land and other crosscutting issues. The participating local representatives showed their serious concern on the importance of chemical and pesticide free agriculture for food and need to address it through local government’s agriculture act. Hari Jung Shahi, mayor of the municipality ended the program expressing his interest to work together with Alliance of Agriculture for Food (AAF) for further facilitation on the framing local agriculture act and other agriculture development plans of the municipality.

Community photo exhibition was organized by ForestAction Nepal under the CALCNR extension project at Chispani Community Forestry, Nawalparasi on 21st August 2017. The event covered 50 photographs taken by the community themselves to portray the issue of Natural Resource (NR) conflict between CF users of north and south.

Photo exhibition was based on four different thematic areas:

• Women’s engagement in gathering Natural Resources (Northern CFUG V Southern CFUG);

• Roles and responsibilities of men in NR management;

• Livelihood and Natural Resources variation (Northern CFUG V Southern CFUG)

• Depo and its impact

To reach a wide range of audience, the event was organised during the Adaptive Learning Network (ALN) meeting. Mayor of Bardaghat Municipality, Assistant Forest Officer (AFO), local leaders and CFUG’s from North and south attended the ALN meeting followed by the photo exhibition.

Community photo sharing turned out to be an effective communication tool for sharing the issues faced by the local people and attract the concerns of local leaders and stakeholders. The event itself gained more authenticity as it was choreographed by the representative of the community itself.

‘1st Kalinchowk Chauri Fair’ organized by Kalinchowk Rural Municipality endured to be one of its first kind in Dolakha.The major objective of the fair was sharing the learning’s and relationship between Chauri and various components associated with it. As a technical counselor in natural resources management of the event, ForestAction shared the research finding on conflict between yak herders and community forests. The event was scheduled from 6 to 7 August 2017 and was chaired by Members of Parliament- Ananda Prasad Pokharel, Parbat Gurung and Pashupati Chaulagain. Around 1200 visitors attended the fair over two-days period. Participants were mainly Chauri Herders and visitors from neighboring Rural Municipalities.

The fair was organized to promote local culture and local products, placing the importance of Chauri farming in high Himalayan region of Nepal, through the presentation of indigenous attires and different traditional values of the area, presentation of different kinds of Chauri and yaks and their products & selection of best products of Chauri and yaks. ForestAction’s role was to involve in technical discussion relating to yak (chauri) and forest and its relationship over the time. ForestAction’s team shared general ideas related to the importance of highland grazing system and Chauri with the local stakeholders and participants from the local government. General findings of the ongoing CALCNR project in Suspa-Kshmewati Community Forest was shared with the participants and a brief informal presentation regarding the forest issues and conflicts was made on 7 August 2017 in a group.

ForestAction Nepal along with FECOFUN is organizing a half day workshop on 8 August 2017 at Staff College premises as a part of a nationwide celebration of Community Forestry Day. The major highlight of the workshop will be discussion on issue “Civil Movement in Community Forestry and Future Visioning”.

Participants will be from different NGOs, INGOs and Government Offices like Human Rights Alliance, NTNC, WWF, IUCN,Forest Enterpreneurs, COFSUN, Care Nepal, RDN, DANAR, AECOFUN, ANSAB etc. representing diverse backgrounds.

ForestAction Nepal in collaboration with Portland State University organized a workshop to share the findings of the research entitled “Community Forestry and REDD+: Synergy and Trade Offs” with the financial support of World Bank. The workshop, held on 4th June 2017 at Hotel Himalaya, aimed at sharing new evidences on outcomes of community forestry in forest management, biodiversity, carbon and equity, and their implications to the design and implementation of REDD+ in Nepal and beyond. A total of 4 papers were presented by representatives from Portland State University, ForestAction Nepal, REDD IC and ICIMOD. The participants were from various NGOs, INGOs as well as government sector working closely with issues related to REDD+.

A three-day training workshop on Advocacy facilitation was held from 17th to 19th July at SAHAMATI, Nawalparasi. The participants of the workshop included OXFAM partners from its working area. The changing context of food, agriculture and land as well as the issues of chemical and pesticide free agriculture were discussed along with the emerging roles of local government in addressing issues related to agriculture. The training was designed to develop knowledge and skills of the local representatives, development frontiers and relevant stakeholders to understand agriculture issues and the local agriculture legal framework and plans.

ForestAction Nepal in collaboration with Alliance of Agriculture for Food and OXFAM organized an interactive discussion session on 7th June 2017 at Babarmahal, Kathmandu. The main objective of the program was to discuss about the challenges under the existing policy advocacy of Agricultural insurance as well as challenges found in the existing practices and exercises. Total 30 participants representing National Farmers Group Federation, National Land Rights Forum, Ministry of Agricultural Development were also engaged in the discussion to find out the possible solutions for such challenges. Mr Navaraj Basnet shared various issues associated with Agricultural Insurance from the findings of research conducted in 6 different districts, the main point being Inaccessibility of Agricultural Insurance among Small Farmers. Ms Karishma Gurung shared her findings from research conducted in 8 districts from financial support of OXFAM thereafter.

ForestAction Nepal participated in the workshop, “Balancing unpaid care work and paid work” organized by OXFAM Nepal on 31st May, 2017. The major role of ForestAction was facilitation of the advocacy uptake during the group discussion. The sharing of the study was done by the research team that conducted survey in various districts. The overall results from the study towards economic empowerment of women were shared by the team. After the sharing and discussion session, the floor was transferred for group work. The facilitation of the advocacy uptake was done by Krishna Paudel from ForestAction Nepal. The participants were divided into four groups and following topics were given for discussion:

 

• What might be the possible solutions of “Balancing unpaid care work and paid work for women”?
• What might be the take home message from this workshop?
• What might be three policy advocacy issues regarding the topic to work upon?

Alliance of Agriculture for Food (AAF) organized a half day interaction at ForestAction Nepal on 22 May 2017. The major agendas for discussion were update of changing context after local election and future intervention to collaborate at local levels. The participants of the interaction were regular alliance members including OXFAM. The actual impact of alliance’s election manifesto in various working districts of alliance was discussed during the meeting. Members expressed that the manifesto prepared by the alliance had a positive impact at local level. The interaction went to the second phase for planning to conduct local level interactions with the newly elected representatives. The division of the districts to conduct several interactions was made among the alliance members. ForestAction Nepal took the initiative to conduct such interactions with newly elected representatives at province number 6. Similarly, other alliance members took the initiatives for other provinces.