IFRI Collaborative Research Center – Nepal activities on the way

ForestAction hosts and coordinates the International Forestry Resources and Institutions (IFRI)-Nepal Collaborative Research Center (CRC). IFRI-Nepal has collected data for more than 43 sites, and has completed 15 second revisits, and two third visits. Recently, coordinator of IFRI CRC – Nepal Dr Birendra Karna met Dr Arun Agrawal, coordinator of IFRI and discussed on the future programs and activities of IFRI in Nepal. In the coming months, ForestAction will conduct field research with a special focus on the research question to how social capital influences community forest outcomes. In assessing the role of social capital, the study will majorly focus on three ways in which social capital may influence local forest governance and outcomes: 1) at the individual level by influencing the levels of trust that households have over institutions and on the behaviour of their neighbours; 2) at the household level by increasing the willingness of the households to learn from their neighbours; and 3) at the community level by lowering the cost of institutional enforcement by increasing the ability of households.

The proposed study will be valuable in terms of fulfilling the gap of adequate existing research based on temporal data on community forests, analysis that combines qualitative and quantitative approaches, and the examination of tradeoff and synergies among multiple outcomes of forests. A total of 25 sites will be revisited for proposed project purpose where full range of IFRI research protocol will be administrated.

Refer to the link for more details: http://sitemaker.umich.edu/ifri/nepal