For Environment, Democracy and Livelihoods
Social Learning at Work: A case Study of Community Forestry in Nepal.
To achieve the twin goals of conservation and poverty reduction, there have been a range of attempts to engage the state, markets and local communities in managing natural resources in different temporal and spatial contexts, with an increasing emphasis on the roles and rights of local communities in the recent years. The shift towards a greater (acknowledged) role of communities in what is commonly known as Community Based Natural Resources Management (CBNRM) reflects the belated recognition that sustainable resource management can never be independent of the sustainability of collective human institutions at local level (Agrawal 2001). While CBNRM has generated several successful outcomes in some parts of the world such as in Nepal (see, Mahapatra and Khanal, 2000; Joshi, 2001; Sharma, 2002), there is not yet satisfactory and consistent progress in both resource sustainability and improvement of livelihoods of the poor. A number of researchers and policy analysts have analyzed the dynamics of institutions governing the common pool resources at local level, including factors related to their successes and failures (Ostrum 1990, Bromley 1991). Their work has advanced our knowledge of how people and resources relate in using and managing resources.
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