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Reframing community forest governance for food security in Nepal

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 October 2016

DIL KHATRI ,
KRISHNA SHRESTHA ,
HEMANT OJHA ,
GOVINDA PAUDEL ,
NAYA PAUDEL  and
ADAM PAIN
DIL KHATRI*
Affiliation:
Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences – Department of Urban and Rural Development, Uppsala, Sweden ForestAction Nepal, Satdobato, Lalitpur, Kathmandu, Nepal
KRISHNA SHRESTHA
Affiliation:
University of New South Wales – School of Social Sciences, Sydney, Australia
HEMANT OJHA
Affiliation:
University of New South Wales – School of Social Sciences, Sydney, Australia Southasia Institute of Advanced Studies (SIAS), Kathmandu, Nepal
GOVINDA PAUDEL
Affiliation:
ForestAction Nepal, Satdobato, Lalitpur, Kathmandu, Nepal
NAYA PAUDEL
Affiliation:
ForestAction Nepal, Satdobato, Lalitpur, Kathmandu, Nepal
ADAM PAIN
Affiliation:
Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences – Department of Urban and Rural Development, Uppsala, Sweden
*
*Correspondence: Dil Kharti e-mail: [email protected]
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Summary

The growing challenge of food insecurity in the Global South has called for new research on the contribution of forests to food security. However, even progressive forest management institutions such as Nepal's community forestry programme have failed to address this issue. We analyse Nepal's community forestry programme and find that forest policies and local institutional practices have historically evolved to regulate forests either as sources of timber or as a means of biodiversity conservation, disregarding food security outcomes for local people. Disciplinary divisions between forestry and the agriculture sector have limited the prospect of strengthening forest–food security linkages. We conclude that the policy and legislative framework and formal bureaucratic practices are influenced by ‘modern forestry science’, which led to community forestry rules and practices not considering the contribution of forests to food security. Furthermore, forestry science has a particularly narrow focus on timber production and conservation. We argue for the need to recognise the importance of local knowledge and community practices of using forests for food. We propose adaptive and transformational approaches to knowledge generation and the application of such knowledge in order to support institutional change and policy reform and to enable landscape-specific innovations in forest–food linkages.

Keywords

food securitycommunity forestryforestry sciencepolicyinstitutionsresource governance
Type
Papers
Information
Environmental Conservation , Volume 44 , Issue 2 , June 2017 , pp. 174 - 182
Copyright
Copyright © Foundation for Environmental Conservation 2016 

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Footnotes

Supplementary material can be found online at http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0376892916000369

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