Empowering rural community for sustainable management of forest resources.by | 24-01-2015 02:41 |
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Community forestry is an evolving branch of forestry whereby the local community plays a significant role in forest management and land use decision making by themselves in the facilitating support of government as well as change agents. It involves the participation and collaboration of various stakeholders including community, government and non-government organizations (Wikipedia). 1) National Forest 2) Leasehold Forest 2) Private Forest Also Forest Regulations (1995), the Operational Guidelines (1995), Revised Operational Guidelines (2001-02), and the Forestry Sector Policy (2000) have further institutionalized community forestry in Nepal. Community forest is run by the "community forest user groups (CFUG's)". The acts, regulations and guidelines define CFUG as an independent, autonomous and self-governing institution responsible to protect, manage and use any patch of national forest with a defined forest boundary and user group members. CFUGs are to be formed democratically and registered at the District Forest Office (DFO), with CFUG Constitution, which defines the rights of the users to a particular forest. The forest is handed over to the community once the respective members through a number of consultative meetings and processes prepares the Operational Plan (OP), a forest working plan, and submits it to the District Forest Officer (DFO) for approval. The plan has to be countersigned by the Chairperson of the CFUG. The general assembly of the CFUG is the supreme body to finalize the plan before it is submitted to the DFO for its approval. The plan is generally implemented by an executive committee nominated by the general assembly. About 850,000 hectares forest areas have been handed over to eleven thousands forest user groups involving over a million households(Bhatta 2001).Community forest has been a great success in nepal specially in midhills resulting in livelihood improvement,conversion of natural capital into financial capital, leadership development, inclusion etc. 1) Climate Change The above topics are the talk of the world and most of the world knows about it well. But the people from remote areas have hardly some knowledge about these topics excluding some who have got opportunity to participate related trainings. At first we gave them brief information about the above topics and later discussion was held.
In Nepal there are many other women led community aforests, hope they will also be able to make good use of their resources and be able to uplift their living standard as well as boost the status of country's greenery.
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