DEVELOPMENT PROJECTS |
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Identification of Criteria
and Indicators for Community Based Sustainable Forest Management
A research project
based on Community Forestry in Nepal
BOKU University/RRN are being implementing
the participatory action research (PAR) in Makawanpur and
Chitawan districts, Nepal through the close collaboration
with diverse stakeholders from the Department of Forestry
(DoF), Federation of Community Forests, Nepal (FECOFUN), Natural
and Organization Resource Management Services (NORMS), the
Institute of Forestry (IoF) and project managers from the
Department of Forest and Soil Sciences, (DWB, Austria) and
one of the leading NGO's of Nepal, Rural Reconstruction Nepal,RRN.
The demand to assess sustainable forest management (SFM) has
generally evolved to the use of C&I because they appear
to be highly capable of measuring aspects of SFM at national,
regional and forest management unit level. The concept of
C&I has become widely accepted as a suitable forest policy,
management and research tool for conceptualizing, evaluating,
and implementing sustainable forestry. The study will clarify
the overall goals of sustainable forest management in Nepal.
It will be able to identify the objectives of the common property
resource management which provide a new insight into the community-based
institutions, their determinants and their impacts on resource
use pattern and environmental outcome.
Objectives
The overall goal of this study is
to identify criteria and indicators for analyzing and evaluating
community forests managed by forest user groups from a sustainable
natural resource management perspective and to test the C&I
set in regional case study. The specific objectives are:
- to identify criteria and indicators
based on the international principles of SFM
- to develop a methodology to generate
a generally accepted set of C&I at the regional and
community level by multi-stakeholder participation in Nepal
- to apply the C&I set for SFM
within case studies of Community based forest management
in Makawanpur district and evaluate management plans
- to promote political commitment
for the use of C&I for sustainable forest management
- to promote the contribution of
community forest management to poverty reduction, biological
diversity, ecological integrity, water conservation and
forest health
Target groups
This study mainly targets to the member
of the CFUGs for improving their performance in terms of sustainable
forest management at the forest management unit level. The
CFUGs are supported in their efforts to increase the productivity
of their forests on the one hand and maintain forest resources
on the other hand. By the help of the C&I development
process it will be possible to eliminate inequalities and
promote gender equality throughout the members of the CFUG.
The study will support also other
stakeholder groups in designing more sustainable oriented
policies. Through the collaboration with stakeholders from
forest officials from the Department of Forestry (DoF), Federation
of Community Forests, Nepal (FECOFUN), the Institute of Forestry
(IoF) and project managers from other projects at the local
government level this study will help to integrate the interests
of these different stakeholder groups. This study targets
to donor agencies for evaluating the sustainability of the
activities undertaken by various natural resource management
projects and certification bodies for assessing the resource
management for certification process and purposes.
Duration
December 2006 to May 2008
Financiers
- Kommission für Entwicklungsfragen
an der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften
Wien Austria
Participating Instituts/BOKU Departments
- Institute of Silviculture; coordinator
For more information
Mr. Chiranjeewee Khadka<chiranjeewee@rrn.org.np>
Rural Reconstruction Nepal (RRN)
Post Box 8130, Lazimpat, Kathmandu, Nepal
Phone: 977-1-4415418, 4422153
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