From community to leasehold forestry

A central component of the Nepal Government's forestry sector policy is its community forestry programme. In principle, every household is entitled to become a member of a community forest user group and share forest products under the programme. But many of the user groups are controlled by local elite, particularly men, and better-off households tend to benefit more from the programme than the poorest, most disadvantaged households.

The Hills Leasehold Forestry and Forage Development Project was designed to address these inequities by providing poor households with leases to forest lands. Launched in 1989 by the government to reduce poverty and restore degraded environments in the hills of Nepal , the project offered 40-year, renewable leases to groups of poor rural people for small blocks of degraded, public forest land.

There were two main differences between the community forestry programme and the community-based leasehold forestry project, which ended in 2001:

Community forestry user groups have, on average, more than 100 households per group and executive committees make decisions for the rest of the group. The leasehold forestry groups, on the other hand, were relatively small, with less then ten households per group and every household participated in every decision.
In community forestry, all income derived from the forest has to be used for community development or forest development. But in community-based leasehold forestry, all forest-based income was available for direct use by the member households.

Major results

One of the project's most significant results was the increase in available animal feed, which decreased the average time women used to collect forest-based fodder from 3.9 hours per day to 1.4 hours. This additional 2.5 hours per day meant that women had more time to pursue other productive activities, like literacy and vocational training and income-generating activities. As a result, cash incomes among leaseholders rose by 24 per cent between 1996 and 1999, and almost half of the new cash earners were women.

Daily labour An increase in fodder also made it easier for household members to switch from “free grazing” to “stall feeding”. Stall feeding reduces the pressure on forest lands and increases the availability of manure, which in turn helps maintain or improve soil fertility. As a result, food production increased and leasehold households were more food secure: From 1996 to 1999, the average period of food security rose from 7.8 months to 8.4 months – a 16 per cent increase. (In comparison, non-leasehold households saw a 4 per cent decrease in food security over the same period.)

Breaking new ground: leasehold forestry in Nepal

Forest areas in Nepal decreased at a rate of 1.7 percent every year between the end of the 1970s and the mid 1990s. Land degradation leads to soil erosion spelling disaster for poor rural households who are forced to spend more time collecting fodder and fuel which in turn leads to a drop in agricultural labour supply, agricultural production and food security.

Source: IFAD

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The increased availability of fodder and access to credit also enabled a number of poor households to purchase and keep livestock for the first time. The average number of goats owned by leasehold forestry households increased from 3.9 heads to 4.4 heads over a three- to five-year period. Leaseholder households were also encouraged to expand their livestock to include high-producing animals. As a result, more livestock products are now sold and consumed in leaseholder communities, which has led to improved nutrition and food security, as well as increased incomes.

Most leasehold sites have also experienced rapid natural regeneration of herbs and grasses, as well as varying speeds of natural tree regeneration. Average ground cover in new sites was about 32 per cent, but rapidly rose to 50 per cent after one full growing season, and gradually increased to almost full coverage in sites after seven years. Biodiversity also increased. Some leasehold forestry groups developed fruit orchards, and the number of plant species in two sites increased by 57 and 86 per cent between 1994 and 2000.

Sustainability of leaseholder groups and leasehold forestry

Since leasehold forestry user groups usually consist of 10 or fewer households and are less educated and more socially disadvantaged than the community as a whole, it may not be realistic to expect them to form and maintain functional organizations that last the duration of the lease.

Decision making

At the same time, forming larger leaseholder groups would diminish the strong sense of ownership and responsibility that exist among smaller groups. One alternative is to unite small leaseholder groups into leaseholder “inter-groups”, which in turn can be organized into cooperatives or associations. To date, approximately 1,600 leaseholder groups have formed 19 cooperatives, about 120 inter-groups and at least one district-level association.

Leasehold groups

Under the current regulatory framework, community forestry has priority over leasehold forestry. This means that there must be a community consensus before leases for forest land are given to the poor. Since leases are only given for degraded forest, this consensus is usually not difficult to achieve. But after the degraded sites become green and productive, those who do not benefit from leasehold forestry may feel resentment towards those who do. Conflicts can arise, and leaseholder groups tend to be in weaker positions since they are poor.

The outcome of such conflicts will depend upon the decision-making process in handing over community and leasehold forest. Ideally, the local community should agree upon which part of the forest will be deemed “community” forest, which part will be allocated to the poor, and which households qualify as “poor”.

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