New forestry strategy
By: Dr. Jagadish C Baral
There has been a strategic gap in Forestry Policy since 2011 when the tenure of the policy terminated. Recently, I managed to go through a draft version of newly drawn Forest Sector Strategy (FSS) meant towards guiding the forestry sector for the next ten years.
The strategy has envisioned creating 1.2 million forest-based jobs. This is definitely a reason for me to cherish as it might contribute to reducing the outflow of people for employment thereby also contributing to national prosperity. Increasing the forest coverage and enhancing biodiversity through participative means are the main emphasis of the FSS. It intends to stabilize forest cover to 40 percent from current level of 39.6 percent.
Likewise, the forest under intensive forest management is aimed at 50 percent in the Tarai and 25 percent in the hills, compared to current gross figure that is much below one percent. Growth in area under private forest is sought to be 200,000 hectare compared to current figure at 55,000 hectare. Large scale increase has been sought in community forestry, collaborative forestry and leasehold forestry. Huge increase in number of flagship species such as rhino and tiger and the improvement of watershed conditions are other notable examples of the overall FSS targets. While the set milestones look encouraging, I observe several lacunae at the same time.
Despite having drawn stimulating vision, goal and an exhaustive set of activities, a systematic framework regarding the implementation of activities for achievement of the goal is lacking. Activities may be completed but not necessarily leading to achievement of goals. The document looks more like a sort of ‘to do list’, lacking strategic directions to overcome the impending problems. For instance, while it acknowledges several problems in Collaborative Forest Management in the Tarai (lack of effectiveness and inclusion) and High-Hills (lack of appropriate form of tenure and forest governance), it does not spell out how these problems should be overcome.
Likewise, while it acknowledges the fact that the existing and supposedly comprehensive strategies such as ‘Gender and Social Inclusion strategy’ and ‘human resources development strategy’ has remained unimplemented, it fails to provide succinct analysis of why this happened and how to overcome this. FSS is replete with several prescriptive bullets without much guidance on how they could be actually implemented. Besides, no specific mechanism is conceived to oversee the FSS execution with clear implications on implementation flaw. There is no specific direction as to how the traditional mindset of the actors both in the government and outside could be addressed which is actually the crux for transformative change.
Condition of forest governance in Nepal largely reflects on its physiography, which the FSS has not really acknowledged. For instance, the forests in the Mid-Hills are doing well under Community Forestry (CF) regime at least in terms of forest recuperation. It requires ‘fine tuning’ with more intensive management followed by utilization of the financial benefits for uplifting the conditions of the poor in particular. This is not quite the case in the Tarai/Chure and High-Hills where even a ‘crude tuning’ is lacking and is reeling under tenure and governance uncertainty.
The contemporary Collaborative Forest Management (CFM) system in the Tarai lacks an effective and equitable mechanism by which forest management could take place with participation of wider stakeholders including the distance users in the south. The High-Hill forests, on the other hand, are yet to find right type of mechanism to govern those resources, let alone the question of those being managed in a right way. FSS could have decided to put problems and opportunities of each of these broad physiographic regions under close scrutiny as a basis for identifying required strategic directions.
Many targets, though encouraging, are dubious. For example, the FSS fails to explain why it aspires for a 40 percent area of the country under forests: why not for instance 39.9 percent or 40.1 percent? Likewise, nearly fivefold increase in forests under community management and twofold increase of the same under leasehold forests may be unrealistic given the past performance records and lack of adequate type of strategies to commission it.
The FSS would like to minimize the direct role of the government by allocating all forest lands in the country to be managed through a number of tenure types such as Community Forestry, Collaborative Forestry, and Leasehold Forestry. This supposedly good move is likely to have a setback due to the very contestable nature of forestry user rights. FSS envisages preparing District Forestry Sector Plan (DFSP) to each district in consultation with what has been called District Forest Coordination Committee (DFCC). The plan would segregate all forests into one or other management regime. Only the residual areas unclaimed for any purpose will be under the government tenure to be controlled by District Forest Offices (DFO).
This seemingly people-centric move may have serious repercussions owing mainly to the contestable nature of forest use rights which are dynamic and liable to change over time. This is truer more in the Tarai and High-Hills where the user rights are far from being fully evolved compared to the Mid-Hills where those are at much advanced stage of evolution. Malaria infestation of the past may be one of the reasons why the Tarai witnessed problem in user right evolution.
In the High Hills, on the other hand, the sizes of forest resources till date are too big for people to worry about contesting for rights. In this backdrop the idea of choosing the management regimes in advance may block the slowly evolving user rights. A quick-fix idea of drawing DFSP through a snap shot consultancy work may easily overlook the aspiration of the communities particularly in the Tarai where the people’s awareness level is too low owing to number of factors including their marginalization. The possible outcome may be social exclusion that may culminate into severe and intractable conflict. Thus, totally freeing the DFO machinery from governing the forest resource may not really produce the intended outcome.
Published on Republica (2014-09-10)
http://www.myrepublica.com/portal/index.php?action=news_details&news_id=82787
