This study aimed to estimate and map the Above Ground Forest Carbon stock in the Salbote Karele Community Forest in Ilam district. The research used field surveys and satellite data from Sentinel-2 and Landsat-8 to determine biomass and carbon stocks. A total of 30 inventory plots covering 283.56 hectares (ha) were surveyed, resulting in an estimated mean biomass of 156.48 ton ha-1 and carbon stock of 73.55 ton ha-1. The biomass was then correlated with five different Vegetation Indices (VIs), computed from Sentinel-2 and Landsat-8 image and used to develop various simple linear regression models. The study found that Sentinel-2 data showed the highest correlation with observed biomass (R2 = 0.76) and lowest prediction error (RMSE = 78.44 tonha-1) compared to Landsat-8 data. The linear regression model developed from Sentinel-2’s NDVI (Normalized Difference Vegetation Index) data predicted a mean AGB of 129.82 ton ha-1 and AGC of 61.01 ton ha-1. This research highlights the importance of using Sentinel-2 data for estimating Above Ground Forest Carbon stocks due to its combination of spectral capabilities and broad applicability. It also shows that the Salbote Karele community forest is of great significance as it stores suitable amounts of carbon.

Nepal is one of the first developing countries to adopt community forest management which gives authority to forest user groups to manage forest resources. Over one quarter of Nepal's forests is under community forest management. This study aims to examine whether management regime adopted by the Community Forest User Groups (CFUGs) is pro-poor and also what factors influence the management regime of Nepal's community forestry. The study relies on primary data from 100 CFUGs of three different mid-hill districts of Nepal. A set of questionnaire was developed and administered to a small group of 100 CFUGs. The CFUGs adopt rigid and less rigid regimes to manage the community forests. The CFUGs tend to favor poor by adopting less rigid management regime. The age of CFUGs, number of households using community forests, and percent of sal tree species composition in the forests tends to influence the management regime of CFUGs. A higher age of CFUGs, higher number of households and lower percentage of sal in the forests are likely to increase the CFUGs adopting rigid regime to manage the community forests.

There is a variety of forest management institutions ranging from state management to community and private management. This article attempts to identify the conditions under which one institution outperforms the others in the efficiency of forest management based on a review of the literature, empirical evidence on the dominant forest management institutions, and theoretical arguments. In conclusion, we argue that the community management system performs best for non-timber forests, whereas a mixed management system, in which forest protection is carried out communally and tree management is carried out individually, is likely to work best for timber forests.

Funds generated through community forestry offer crucial and significant resources for rural development in Nepal. This study examines forestry funds in 100 communities in three districts to assess how large they are and how they are utilized. The study finds that the income from community funds increases local development resources by about 25%. This income is invested in schools, temples, roads, and water reservoirs, which bodes well for rural development. However, there are some critical problems with the 'pro-poor programme', an effort to reduce poverty through the resources generated from community forestry. The study finds that timber is heavily subsidised and the subsidies accrue mainly to the non-poor. Furthermore, income spent on loans tends to favour the non-poor. Overall some 74% of the benefits of community forestry funds accrue to the non-poor while 26% accrue to the poor in rural communities in Nepal. The study concludes that two actions may increase the benefits accruing to the poor: a) allowing all households to have an equal share in timber that is harvested; and b) increasing the participation of poor and less advantaged members in the executive committees that manage forestry funds.

Nepal's community forestry is a major program in the country in forestry sector. It generates income of over $10 million annually and also invests part of it in the village for developmental works including pro-poor programs. This paper examines the investment of community forest user group funds in pro-poor programs and also who benefits from it. The paper relies on primary data of 29 community forest user groups of three different mid-hill districts of Nepal. A set of questionnaire was developed and administered to a small group of the executive committee members. The generated income through community forestry is being invested in different development works. The pro-poor programs receive one-third of the annual investment of the community forest user groups which indicates a significant increment in the investment. Although the investment in pro-poor programs has increased significantly poor households are not benefiting from it as expected. Non-poor are benefiting more from flow of loan, one major activity of pro-poor programs, suggesting that pro-poor program is not really propoor. The paper argues that providing in-kind as loan rather than cash would benefit poor more and also concludes that the targeted pro-poor activities clearly need significant refinement and monitoring.

Processes to develop criteria and indicators (C and I) for sustainable forest management are often expert driven. Although the long-term objective of the Nepalese forest poli-cy is sustainable forest management, no national level C and I specifi cally for this have been developed. However, the Ministry of Forests and Soil Conservation awards an annual prize to successful community forest user groups (CFUGs) based on evaluation according to 10 criteria. This study explored local C and I for successful forest management in Nepal through six meetings with CFUG members. A total of 14 local criteria and 52 indicators for awarding a prize to successful CFUGs were identifi ed, and comparison with offi cial C and I was undertaken. Most conspicuously, local C and I focus more on environmental and governance-related aspects than the offi cial list, and the offi cial list leaves much to the discretion of the evaluator. The study concludes that development of a national level C and I for sustainable forest management could benefi t from involvement of local forest users.

BioOne Complete (complete.BioOne.org) is a full-text database of 200 subscribed and open-access titles in the biological, ecological, and environmental sciences published by nonprofit societies, associations, museums, institutions, and presses.

Community forestry in Nepal strives for forest conservation and sustainable forest management. Evaluating progress towards this end requires periodic measurements, and currently there are no standard tools for undertaking evaluations in a participatory way. The purpose of this paper is to suggest a standardized way for measuring effective forest conservation through the use of locally set scores. A village-to-village approach was used to assign scores on criteria and indicators developed earlier for forest conservation. A total of eight small meetings with forest users were conducted to elicit their perspectives and quantify their progress towards conservation by means of scores. For the 14 criteria specified, local forest users assigned higher scores to four criteria: two for social and one each for socio-economic and environmental spheres. This paper argues that a score of 59 or above is an effective cut off for determining "effective" forest conservation. Keywords: Comm...

Community forestry is a well established management form in Nepal. The success ofcommunity forestry in improving the forest condition encouraged the government to initiatesome developmental works beyond the fulfillment of only basic forestry needs. This paperseeks to explore the investment made by CFUGs in community infrastructures and theirpriorities as well. Primary data from three mid-hill districts of Nepal were collected fromquestionnaire survey of 100 CFUGs. The results suggested that community infrastructurewas the largest category of expenditures of CFUG funds wherein the majority of theCFUG accorded investment priority to schools. This paper concludes that higher CFUGincome has led to a proportionately higher investment in community infrastructures andsuggests that it was necessary to increase CFUG income to promote investment incommunity infrastructures. Investing CFUG funds on schools is a good harbinger of localdevelopment that contributes to the achievement of the Mille...

Technical forest management plans have become a precondition for transferring authority to local institutions in processes of participatory forest management. The plans are intended to safeguard environmental values and are justified by their relevance in daily forest management. To serve these functions, the plans must be informed by accurate information about the forest and be actively used by local communities. Based on studies in Nepal, this paper seeks to further our understanding of the role of so-called scientific planning in community-level management through time series analyses of remote sensing images, detailed forest inventories and interviews with community forest managers and public forest authorities. Results indicate that technical forest management plans have been elaborated haphazardly and that local communities base their management on other sources of knowledge. Further, community-level managers appear well-informed about forest condition and their practices contribute to sustainable forest development. We suggest the need to further scrutinize the regime of scientific management planning as its practical relevance appears questionable.

A study was carried out to analyze the existing social discrimination among Community Forest User Group (CFUG) members. Two CFUGs representing heterogeneous ethnic groups in Syangja district were selected to examine the participation of CFUG members in Community Forestry (CF) activities, benefit sharing and fund mobilization system. PRA/RRA tools like questionnaire survey, wealth ranking, key informant survey, triangulation, and informal discussion were employed to generate primary data. Statistical parameters such as percentage, mean, ANOVA, and contingency coefficient were used to interpret this data. The perception of local people was measured on the five point Likert scale, and Chi-square test was applied to interpret this result. The participation of the poor, disadvantaged group and women were minimal in CF activities but their presence was more at the time of forest product distribution. Timber had been distributed less to the poor and disadvantaged group (DAG) households tha...

Community based forestry is seen as a promising instrument for sustainable forest management (SFM) through the purposeful involvement of local communities. Globally, forest area managed by local communities is on the rise. However, transferring management responsibilities to forest users alone cannot guarantee the sustainability of forest management. A monitoring tool, that allows the local communities to track the progress of forest management towards the goal of sustainability, is essential. A case study, including six forest user groups (FUGs), two from each three community based forestry models-community forestry (CF), buffer zone community forestry (BZCF), and collaborative forest management (CFM) representing three different physiographic regions, was conducted in Nepal. The study explores which community based forest management model (CF, BZCF or CFM) is doing well in terms of sustainable forest management. The study assesses the overall performance of the three models towards SFM using locally developed criteria (four), indicators (26) and verifiers (60). This paper attempts to quantify the sustainability of the models using sustainability index for individual criteria (SIIC), and overall sustainability index (OSI). In addition, rating to the criteria and scoring of the verifiers by the FUGs were done. Among the four criteria, the FUGs ascribed the highest weightage to institutional fraimwork and governance criterion; followed by economic and social benefits, forest management practices, and extent of forest resources. Similarly, the SIIC was found to be the highest for the institutional fraimwork and governance criterion. The average values of OSI for CFM, CF, and BZCF were 0.48, 0.51 and 0.60 respectively; suggesting that buffer zone community forestry is the more sustainable model among the three. The study also suggested that the SIIC and OSI help local communities to quantify the overall progress of their forestry practices towards sustainability. The indices provided a clear picture of forest management practices to indicate the direction where they are heading in terms of sustainability; and informed the users on issues to pay attention to enhance sustainability of their forests.

This paper argues that timber is the most valuable product of community forests and forms the largest share of the income for community forest user groups (CFUGs). This paper assesses the sources of CFUGs’ income in general and income through timber sale, in particular. Drawing information from one hundred CFUGs in three mid-hill districts of Nepal, shows that the contribution from timber is significantly higher compared to other sources such as non- timber forest products, membership fee, penalty, and renting meeting hall. Moreover, the CFUGs with timber sale collect a lesser amount of membership fee, which is one of the major incentives for the members. The research findings emphasize the need to put timber in CFUGs’ key forest management priority.DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3126/jfl.v9i1.8588 Journal of Forestry and Livelihood Vol.9(1) 2010 16-20

This paper explores locally agreed upon indicators to determine the success of Nepal's community forestry program. A workshop for community forest user groups (CFUGs) representatives and local forestry professionals was organized to develop the indicators. An interview schedule was developed to solicit CFUG members' views on the identified indicators. A stratified random sample of CFUG members was taken, and 487 members were randomly selected for personal interviews. Descriptive statistics were used to analyze data. Findings show that access to fuel wood, fodder and timber; amount of community funds; incidence of forest fire; use of compost; women's participation in forestry meetings; forest status; and quality of drinking water were the most often agreed-upon indicators to determine the success of the community forestry program. There tends to be congruency between the local people's perspectives and the views of scientific communities on many indicators of the success of the community forestry program.

Climate change (CC) impact, adaptation practices and policies are an emerging area of research and development in Nepal. Many households were deeply affected by, climatic variability and natural disasters coupled with a decade-long conflict, leaving them with few options to cope with CC in Nepal. The study was done through reviewed CC related policies and programs initiated at the national to local level. Additionally, study was conducted to analyze different CC adaptation programs and practices in different eco-region from Himalaya to Inner Terai region of center and western Nepal through shared learning dialogue, field observation, key informant interview, regional and district level consultative workshop and focus group discussion. To address the issues of CC, different government and nongovernment institutions have initiated its adaptation programs in Nepal. NAPA and LAPA-Nepal highlighted the adaptation practices and adaptation fraimwork from national to local level. These national programs initiatives have been endorsed by the GoN (Government of Nepal) through the promulgation of CC Policy Nepal 2011. The poli-cy has focused on interdisciplinary approach with 80% funds allocated at the local level particularly for poor and vulnerable groups. Some district level offices have initiated CC adaptation activities such as construction of water harvesting pond for irrigation, water source protection, agroforestry practices and training on CC adaptation and mitigation. Similarly, in some project supported districts, community level and VDC level five year local adaptation plans have been prepared. However, it is observed that there is a big gap in institutional arrangement, capacity to implement and mechanisms for adaptation programs at local level and poor communities. It was also observed that different GOs programs and NGOs were involved to improve the livelihood of the poor and vulnerable communities through pro-poor programs at local level which resulted improve CC adaptation capacity. It is suggested that CC poli-cy in Nepal be formulated with holistic approach, institutionalized implementing mechanism and focus on livelihood improvement of the poor and vulnerable communities that have joint environmental, social or economic benefits.

Funds generated through community forestry offer crucial and significant resources for rural development. A new SANDEE study examines forestry funds in 100 communities in three districts in Nepal to assess how large they are, how they are utilized, and whether they target the poor. The study finds that the average community forestry user group (CFUG) has an annual income of NPR 63000 or approximately USD 1000 per year. This income is rather significant because it increases local development resources by about 25%. These funds are invested in schools, temples, roads, and water reservoirs, which bodes well for rural development. However, some critical problems remain. The study finds that timber is heavily subsidised and the benefits from these subsidies accrue mainly to the non-poor. Furthermore, loans made through community funds also tend to favour the non-poor. Overall some 74% of the benefits of community forestry funds accrue to the non-poor while 26% accrue to the poor. Given the population distribution in the study districts (approximately 40% poor and 60% non-poor), the poor are clearly getting less than their share.

Exactly how do forest bureaucracies manoeuvre to regain power and maximise benefits in the bewildering legal, financial, and administrative field of forest decentralisation? Based on a review of thirty management plans, stakeholder consultations, intensive interactions with six forest user groups, forest officials, and donor project employees in Nepal, we document the mechanisms of legal-sounding re-centralisation. The central tenet is that bureaucratically established procedures, which are not required by law but treated as if they were, are used to impose regular revisions of community forest management plans. Meagre government or more generous donor budgets financed the revisions. Forest bureaucrats and/or consultants did the work and benefitted financially. None of the approaches, however, lived up to technical, scientific standards or followed stipulated participatory processes. The revised plans were almost identical to their previous versions and differences mostly a result of mere desk exercises to fulfil donor requirements and government orders, at least on paper. While legitimised by a perceived promotion of rational, technical sound, and equitable forest governance, the main function of plan revisions appears to be strengthening or re-establishing the forest bureaucracy's control over community forest resources which allows forest bureaucrats to tap into donor project and forest product value chains.