Part I: Nepal’s Community Forest

Nepal as a country has survived due to its natural fortification of mountains and even more through the malaria-infected forest in the south. 

After the 1934 earthquake, there was the emergence of rampant smuggling of timber as a result forest was destroyed, however, the forest in the Terai would remain protected by Malaria. 

The story of malarial-infected plains changed in 1954 when United States aid helped in eliminating malaria allowing settlers from around the region to cut down the forest and develop human settlement.  

Nepal rapidly lost forest both for its timber and clearing forest patches to repurpose that land for commercial usage. However, Nepal is rather known today for its regeneration of forests and is renowned for its community forest.

The story of Community Forest started in 1962 when Nil Prasad Bhandari was elected as Pradhanpacha (the chairperson of the village) and worked on various ideas to protect the forest.  

On March 11, 1973, Bhandari organized a meeting that decided that the village would hold the responsibility for the management of the forest and help it regenerate trees for 10 years. The government would need to get villagers' permission before numbering and cutting down trees.  

The decision was forwarded to the then-District Forest Officer of Sindhupalchowk Tej Bahadur Singh Mahat and the Ministry of Forest. The village received the authority to manage the forest for a trial period of two years on August 9, 1973.

On October 28, 1973, a meeting of Village Panchayat formed a 103-member forest conservation promotion and development committee in the presence of Jogmehar Shrestha, the Forest Minister. 

In that effort, villagers planted tree saplings on the barren hills of Thokarpa during March and April 1974 after the government handed over the forest. 

The entire plan was successful and the forest was later named Ratuwapati Bajathalo Community Forest. The government declared August 9 as National Day for Community Forest. 

The government declared Thokarpa as the birthplace of community forest in 2016 and recognized the contribution of Nil Prasad Bhandari in the area of Community Forest. There are now 22,200 community forest groups across the country around 14 million members. 

The concept of Community Forestry had Australian support since 1966 which was later named as Nepal-Australia Forestry Project (NAFP). This has been described as Australia’s longest-running aid investment. 

The Forest Law 1993 of Nepal is considered one of the strongest forest legislation to devolve power to local communities. The same spirit continues with the Forest Act 2019.

By 2017, 1.8 million hectares of forest in Nepal were handed over to 19,361 Community Forest User Groups creating direct engagement of 45% of the population in Nepal. In a country where forest covers 45% of land area and has 500 commercially tradable products with 150 species already in trade. This will be discussed in the second part of the paper.

However, only a fraction of community forests are under active management. Nepal spends billions to import timber because domestic forests are under-utilized. 

Forest law is undermined by rules, rules by working procedures, working procedures by written notices, and written notices by oral instructions- creating multi-layer chaos.

The final post will discuss the shortcomings of the community forest.