Does Forest Certification Improve Socio-Economic and Governance Issues? A Case of Community Forestry from Nepal

Abstract

Forest certification has emerged as a market-based solution to improve forest management, and also expected that it can contribute in resource governance and poverty reduction. Nepal's community forestry is an exemplary participatory forest management system and a total of 18,960 community forest user groups (CFUGs) are managing 1.79 million hectares of national forest land. Selecting two CFUG, one each from Central and Far-Western Nepal, and using longitudinal method, the study analysed the impacts that the forest certification has brought in constitutions, operational plans, minutes and their record keeping systems. Moreover, the implementation status of those changes in regard to decision making, governance, institutional development and livelihood enhancement has been studied. Three time series (2003, 2008 and 2016) data were used to assess change in socio-economy and governance through forest certification. The results indicated that the certification has played an important role for local value addition of non-timber forest products, income and employment generation, and rural poverty reduction. It has also positive impacts in sustainable resource management through improved governance. The signs of major positive changes in resource management were but not limited to improved collection practices, up-to-date record keeping, and maintaining transparency of all process and methods. This has also resulted improvement in forest management and local enterprises promotion. The study suggests that the forest certification in community managed forests can be beneficial to improve natural resource governance, ultimately contributing in reducing poverty.