The Deliberative Scientist: Integrating Science and Politics in Forest Resource Governance in Nepal

Abstract

Viewing resource management essentially through a biophysical lens hasprovided too restricted a perspective for understanding complexpolitical processes surrounding forest management. The case of communityforestry in Nepal demonstrates a range of experiences of complexpolitical processes, including conflicts and collaboration, especiallybetween technical forest officials and local forest dependent people.Despite innovative legislative and institutional frameworks already inplace, community forestry in Nepal still experiences the effects oftechno-bureaucratic control. Such control is manifested in the entirerange of processes related to planning, management, and monitoring offorestry activities. To understand this situation, we apply theconceptual lens of deliberative governance, that is, governance whosearrangements have been devised from both scientific and local knowledge.This chapter provides practical examples to offer insights into theapplication of deliberative governance in forestry practices. Weidentify how different aspects of managerialist, techno-bureaucraticdomination (legitimated by principles of positivist science) aredeliberatively challenged by local people, civil society activists, andaction researchers to improve governance practices. We also identifysituations and deliberative processes through which forest managersthemselves begin to realize the limits of an antideliberative scientificapproach, and apply more reflexive and deliberative approaches toknowledge and decision-making in forest management. In doing so, weeschew taking an absolute position for or against indigenous knowledgeor scientific enterprise, but seek to demonstrate that neithertechnocratic prescription nor reliance on local knowledge alone isadequate for sustainable management of forests. What is needed, asFischer (1998) argues, is a deliberative engagement between the claimsto knowledge by both scientists and citizens. In our experience, thisdeliberative process provided a foundation for less constraineddialogue, greater collaboration, and mutual learning in the direction ofmore evidence-based decision-making. This approach is however not freefrom challenges related to power and techno-bureaucratic control.