Community-based natural resource management in Nepal

Abstract

Nepal is known globally for its rich heritage of biological diversity and iconic community forestry model of community-based natural resource management. In this chapter we present the novel approach promulgated since the early 1980s that helped to overcome the common property resource management dilemma. Over the years, it has proliferated in a diversity of management regimes in the country and abroad giving rise to innovative positive outcomes with effective community protection and management of forests and other natural resources. It has now become established as a viable alternative position between the government and private management regimes. Community-based natural resoruce management is now viewed as a solution to many aspects of institutional dysfunction and conflict resolution. This has gradually escalated in its scope from subsistence to commercial livelihoods and from products-based to services-based solutions. In the simplest form Nepal has demonstrated that community consensus is a bond that can anchor and balance natural processes and human behavior under different sets of environmental constraints. It is not simply the numbers that matter but the laying of a strong institution foundation capable of giving rise to lasting outcomes, such as, sustainable rural livelihoods, natural resilience against climate shocks, and, culture of democratic good governance.