Dil Khatri
After more than 40 years of successful implementation, Nepal’s community forestry is at the crossroad between a commercial production path driven by the concept of scientific forestry and subsistence utilization and livelihoods as envisioned by community-based resource management approach. The scientific forestry developed in the context of industrialized forestry in Western Europe, has travelled across the globe and has become a dominant ideology and approach of forest management. The forest management interventions in Nepal were initiated during 1970s with expert led and top-down afforestation activities. When the concept was introduced in Nepal’s community forestry since the early 2000s, it significantly reshaped the management priorities of community forests where historically local communities have been managing the forest primarily for subsistence livelihoods. Under scientific forestry, community forest management professional and expert knowledge bolstered technical and bureaucratic power among forest authorities, which in turn did not only underprivileged traditional local knowledge but also undermined local decision-making autonomy in community forestry. The lecture draws on my own reflection from hands on experience as a forestry professional (1997-2008) in the beginning of the Community Forestry era, later as a policy researcher (2010 onwards) and recently as a social science researcher. These diverse experiences allow me to critically reflect on the process through which scientific forestry (re)shaped community forestry management and local institutional, ecological and livelihood outcomes in rural communities in the mid-hill of Nepal. Based on emerging findings from my two ongoing research projects, I will draw evidence on the outcome of scientific forestry implementation over four decades or so.
In this lecture I will argue that the prevalence of scientific forestry concept and expert’s knowledge underprivileged local traditional knowledge and practices and prioritized commercially valuable products against local subsistence uses. Reports reveal that the community forest management plans were found not helping local communities to guide forest management, rather they are used as a bureaucratic tool to legitimize expert knowledge (Rutt et al. 20215). Further, the implementation of so called ‘scientific forest management’ scheme in community forestry since 2012 undermined local autonomy and participation in forest management as it demanded high level technical skills. Research also showed the emerging nexus of powerful actors shaping key decisions (see Khatri et al. 2022). Preliminary findings from my ongoing project on forest restoration show that the community forests in mountain areas are developed into close-to-monoculture pine patches or woodlots with limited ability to meet diverse local forest product needs (also see Poudyal et al. 2023). Findings from my other research revealed some negative externalities in terms of growing human-wildlife interactions in farming landscapes.
As I will demonstrate in the talk, the domination of scientific forestry ideas and expert’s knowledge has not only provided important challenges to community forestry governance in terms of increased bureaucratic control and undermining local autonomy, but it has also led to important ecological changes in the landscape. As a result, forests are becoming less beneficial to meet local livelihood needs. Hence, I argue, there is a need for revisiting community forest management which needs to reflect local knowledge and priorities. In short, we need to revisit the knowledge system that help shaping what a good forest is and for whom.