"Forests and people’s lives are interconnected,"" says Ghan Shyam Pandey, mayor of Tulsipur Sub-Metropolitan City in Nepal’s lowland valleys. "The community has a historical and cultural attachment with the forest area."
This is true now more than ever thanks to the work of thousands of community forestry users groups (CFUGs) across the country.
Starting in 1978, the government encouraged community involvement in forestry management. The 1993 Forest Act in particular laid the foundation for turning management of 35 percent of Nepal’s forest areas to CFUGs. “These are the largest civil society organizations in the country,” says Netra Sharma, a Natural Resources Management Program specialist with USAID’s Mission in Nepal.
USAID and other donors have supported them from the start.
In the early years, that support focused on conservation and reforestation activities, essentially trying to stop the bleeding of unsustainable harvesting. Later, USAID and others provided management training for members and officers, passing along leadership and communication skills so each group could be more effective. Now the groups’ interests are shifting toward conservation and sustainable resource harvesting in each forest, capitalizing on a trade in carbon sequestration credits, and promoting ecotourism.
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