Book Description

Sustainable forest governance is critical to a debate over how multi-faceted impacts of climate change can be addressed at the local community level. Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) is a financial incentive-based carbon emission reduction program of the United Nations (UN) which will likely change the ways community forests in many developing countries are accessed and used. In particular, the REDD program may reduce the access and use of forest products to poor communities who are heavily dependent on forests for their livelihoods. This paper aims to investigate whether and how the REDD program affects community forestry program in Nepal, particularly in relation to the livelihoods of forest dependent poor communities. It examines conceptual and policy aspects of REDD program in respect to Nepalese community forestry policy through the literature review, and also draws upon the current research in three community forestry cases. It then focuses on the analysis of impacts of the REDD program, viz.- a) access and use of community forests for poor communities, b) benefit and costs of REDD program to poor communities, and c) benefits (or costs) sharing mechanism (i.e. who gets what, when and how?). The paper identifies issues of REDD program in relation to community forestry and local livelihoods, particularly the livelihoods of the poorer groups. The paper provides a critique of the market driven, financial incentive-based REDD program to be not sympathetic to the decentralized forest governance. Despite community forestry has proven to be more equitable than the top-down centralized approach to forest governance, we argue that REDD seems to encourage the top-down approach, and therefore it seems to be anti-community forestry. Further, it does not really safeguard the interest and need of poor and disadvantaged communities who are directly dependent on forests. The paper concludes by underpinning the need to rethink forest governance in a changing climate with due consideration of persisting poverty in many developing countries.