20 YEARS AGO THIS WEEK

Nepal’s community forestry program has won international praise for dramatically restoring the country’s tree cover, from 29% in the 1990s to 45% today, representing more than 1 billion tons of carbon stock. Once barren hillsides have been replaced by dense forests rich in biodiversity and populated by wildlife. 

The biggest credit to this accomplishment goes to the 22,236 Community Forest User Groups (CFUGs) spread across the country, much like how local communities have had a major role in all of Nepal’s success stories.

Yet, back in 2001, the government proposed an amendment to the Forest Act 1997 that threatened to take away communities’ right to protect and manage community forests.

The 2015 Constitution then placed national forests under the authority of the provincial governments. But the Local Government Operation of 2017 gave back rural municipalities their right to protect, use, manage, monitor, regulate as well as formulate and implement laws. This was short-lived as the Forest Bill drafted in 2019 once again tried to curtail the rights of CFUGs.

After all this back and forth, our only suggestion to the government: don’t try to fix what ain’t broke.

Excerpts from the editorial of issue #34, 20 years ago this week:

It is difficult to find things that are going right. But one of the most visible success stories of the past ten years has been the spread of community forests throughout the midhills of Nepal. It is a success on such a grand scale that the increase in the chlorophyll content of the vegetation is now visible from outer space.

Kavre and Sindhupalchok are districts that pioneered community forestry and showed us all what could be achieved through local motivation, devolved decision-making, and transferring ownership and control of natural resources to the village level through true decentralisation and grassroots democracy. If there is one group of unsung heroes that deserve the next Right Livelihood Award, it will be the thousands of village chairmen, forestry user groups and women’s organisations that manage and protect woods across the land.

This national achievement is now threatened by a proposed amendment to the Forest Act 1997 that seeks to undo the 1993 Community Forestry law that made much of this success possible. Once more, our rulers have shown that they cannot see the forest for the trees. Once more they are ruining in one fell swoop what has been achieved by decades of hard work and commitment by villagers all over Nepal. Once more corrupt national level politicians with a bureaucracy in cahoots is equating forest with timber, and nothing else.

from Nepali Times https://ift.tt/3hujY1W
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