Two days workshop on the issues identification to CFM at regional level

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Date: 24th and 25th September, 2017

The LSC is implementing Community Empowerment through Democratic NRM program for 3 years from March 2016 to February 2019. In association with Danish Forestry Extensions (DFE) and Brandbjerg Hojskole (BH) with the support from CISU. Its main objective is to strengthened independent civil society partners with organizational, technical, and advocacy capacity for responsible NRM, creating a vibrant synergy among each other.

Government of Nepal is formulating new federal forestry act and revising the CFM guidelines. The cabinet has tabled the bill in parliament to handover the national forest to local government. With the resolution of this bill, the traditional users’ far from the churia forest will be marginalized from access and control over CFM and national forest area.  This is right time to provide forest users’ opinion and feedback to the government for contextual amendment of CFM guide line as federal structure.  

In this context, Two days regional workshop was organized at LSC on “Collaborative Forest Management in federalism: Opportunities, Challenges and Solutions” with following objectives

Objectives:

The main objective is to identify issues of collaborative Forest management in relation to VDCs and Districts. The participants will have good learning and sharing about the Collaborative forest management and its benefit.

  • Good learning and sharing about Collaborative Forest Management
  • Challenges in respect to present federal structure
  • Collaborative Forest management’s opportunities, challenges and problems according to present federal system.
  • Advocacy on issues of collaborative forest management of national level.

Activities:

The task will be performed at Life school Center premises, Janakpur and the works are enlisted below:

  • The trainer will use different publications and reports, other secondary data information, other research documents, reports of stakeholders and coordinate with concerned line agencies and consultant.
  • The trainer developed a framework of the Collaborative Forest Management’s issue according to the present federal system and the major issue was also highlighted.
  • The present condition of CFMG and their weakness and strength were enlisted.
  • The consultant facilitated interaction workshop sharing the framework for collecting the information, comments and suggestions.
  • Action plan was prepared for the works going to be done in the future.
  • Report preparation and sharing

Some situational questions were asked to be done in group works which are enlisted below:

  • Ownership of Collaborative Forest Management resources.
  • Change in benefit sharing
  • Sharing of royalty obtained from the forest products.
  • Carbon trading, biodiversity
  • Management responsibilities of stakeholders
  • Program implementation

Three groups were made and they have the following type of feedback:

Group – Ist

  • If the ownership will be in regional level, everyone can utilize the natural resources.
  • Ecosystem is for everyone.
  • Employment opportunities will be created in local levels from carbon trading and measurement.
  • Water table gets lowered.
  • Grass root level demand supply will be maintained
  • Development of local level will be done
  • Tourism industry will also be highlighted.
  • Wastage of water will be minimized and it will be utilized in agriculture sector.

Group – 2nd

  • Ownership of the CFM should be kept under regional level.
  • Collaborative Forest Management Group Formation orders should be given by regional government
  • Division office of Forest should be kept in different regions
  • Profit earned by the sale of forest product should be kept in different bank account.
  • Guidelines

Group – 3rd

  • Right on Collaborative Forest is the inborn right of the people so it should not be collapsed.
  • Collaborative Forest as well as community forest should be kept under the right of regional government.
  • Division Forest Office should be made instead of Municipal Forest office and VDC forest office.
  • For this protest should be done from local people under the leadership of ACOFUN and coordination from NESTA and other forest technicians.

Line agencies from different districts were also invited and they had the following suggestions and opinion towards the workshop.

Ashok kumar Jha, District Forest Officer, DFO, Janakpur – In present federal system, Forest is the most affected sector. Especially CFM should be under the national government not the local government. Natural resource should not be bounded under boundary. Terai people will be mostly affected if the national forest goes under local government.

Ram Ashish Yadav, News reporter, Janakpur – Higher priority in Natural resources should be given to higher number population. Revolt should be done not street protest but also at policy level. He also added a proverb “ Trying is the key to success” that means in this context he asked the collaborative Forest management group to be standby for their rights which is going to be ruined by the government.

Suresh Sharma, Assistant Forest Officer, Janakpur – If the collaborative Forest management goes in the hand of local government, local people’s access will be totally lost. Joint action should be taken from local people, different institutions and line agencies. Local government will have total control of the forest so people far away from forest have no rights on forest so they will only try to ruin the forest and natural resources and equity of distribution of resources will be lost. Environmental resources are for everyone so it should be utilized by everyone and upstream people should protect and downstream people should get the benefit.

Chandeshwor Sharma, Assistant Forest officer, janakpur – Collaborative Forest management is going to be handover to local government which will have negative impact on CFM. CFM was formed to preserve the rights of both accessible and non accessible users. But when it goes under local government it will be only utilized by the same place people that means there will be no forest of the right of terai people because there is very less or in average no forest in terai.

Babita Chaudhary, Vice President, and ACCOFUN – CFM should not be handover to local level. For this we are ready to revolt and street procession should be carried out for the CFM rights. CFM should be handover to regional level not in local level. This is against the law if this policy will be applied Collaborative Forest Management is the main to be affected. Leadership should be taken by ACOFUN and the institutions working in this field should also be included in this revolt and the policy level revolt should also be done.

Venue: Life School Center, Harsar

Date: 24th and 25th September, 2017

Participants: 37

Collaborative Forest Management group chairman (CWMG):  

      Line agencies: 5 (4- DFO, Dhanusha, 2-DFO, Mahottari, 1- DFO, Sarlahi

LSC staffs: 5

Consultant: 1

 Output:

The following results were concluded from the 2 days regional workshop on collaborative forest management- Possibilities, challenges and solutions. After long discussion some conclusions were drawn which will be followed by collaborative forest management group are enlisted below:

  • According to the constitution of Nepal (Forest Law, 2059), national forest is directly under Nepal government. But according to recent decision of cabinet, National Forest is kept under the right of local government. This proves that government totally ignores Collaborative Forest management’s methodology. So this was the great matter of discussion because this proves that collaborative forest management will have no future in the upcoming days. This decision was passed from cabinet but this is against the present constitution which should be invalid very soon. People are unknown about this decision so after the workshop the group agreed to follow awareness and also extension for this should be done in local level. Wide discussion should be done for this and not only Life School Center likewise other institutions should be involved in this advocacy. Street protest will also be done in this context if needed.
  • Collaborative Forest management group’s representative from Parsa to Dhanusha district came together in this workshop and they shared the condition of their forest. Their strength and weakness were considered during this workshop and weakness will be tried to overcome. Strengths of some Collaborative Forest Management group were shared and other groups were asked to apply the same technique.
  • At last action plan were made by the group and they will apply from their own level.

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