Community forestry as an approach to forest management has gained popularity in recent decades as a response to the failures of top-down, centralized forest policies. The shift from state-controlled forests to community forestry was aimed at achieving desired environmental and socio-economic outcomes in the forest management process. Community forestry is frequently posited as a promising forest management model for achieving ecological sustainability and community well-being. Although extensive literature exists that covers various aspects of community forestry, studies on the performance of community forestry programs in the face of unpredictable events such as climate change impacts and earthquakes are limited. In Nepal, for instance, community forestry programs have been implemented since the late 1970s and flourished after the adoption of the Forest Act of 1993. However, the impacts of these programs on the resilience of communities to various drivers of change have received little attention. To address these gaps, this dissertation employed a mixed methods approach in analyzing the impact of Nepal’s community forestry program on the general resilience of forest-dependent communities, as well as their specified resilience to the 2015 earthquake. Data for the qualitative component of the study were generated through the review of documents, as well as interviews with 27 purposively sampled key informants from two rural communities in the Gorkha district of Nepal, whereas quantitative data were generated through the administration of a survey questionnaire to 237 households who were selected using the systematic random sampling technique. Data were collected from November 2019 to March 2020.The results from the community level analysis revealed that the shift towards the community forestry program in both communities was triggered by the perception of ecological crises and facilitated by the existence of enabling policy conditions as well as the role of external forest organizations. The analysis of the impacts of the community forestry program on community resilience outcomes revealed variations across different forms of capital assets, with similarities and differences between the two communities. While natural capital, social capital, human capital were reported to have increased in both communities, the effect of community forestry on physical capital was found to be moderately positive. Regarding economic capital, the implementation of the community forestry program resulted in positive and negative outcomes on both communities, but the overall effect seemed to be moderately positive. Regarding specialized resilience outcomes, the community forestry program had a positive impact on community resilience to the 2015 earthquake. The community forestry program played various roles in community earthquake resilience, including enhanced access to timber for housing construction, and enhanced linking social capital for the mobilization of external resources. The results from the household level analysis showed that ethnicity and household’s prior involvement in forest organizations were significant predictors of household participation in the community forestry program but past household assets did not predict participation. Ethnicity and participation in the community forestry program were also the most important predictors of outcomes of the program, as measured by current levels of assets. Each of the past household assets and socio-demographic variables was a significant predictor of at least one of the current assets, but prior involvement in forest organizations did not predict any of the current assets or changes in assets. Regarding household resilience to the 2015 earthquake, household participation in the community forestry program also had a significant positive effect on two of the three dimensions of earthquake resilience, whereas past bridging capital and past physical capital each had a significant positive effect on the three earthquake resilience dimensions. Consistent with the community resilience framework, the results lend some support to the hypothesis that capital assets and institutions, coupled with the role of various community attributes, are important predictors of the process and outcomes of community resilience to drivers of change. Participation in community forestry programs provides an important mechanism for building general and specified resilience in forest-dependent communities. As global climate change policy has shifted towards community-based adaptation in recent decades, this study shows the potential for community forestry to serve as an entry point for global climate change policy through its contributions to community capacity for adaptation to various drivers of change.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:siu.edu/oai:opensiuc.lib.siu.edu:dissertations-3241 |
| Date | 01 August 2024 |
| Creators | Bhattarai, Mukesh |
| Publisher | OpenSIUC |
| Source Sets | Southern Illinois University Carbondale |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | Dissertations |
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