Purpose

Overall goal: Improved living conditions of people in seven districts in Nepal.

Overall purpose: Increased effectiveness of FUGs in managing community forestry areas on an equitable and sustainable basis.

Secondary objectives:
1. Hill communities meet their needs for tree products on a sustained yield basis.
2. Popular participation in decision making and the sharing of benefits (with special reference to full involvement of poor and women).
3. To enhance the capacity of the Department of Forests (DOF) to undertake community forestry.
4. To enhance the capacity of communities (user groups) in seven districts to manage selected areas of forest on an equitable and sustainable basis.
5. To support HMGN in the further development and implementation of its national community forestry policy.
6. To reduce forest degradation in seven districts in Eastern and Western Regions of Nepal.

Use of Sustainable Livelihoods Approaches

As a capacity building project, NUKCFP has focused on issues related to power relations, chiefly at the local level, by creating a more empowering environment in which local people can manage their own resources to increase their livelihood strategies.

The project was not designed as a livelihoods project, but since 1998 has been more explicitly engaged in livelihood analysis at a household and community level through action research based on a learning by doing approach.

On the basis of sample household and community surveys the project has clearly had a positive influence on some livelihood assets:

Social resources

• contribution to leadership development and enhanced social standing
• contribution to the development of FUGs as independent local institutions to manage community forests
• facilitating development and establishment of democratic and accountable operation of FUGs
• supporting FUG local networking and joint action
• contribution to the development of a community forestry national vision

Human resources

• development of skills and knowledge for forest management
• development of skills and knowledge for community organisation, leadership, participation
• development of skill and knowledge for community mobilisation at local level
• contribution to the development of skill and knowledge in participatory forest resource and organisational management for DoF staff and FUG members

Natural resources

• protection and regulation of community forests
• establishment of group nurseries
• enriched productive capacity and value of community forests

Financial resources

• establishment of FUG funds
• increasing value of FUG funds through income generating activities

Infrastructure resources

• improvement of education/health facilities in some FUGs
• development and improvement of rural access roads in some FUGs
• increased collective capacity and strength of FUG to invest in physical infrastructure

Project impact (change assessment) and livelihood analysis has been carried out using the SL framework adapted through reference to Fowler's work (1997) and a report by Shepherd and Gill (1999). This work has informed the design process for a follow on programme which will continue to emphasise the need to work at multi-level (local, district, national, cross-sectoral) to provide enabling environments for policy, and institutional change. The goal of the new programme (Nepal Livelihoods and Forestry Programme), which is due to start in early 2001 is: reduced vulnerability and improved livelihoods for poor rural people.

Print version of the Project Summary: Word.