Adaptive collaborative management of community forests in Asia ...

Chapter 3: Adaptiveness and Collaboration in Community Forestry in Nepal • 79
Box 3-5. Empowerment of one marginalised woman
In Bamdibhir CFUG, plans for a bamboo craft enterprise had emerged from
the participatory self-monitoring and planning. The enterprise’s explicit goal
was the ‘economic upliftment’ of marginalised CFUG members, especially
women. After the bamboo craft training course, CFUG committee members
and sponsoring NGO representatives selected five trainees to participate as
paid craft-making staff, based on the goals of the enterprise and a passing
grade in the bamboo training course. The recommended list of paid craft
makers was accepted by most participants and was in the final approval stage
when one woman—‘Ms B’ (name changed to respect her privacy)—spoke
out. A lower-caste woman and economically very poor, she previously would
not have had much leverage—and likely not the confidence—to influence
CFUG decision-making. In this case, however, by explicitly referring the group
to the monitoring-based decisions and tools, she was able to make her point.
Ms B pointed out that the selection of trainees did not meet the agreedupon
goal and criteria of the bamboo craft enterprise, which was to provide
an opportunity to marginalised members, especially women. She cited the
CFUG’s own wealth analysis, which showed that she, being ‘very poor’, fell into
the target group better than the trainees who were classified as ‘lower middle’
and ‘poor’. Furthermore, she had received a B grade in the course. On the basis
of her arguments and evidence, the committee and the NGO representatives
reconsidered the decision and appointed Ms B as a paid employee in the
bamboo craft enterprises. (McDougall et al. 2007)
It is especially notable that the changes in human capital involved the
‘spreading’ of knowledge throughout the CFUG members generally,
including women and other marginalised users, not only knowledge
acquisition by executive committee members. We attribute this spreading
of human capital development to the leadership assumed by tole committees
and action groups and also to the increasing access to training and other
opportunities for women and the poor.
Natural and financial capital: generating, sustaining and distributing
benefits
Because long-term changes in natural and financial capital could not be
observed during the project period, our assessment focused on the factors
that influence natural and financial capital generation and access to them
rather than on changes in the resources themselves. We highlight here
two broad trends—increased efforts to generate forest product benefits