Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation

interface between the state and the
communities with respect to forests.
Forest governance in Terai
As mentioned earlier, the forests in the
Terai region of Nepal would likely be attractive
to carbon investors due to the nature of the
forests and the prevalence of deforestation.
However, in order for these forests to be
brought under a REDD mechanism, serious
improvements in forest governance would be
necessary. The twenty Terai districts have
almost 50% of Nepal’s population and a
coverage of approximately 19.7% of the total
forests of the country. However, according to
the CFUG database of the DOF, a total of
169,549 ha, only 2.9% of the country’s 5.828
mill ha of forests, is handed over to
communities in the Terai. There are only 1341
CFUGs covering 286,620 households (DOF,
2009; Shrestha and Bampton, 2006). A large
percentage of forests are under government
control with no effective management and
governance practice. The major governance
issues that would need to be addressed in Terai
are: a) lack of appropriate policy strategy and
strong community based institutions and civil
society advocacy organizations; b) weak law
enforcement mechanism, non compliance of
existing legislation and verdict of the court to
handover forests to CFUGs; c) corruption,
malpractices, forest encroachment under the
protection of powerful political elites; and d)
political instability and conflict among
communities in the choice of appropriate
community based institutions (such as conflict
between community vs. collaborative forests)
and forest management regimes (public,
private or community).
1.1.2. Opportunities Successful
community forestry programme, with
functioning CFUGs
Nepal’s principle opportunity in
implementing mitigation schemes in a way
that rural communities can benefit is its
successful community forestry programme.
In Nepal, there are over 14,300 community
forestry groups (CFUGs) managing more
than one million ha of forest in a sustainable
way. The CFUGs have reversed past trends
of deforestation, and have enhanced a
number of livelihood assets. In a number of
innovative cases (see NSCFP 2007a), they
have created provisions to directly benefit the
poor and excluded groups. If CFUGs were
able to access rewards for carbon offsets, it
would represent a significant contribution to
the income of community groups and to the
sustainability of the community forestry
programme in Nepal. Under the community
forestry programme, communities already
manage their forests in a very conservative
way, generally harvesting only half of what
would be allowed according to sustainable
forest management guidelines. Thus
conserving forests, and their carbon, is
already in practice. If REDD(+) projects are
to include and favour community forestry, then
Nepal is likely to be a good candidate on the
global scale, given its well-respected and
long-established community forestry
programme (Staddon 2009).
Use rights are legally conferred to the
community forest user groups through
formal handover
Though Nepal’s forest tenure system as
described above is highly complex,
communities’ use rights are clearly
recognized according to a number of different
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