9.7.1 Current forest management planning practices and constraints to effective
monitoring systems
There has been considerable development of detailed procedures for planning and monitoring in community forestry, and indeed attention has been given to encouraging participation of FUG members in planning. However, at present, procedures for planning forest management and monitoring are tailored to the requirements of the DFO, which almost has a monopoly in defining the way in which planning and monitoring is done. Moreover, the monitoring system is less focused towards self-assessment (impacts of DFO activities, rather than just general changes in FUGs), with a tendency to monitor the work of others rather than one’s own work. Within the FUG, procedures for planning are dominated by a few selected FUG committee officials, who may be more interested in the DFO’s interests, rather than those of the forest users. Some of the most critical constraints to developing an effective monitoring system for use at the local level include:
• There is little understanding within the Department of Forests as a whole, of why particular monitoring information is being gathered, how it will be used and what their capacity will be to respond to that information. This point is crucial if the DFO is to increase its service orientation.
• At present, there is no mechanism in place for the various stakeholders to come together and discuss their interests and forest management objectives, methods and procedures for achieving the objectives, and ways in which to measure the progress made.
• The two stated functions of the Operational Plan, namely as a document to guide forest management, as well as a legally binding document for regulatory purposes, are difficult to reconcile with each other. In reality the regulatory function takes precedence, such that detailed management decisions are also scrutinised by the DFO.
• The forest management planning, especially Operational Plan preparation, are ultimately set by the human resource constraints of the DFO. This means that FUG members are forced to come to decisions in a very short space of time, and many of those decisions require far more investigation and negotiation. Consensus requires the recognition of a need to experiment with the unresolved issues and a containment of disagreement within certain parameters.
• The problem of monitoring at the Range Post level is that there is no monitoring system relevant to their own activities, nor do they have any decision-making authority. Not only the decisions for action at the Range Post level are all made at the District level or higher up, but such decisions are also based on the information available at the district level, rather than the information available at the Range Post level.
• The DFO/Range Post staffs currently devote most of their resources to planning the management of forest resources, handed over to local communities as community forests. There is no recognition of the many processes underway in non-FUGs that dictate
subsequent community forestry arrangement. It is important that the basic decisions relating to forest management are undertaken from the beginning through the conscious involvement of all users, whether in a FUG or not.
9.7.2 Process for developing forest users’ planning and monitoring systems
The research project has developed a systematic, generic methodology for enhancing forest users’ on-going forest management planning and monitoring processes. Core elements of the methodology are very simple and replicable, and the process shows the major steps, in terms of what activities to be undertaken, when, how and by whom. It is hoped that once the system is in place, the concerned FUG members will be able to use the process on their own and adapt it to their local circumstances. Although initially some outside support will be required to help initiate and facilitate the process, it is intended that the involvement of outsidefacilitators should be minimal in the future. The main features of the methodology are as follows:
• It enables the system to reach the majority of FUG members, beyond the FUG committee officials, and ensures that their views are taken into consideration.
• It provides a sequential framework for information collection and analysis, explaining the required actions and the objectives for each step or activity.
• It explains at what stage and how the concerns and interests of various interest groups and individuals should be brought together for discussion and negotiation.
The major role of the external facilitators can be summarised as follows:
• Defining the overall process of research and communication in terms of the sequence of meetings (in particular, tole meetings) – though the users set the timetable.
• Assisting in bringing together different issues, interests and perceptions in relation to group functioning and the forest resource (particularly where these conflict with each other), and help negotiate solutions,.
• Providing a broader picture of social, economic, environmental and political realities (in particular, equity, power relations and environmental degradation) that are global
concerns. This will create a critical group awareness, and group level self-assessment, by relating these issues to their own social reality.
• Providing a standard set of information that gives a common basis for transparent decision-making in common property forest
9.7.3 Suggestions for improving monitoring systems at the Range Post level
The present monitoring system is very top-down and rigid. It is evident that not all the information collected is required or used by different levels of Forest Department offices. There is a need to develop more relevant monitoring systems for the Range Post level. There is also a need to match the perceptions of community forest resources as they relate to outsiders’ perceptions of livelihoods and biological diversity. For this, the Range Post staff needs to have greater accountability and responsibility, rather than just collecting information for the DFO and offices higher up.In overall, the project has considered monitoring issues in the context of the overall planning for the management of common property forest resources at the local level, rather than as a separate activity. The project findings will contribute to the goals of supporting Nepal’s forest sector management, especially towards ‘enhancing community forestry’s contribution to sustainable rural livelihoods’. Not only has the project identified some of the major problems facing community forest management and monitoring in Nepal, it has developed a generic methodology (process), which appears to be able to address them. It is unlikely, however, for the process, in isolation, to achieve the goal of increasing the conscious participation of local communities in community forest management due to many prerequisite factors that affect the sustainability of a FUG as a whole. Whilst these factors were external to the scope of the field process, the project has produced recommendations to address them.