TY - JOUR

T1 - Legal-sounding bureaucratic re-centralisation of community forestry in Nepal

AU - Basnyat, Bijendra

AU - Treue, Thorsten

AU - Pokharel, Ridish Kumar

AU - Lamsal, Lok Nath

AU - Rayamajhi, Santosh

PY - 2018

Y1 - 2018

N2 - Exactly how do forest bureaucracies manoeuvre to regain power and maximise benefits in the bewildering legal, financial, and administrative field of forest decentralisation? Based on a review of thirty management plans, stakeholder consultations, intensive interactions with six forest user groups, forest officials, and donor project employees in Nepal, we document the mechanisms of legal-sounding re-centralisation. The central tenet is that bureaucratically established procedures, which are not required by law but treated as if they were, are used to impose regular revisions of community forest management plans. Meagre government or more generous donor budgets financed the revisions. Forest bureaucrats and/or consultants did the work and benefitted financially. None of the approaches, however, lived up to technical, scientific standards or followed stipulated participatory processes. The revised plans were almost identical to their previous versions and differences mostly a result of mere desk exercises to fulfil donor requirements and government orders, at least on paper. While legitimised by a perceived promotion of rational, technical sound, and equitable forest governance, the main function of plan revisions appears to be strengthening or re-establishing the forest bureaucracy's control over community forest resources which allows forest bureaucrats to tap into donor project and forest product value chains.

AB - Exactly how do forest bureaucracies manoeuvre to regain power and maximise benefits in the bewildering legal, financial, and administrative field of forest decentralisation? Based on a review of thirty management plans, stakeholder consultations, intensive interactions with six forest user groups, forest officials, and donor project employees in Nepal, we document the mechanisms of legal-sounding re-centralisation. The central tenet is that bureaucratically established procedures, which are not required by law but treated as if they were, are used to impose regular revisions of community forest management plans. Meagre government or more generous donor budgets financed the revisions. Forest bureaucrats and/or consultants did the work and benefitted financially. None of the approaches, however, lived up to technical, scientific standards or followed stipulated participatory processes. The revised plans were almost identical to their previous versions and differences mostly a result of mere desk exercises to fulfil donor requirements and government orders, at least on paper. While legitimised by a perceived promotion of rational, technical sound, and equitable forest governance, the main function of plan revisions appears to be strengthening or re-establishing the forest bureaucracy's control over community forest resources which allows forest bureaucrats to tap into donor project and forest product value chains.

KW - Community forestry

KW - Forest bureaucracy

KW - Incentives

KW - Management planning

KW - Power

U2 - 10.1016/j.forpol.2017.08.010

DO - 10.1016/j.forpol.2017.08.010

M3 - Journal article

AN - SCOPUS:85028603348

VL - 91

SP - 5

EP - 18

JO - Forest Policy and Economics

JF - Forest Policy and Economics

SN - 1389-9341

ER -