IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/forpol/v91y2018icp5-18.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

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

Author

Listed:
  • Basnyat, Bijendra
  • Treue, Thorsten
  • Pokharel, Ridish Kumar
  • Lamsal, Lok Nath
  • Rayamajhi, Santosh

Abstract

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.

Suggested Citation

  • Basnyat, Bijendra & Treue, Thorsten & Pokharel, Ridish Kumar & Lamsal, Lok Nath & Rayamajhi, Santosh, 2018. "Legal-sounding bureaucratic re-centralisation of community forestry in Nepal," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(C), pages 5-18.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:forpol:v:91:y:2018:i:c:p:5-18
    DOI: 10.1016/j.forpol.2017.08.010
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1389934117301168
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.forpol.2017.08.010?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Sadath, Nazmus & Kleinschmit, Daniela & Giessen, Lukas, 2013. "Framing the tiger — A biodiversity concern in national and international media reporting," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 36(C), pages 37-41.
    2. Scheba, Andreas & Mustalahti, Irmeli, 2015. "Rethinking ‘expert’ knowledge in community forest management in Tanzania," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(C), pages 7-18.
    3. Giessen, Lukas & Krott, Max & Möllmann, Torsten, 2014. "Increasing representation of states by utilitarian as compared to environmental bureaucracies in international forest and forest–environmental policy negotiations," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 38(C), pages 97-104.
    4. Rutt, Rebecca Leigh & Chhetri, Bir Bahadur Khanal & Pokharel, Ridish & Rayamajhi, Santosh & Tiwari, Krishna & Treue, Thorsten, 2015. "The scientific framing of forestry decentralization in Nepal," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(C), pages 50-61.
    5. Richard Gauld, 2000. "Maintaining Centralized Control in Community‐based Forestry: Policy Construction in the Philippines," Development and Change, International Institute of Social Studies, vol. 31(1), pages 229-254, January.
    6. Allison, Graham T., 1969. "Conceptual Models and the Cuban Missile Crisis," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 63(3), pages 689-718, November.
    7. Toft, Maja Nastasia Juul & Adeyeye, Yemi & Lund, Jens Friis, 2015. "The use and usefulness of inventory-based management planning to forest management: Evidence from community forestry in Nepal," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(C), pages 35-49.
    8. Krott, Max & Bader, Axel & Schusser, Carsten & Devkota, Rosan & Maryudi, Ahmad & Giessen, Lukas & Aurenhammer, Helene, 2014. "Actor-centred power: The driving force in decentralised community based forest governance," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(C), pages 34-42.
    9. Allison, Graham T., 1969. "Conceptual Models and the Cuban Missile Crisis," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 63(3), pages 689-718, November.
    10. Schusser, Carsten & Krott, Max & Yufanyi Movuh, Mbolo C. & Logmani, Jacqueline & Devkota, Rosan R. & Maryudi, Ahamad & Salla, Manjola & Bach, Ngo Duy, 2015. "Powerful stakeholders as drivers of community forestry — Results of an international study," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 92-101.
    11. Andrea J. Nightingale & Hemant R. Ojha, 2013. "Rethinking Power and Authority: Symbolic Violence and Subjectivity in Nepal's Terai Forests," Development and Change, International Institute of Social Studies, vol. 44(1), pages 29-51, January.
    12. Faye, Papa, 2015. "Choice and power: Resistance to technical domination in Senegal's forest decentralization," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(C), pages 19-26.
    13. Bas Arts & Jan Tatenhove, 2004. "Policy and power: A conceptual framework between the ‘old’ and ‘new’ policy idioms," Policy Sciences, Springer;Society of Policy Sciences, vol. 37(3), pages 339-356, December.
    14. Ribot, Jesse C. & Agrawal, Arun & Larson, Anne M., 2006. "Recentralizing While Decentralizing: How National Governments Reappropriate Forest Resources," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 34(11), pages 1864-1886, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Fatem, Sepus M. & Awang, San A. & Pudyatmoko, Satyawan & Sahide, Muhammad A.K. & Pratama, Andita A. & Maryudi, Ahmad, 2018. "Camouflaging economic development agendas with forest conservation narratives: A strategy of lower governments for gaining authority in the re-centralising Indonesia," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 78(C), pages 699-710.
    2. Kimengsi, Jude Ndzifon & Owusu, Raphael & Djenontin, Ida N.S. & Pretzsch, Jürgen & Giessen, Lukas & Buchenrieder, Gertrud & Pouliot, Mariève & Acosta, Ana Nicole, 2022. "What do we (not) know on forest management institutions in sub-Saharan Africa? A regional comparative review," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 114(C).
    3. Shrestha, Krishna K. & Paudel, Govinda & Ojha, Hemant & Paudel, Naya Sharma & Nuberg, Ian & Cedamon, Edwin, 2022. "Community entrepreneurship: Lessons from Nepal's Chaubas community forestry sawmill," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 141(C).
    4. Basnyat, Bijendra & Treue, Thorsten & Pokharel, Ridish Kumar & Kayastha, Pankaj Kumar & Shrestha, Gajendra Kumar, 2023. "Conservation by corruption: The hidden yet regulated economy in Nepal's community forest timber sector," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 149(C).
    5. Basnyat, Bijendra & Treue, Thorsten & Pokharel, Ridish Kumar & Baral, Srijana & Rumba, Yam Bahadur, 2020. "Re-centralisation through fake Scientificness: The case of community forestry in Nepal," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 115(C).
    6. Clare, Stephen M. & Ruiz-Jaen, Maria C. & Hickey, Gordon M., 2019. "Assessing the potential of community-based forestry programs in Panama," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 104(C), pages 81-92.
    7. Paudel, Ganesh & Bhusal, Prabin & Kimengsi, Jude Ndzifon, 2021. "Determining the costs and benefits of Scientific Forest Management in Nepal," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 126(C).
    8. Myers, Rodd & Fisher, Micah & Monterroso, Iliana & Liswanti, Nining & Maryudi, Ahmad & Larson, Anne M. & Mwangi, Esther & Herawati, Tuti, 2022. "Coordinating forest tenure reform: Objectives, resources and relations in Indonesia, Kenya, Nepal, Peru, and Uganda," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 139(C).
    9. Eliezeri Sungusia & Jens Friis Lund & Christian Pilegaard Hansen & Numan Amanzi & Yonika M. Ngaga & Gimbage Mbeyale & Thorsten Treue & Henrik Meilby, 2020. "Rethinking Participatory Forest Management in Tanzania," IFRO Working Paper 2020/02, University of Copenhagen, Department of Food and Resource Economics.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Basnyat, Bijendra & Treue, Thorsten & Pokharel, Ridish Kumar & Baral, Srijana & Rumba, Yam Bahadur, 2020. "Re-centralisation through fake Scientificness: The case of community forestry in Nepal," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 115(C).
    2. Baral, Srijana & Meilby, Henrik & Khanal Chettri, Bir Bahadur & Basnyat, Bijendra & Rayamajhi, Santosh & Awale, Srijana, 2018. "Politics of getting the numbers right: Community forest inventory of Nepal," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(C), pages 19-26.
    3. Lund, Jens Friis, 2015. "Paradoxes of participation: The logic of professionalization in participatory forestry," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(C), pages 1-6.
    4. Mustalahti, Irmeli & Gutiérrez-Zamora, Violeta & Hyle, Maija & Devkota, Bishnu Prasad & Tokola, Nina, 2020. "Responsibilization in natural resources governance: A romantic doxa?," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 111(C).
    5. Singer, Benjamin & Giessen, Lukas, 2017. "Towards a donut regime? Domestic actors, climatization, and the hollowing-out of the international forests regime in the Anthropocene," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 79(C), pages 69-79.
    6. Scheba, Andreas & Mustalahti, Irmeli, 2015. "Rethinking ‘expert’ knowledge in community forest management in Tanzania," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(C), pages 7-18.
    7. Nantongo, Mary & Vatn, Arild & Vedeld, Paul, 2019. "All that glitters is not gold; Power and participation in processes and structures of implementing REDD+ in Kondoa, Tanzania," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 100(C), pages 44-54.
    8. Fatem, Sepus M. & Awang, San A. & Pudyatmoko, Satyawan & Sahide, Muhammad A.K. & Pratama, Andita A. & Maryudi, Ahmad, 2018. "Camouflaging economic development agendas with forest conservation narratives: A strategy of lower governments for gaining authority in the re-centralising Indonesia," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 78(C), pages 699-710.
    9. Rahman, Md Saifur & Sarker, Pradip Kumar & Sadath, Md. Nazmus & Giessen, Lukas, 2018. "Policy changes resulting in power changes? Quantitative evidence from 25 years of forest policy development in Bangladesh," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 419-431.
    10. Nicole Gross-Camp & Iokine Rodriguez & Adrian Martin & Mirna Inturias & Glory Massao, 2019. "The Type of Land We Want: Exploring the Limits of Community Forestry in Tanzania and Bolivia," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(6), pages 1-16, March.
    11. Lukas Giessen & Pradip Kumar Sarker & Md Saifur Rahman, 2016. "International and Domestic Sustainable Forest Management Policies: Distributive Effects on Power among State Agencies in Bangladesh," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 8(4), pages 1-28, April.
    12. García-López, Gustavo A., 2019. "Rethinking elite persistence in neoliberalism: Foresters and techno-bureaucratic logics in Mexico’s community forestry," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 120(C), pages 169-181.
    13. Dobrynin, Denis & Smirennikova, Elena & Mustalahti, Irmeli, 2020. "Non-state forest governance and ‘Responsibilization’: The prospects for FPIC under FSC certification in Northwest Russia," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 115(C).
    14. Trejos, Bernardo & Flores, Juan Carlos, 2021. "Influence of property rights on performance of community-based forest devolution policies in Honduras," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 124(C).
    15. Marques, Marlene & Juerges, Nataly & Borges, José G., 2020. "Appraisal framework for actor interest and power analysis in forest management - Insights from Northern Portugal," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 111(C).
    16. Sarker, Pradip Kumar & Rahman, Md Saifur & Giessen, Lukas, 2018. "Regional governance by the South Asia Cooperative Environment Program (SACEP)? Institutional design and customizable regime policy offering flexible political options," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 77(C), pages 454-470.
    17. Maryudi, Ahmad & Citraningtyas, Erlita R. & Purwanto, Ris H. & Sadono, Ronggo & Suryanto, Priyono & Riyanto, Slamet & Siswoko, Bowo D., 2016. "The emerging power of peasant farmers in the tenurial conflicts over the uses of state forestland in Central Java, Indonesia," Forest Policy and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 67(C), pages 70-75.
    18. Pradip Kumar Sarker & Md Saifur Rahman & Lukas Giessen, 2019. "Regional economic regimes and the environment: stronger institutional design is weakening environmental policy capacity of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation," International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics, Springer, vol. 19(1), pages 19-52, February.
    19. Carla Roncoli & Brian Dowd‐Uribe & Ben Orlove & Colin Thor West & Moussa Sanon, 2016. "Who counts, what counts: representation and accountability in water governance in the Upper Comoé sub‐basin, Burkina Faso," Natural Resources Forum, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 40(1-2), pages 6-20, February.
    20. Rahman, Md Saifur & Giessen, Lukas, 2017. "Formal and Informal Interests of Donors to Allocate Aid: Spending Patterns of USAID, GIZ, and EU Forest Development Policy in Bangladesh," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 94(C), pages 250-267.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:forpol:v:91:y:2018:i:c:p:5-18. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/forpol .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.