Self-governance for a sustainable natural resource management: a case study of the Sundari Community Forest User Group

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The dilemma of how to manage common-pool resources to become both sustainable and contribute to the livelihood of individuals, for whom the resource is a necessity, has been widely discussed in academia. The experience of state and private intervention indicated that neither has been particular successful, and Nepal was one of the first countries in Asia to realise the limitations of unilaterally managing public lands through government agencies, and started a process to hand over the control of national forest to rural self-governing communities. The concept of community forest management emerged almost twenty-five years ago, and has since then addressed the linkage between forestry, rural people and environmental sustainability. Rural people in Nepal still has high levels of dependence on forest products and well-anchored traditions of self sufficiency and community forestry has proved to be successful in addressing the livelihood needs of rural people and keep the forests in a sustainable way. The purpose of this study is to explore how poor rural people can craft and sustain institutional arrangements for the management of a communal resource to enhance their livelihood. To achieve this purpose, I conducted a case study of the Sundari Community Forest User Group (CFUG) in the Nawalparasi district, in southern Nepal. I investigated to what extent the Sundari CFUG has succeeded to establish an institutional framework for sustainable use of the forest held in common My main findings indicate that Sundari CFUG fulfils a large share of what characterise long enduring self-governing common-pool resource systems. However, despite the ambitiousl...