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 - 2018/6
Y1 - 2018/6
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
SN - 1389-9341
VL - 91
SP - 5
EP - 18
JO - Forest Policy and Economics
JF - Forest Policy and Economics
ER -