Current Best Practices First Regional Community Forum 90

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4. Current Best Practices

The methodology for community forestry has been developed over 25 years, is robust, sophisticated and operationalized across the country. Process of Handing Over Community Forests to User Groups The following major steps are carried out in the process of handing over community forests to CFUGs. • Letter of Interests to DFO - First, the local community members living around the forest has to give an application to the DFO expressing their interests to manage the particular forest around them. • Investigation for handing over - Once the DFO receives the letter of interests, it sends a ranger forest technician to help the community in identifying the traditional users of the forests so that they are not excluded from the user group. The ranger also helps the users in preparing the constitution of the user group. • User group formation. Once all the traditional users are identified, a constitution to form a CFUG is prepared. Then the users in a group have to submit an application to the DFO according to the format mentioned in the Forest Rule of 1995. With the information on the user group, the constitution will have i Objective of forest management, ii Rights, duties and responsibility of the user group iii Forest protection measures iv Fund utilization measures, etc. Once the user group is formed and their constitution is registered, they are officially legitimized by the DFO. A certificate of registration is given to users as a proof of user group formation. Operational Plan Preparation As per the need of the users, and depending upon the productivity of the forest, the users prepare a simple management plan of the forest, and the local ranger helps Box3: Brief Description of Ghorlas Community Forest The community forest was established in 1993, and has an area of 27.64 hectares. There are 130 families using the forests and they are members of forest user groups. The executive committee members are elected for two years. For the management of the forests, it is divided into compartments. The community forest user group has initiated many income-generating activities, which include making agricultural tools and handicrafts from bamboo, and sawing timber, etc. The user group is distributing forest products on the basis of equity. Loans are given at low interest rates to poor members of the user groups. Fifty-seven user group members have benefited from these activities. Income generation programs are continued, and the loan is recycled amongst the poor households. The user group is also supporting other user groups in preparing constitutions and operational plans of other CFUGs. Ghorlas CFUG 2004. Kanel, Paudyal Baral 77 them in this process. Operational plan preparation is a very important process for the users, because the users will have to follow it in managing the forest, and extracting the forest products from it. Estimation of annual yield is mandatory for preparing an operational plan. An operational plan will contain information, including the objectives of forest management, a rough map of the forest, division of the forest into compartments, and silvicultural prescriptions to be followed in managing the forest. After preparing an operational plan, users have to submit it to the DFO for approval. Handing Over the Forests If the DFO finds that the operation plan conforms to the required rules and procedures, then she approves it, and a certificate handing over community forests is given to the user group in the format described in the Forest Rules of 1995. The users then have to manage the forests and utilize the forest products according to the approved operational plan. If the operational plan has to be amended, the user group can do so by informing the DFO, according to Forest Rules 1995. If the operational plan is not followed, the government may take the community forests back, but the forest then has to be handed over to a reconstituted CFUG. In other words, once a forest is handed over to a community, the government cannot take it as a government- managed forest. Instead, it has to remain as a community forest.

5. Overall Progress and Achievements of Community Forestry in Nepal