School of Agriculture, Food and Ecosystem Sciences - Theses
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ItemQuantification and payment for ecosystem services from community-managed forests in Nepal( 2018)Humans obtain many benefits from forests that are vital for societal well-being, such as food, timber, fibre, flood protection, clean water and climate regulation. These are known as ecosystem services (ES). The supply of ES varies across space and time and is affected by changes in land use and land cover (LULC), landscape composition and broader social and economic changes. In Nepal, community-based forestry (CBF) emerged in the 1970s against the backdrop of deforestation and widespread concerns over the ‘crisis of Himalayan degradation’ and has become the dominant national strategy for forest management. Over the last 40-years, the Nepalese model of CBF has become globally recognised. Forest area, quality and biodiversity have increased, but the focus of CBF is on the provision of ecosystem goods for local subsistence, and there has been limited analysis of the role of CBF in ES supply to communities. Nor has the potential for local community managers to receive benefits or incentives to continue to conserve watersheds, forests and biodiversity and enhance ES been explored. Most benefits are consumed by wider users who do not contribute to protect and manage the forests. Despite widespread implementation of systems of payment for ecosystem services (PES) benefits to poor people have been limited. This thesis investigated the policy, social and technical arrangements for the assessment of ES and implementation of payment mechanisms to increase environmental, economic and social equity outcomes from CBF in Nepal. The study focused on the Phewa watershed near Pokhara in western Nepal. Quantitative and qualitative approaches were used to assess and prioritise ES resulting from CBF to inform appropriate payment mechanisms. A mixed-methods approach was employed to analyse and interpret the data. Geospatial tools were used to examine the LULC transition from remotely-sensed time series data and linked to spatial distribution of ES. Community perceptions and expert opinion were sought to investigate priority ES, forest policies and PES design considerations. Findings indicated that CBF provides many ES, delivering local to global benefits as a result of forest restoration. However, Nepal’s forest policy and practices are still dominated by narrow notions of forest management that do not accommodate the holistic concept of ES. In addition, many innovative cases are emerging in CBF that demonstrate the emergence of more diverse management strategies, new forms of tenure rights and autonomy in institutional spaces that can potentially catalyse the wider adoption of the ES framework in CBF regimes. Results indicated that 23 ES were relevant to local communities and other stakeholders in the Phewa watershed. Sediment retention, recreation and ecotourism, freshwater, firewood and timber were priority ES for local benefits, while recreation and ecotourism, biodiversity maintenance, sediment retention and carbon stock are priority ES for wider benefits. Priority ES reveal critical areas of correlation and conflict between different services and stakeholder groups. While trade-offs exist between provisioning services and regulating, habitat and cultural services, synergies are identified between regulating, cultural and habitat services. Significant changes in land cover in the Phewa watershed have had positive impacts on ES. Maps showed the distribution of ES varies significantly across the watershed. Dense forests provide higher sediment retention, carbon stocks, biodiversity maintenance, and raw materials but reduced water yield. Likewise, increased aesthetic value provides opportunities for recreation and ecotourism. However, benefits relevant indicators reveal that the societal benefits of most ES are lower compared to the supply of ES. Among the19 design considerations relevant to stakeholders for PES design, only nine, livelihoods, pro-poor participation, tenure arrangements, payment structures, government policy, local institutions, PES governance, opportunity costs and transaction costs are perceived as important for pro-poor PES design. Although the effectiveness of a PES scheme is often measured economically or biologically, our results indicate the essential design considerations for stakeholders are policy, social, financial and institutional arrangements. Overall, an integrated investment strategy and institutional mechanisms should be developed to incentivise local people and continue positive externalities from CBF. This thesis is one of the first studies to undertake an integrated analysis of policy, social, biophysical and institutional arrangements for assessment and payment of ES. The simple and easily replicable process and outcomes of this study are applicable in other parts of Nepal and elsewhere in developing countries or data-poor regions.
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ItemCommunity, social marginalisation and adaptation to climate change( 2016)Climate change has become a key challenge to sustainable development in the Nepal Himalayas, a region with some of the world’s poorest and most climate vulnerable communities. Adaptation to climate change is therefore an urgent task and there has been an upsurge in research and policy responses to enhance adaptive capacity of local communities. This includes community-based and ecosystem-based approaches to adaptation. Although the forests constitute an integral part of the livelihood system in Nepal and in the developing world generally, their role in supporting adaptive capacity has often been neglected in both scholarly research and policy. The interactions among institutions, marginalized groups and forests are also poorly recognized in contemporary adaptation studies. This study analyses the link between forests and people, taking the case of the community forestry system (CFS) in the Middle Hills of Nepal. In combining a social-ecological system perspective with the concepts of vulnerability and resilience, this study investigates the prospects for community forestry enhancing the adaptive capacity of marginalized groups. The study focuses on the Thuli Community Forestry User Group in Kavre district, a region that has experienced dynamic socio-economic and ecological conditions associated with increasing population, changing living conditions, infrastructure development, land degradation and climate change. The study uses a mix of social science and natural science tools to understand the socially constructed realities and analyse the attributes of forest conditions to establish possible causal relations between the community forestry system and the adaptive capacity of the forest dependent communities. In doing so this study analysed changes in forest condition, people’s dependence on forests, institutional dynamics, forest management practices and decision making systems. The findings suggest that existing community based institutions may potentially worsen the disparity between marginalized and elite groups and increase the vulnerability of the marginalised people, for three reasons. First, socio-economic heterogeneity tends to produce different interests and conflicting values and these cannot be addressed using a common set of rules for resource management and utilization. Second, regulatory mechanisms often obstruct autonomous responses by restricting use or access to resources. Third, genuine representation of marginalized groups in decision making is hampered by first, their limited knowledge of complex vulnerability conditions and second, their poor awareness of their capacity to change current conditions. Moreover, an institutional analysis of the CFUG indicated a need for deeper understanding of how vulnerability is constructed upon the historical socio-cultural practices that maintain the status quo in social and economic contexts. The community forestry system provides many potential sources of resilience that are useful for both reactive and anticipatory adaptation in both social and ecological aspects of the system. Increased species diversity, incorporation of native species and sustainable forest product extraction can improve ecological resilience. Translation of those ecological parameters into societal adaptation is possible through collective action, innovation and feedback mechanisms. Nevertheless, existing policies, socio-political and bureaucratic processes have hampered the potential of community forestry to increase adaptation of vulnerable communities. A key implication of this finding is that policy makers have the opportunity to consider the effects of community institutions not only on forest management, but also on various aspects of climatic change-induced vulnerability of marginalized groups. Forest managers could consider how forest management actions and consequent ecological processes enable or constrain the capacity of the poor and marginalized groups to cope with climate risks in specific localities. This thesis concludes by arguing that decision makers at the local community level must be more responsive to the needs of marginalized groups in relation to various climatic risks. However, inclusive adaptation can be achieved only through ensuring the meaningful participation of marginalized people in decision making. This requires a radically new approach to adaptation in the context of a highly heterogeneous society like Nepal where adaptive behaviours can result only from a transformation of existing power relations, movement away from knowledge based supremacy and reconfiguration of cultural economy of symbolic power. Societal complexity has been taken for granted in many aspects of climate adaptation and in other natural resource management policies and practices. Recognition of system complexity should be the first step towards adaptation policy prescriptions and their implementation. Failure to do so will result in the policy and practice that may instead increase vulnerability of some section of society.
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ItemA new institutional economic approach to the organization of community forestry enterprises( 2016)Forests play a vital role in the livelihood and socio-cultural systems of hundreds of millions of people around the world. They have been the subject of ever changing managerial approaches derived from distinct conceptions of what role the state, local communities and individuals should play in their use and conservation. Government-led concession schemes that have favored logging companies and their business models have been linked to overexploitation and deterioration of forests due to lack of forest law enforcement. This has driven the emergence of community-led forestry: systems where communities are able to exercise responsibility and authority over forest management. Community-forestry enterprises (CFEs) are the latest development in community forestry. They have risen as an alternative to industrial scale logging and have been proposed as an innovative business model that can democratize forest governance and involve forest-farm producers in decision-making processes about forest resources. The ultimate aim is to develop forest-farm landscapes reflecting multiple stakeholder interests. The purpose of this thesis is to understand the organization and functioning of these unique enterprises through the use of new institutional economic (NIE) theory of the firm. The study answers the call for greater research to understand the real and potential role of communities in producing timber for commercial purposes and how local resource management functions in the economy in general. Concepts of transaction costs, separation of ownership and control, and ownership are used to identify a general set of characteristics of these enterprises and how they operate. The study used a qualitative methodology that involved semi-structured interviews to understand details about institutions and transactions. The research found that lowering information costs between CFEs and their transacting partners can improve trading relationships. Lowering information costs has spillover effects on the costs of bargaining and monitoring of contractual relationships between both parties thus improving the exchange environment. The results also show that CFEs face internal organizational transaction costs in the form of principal-agent problems. Overlaps between CFE membership and a geographical community exacerbate these costs and external managers can have a positive impact on reducing them. Finally, CFEs are vulnerable to a series of organizational weaknesses such as lack of investment, managerial problems and costly collective decision-making processes that can compromise their ability to survive in competitive productive environments. The results of this research have implications for policymakers and practitioners. Reducing information costs between CFEs and their trading partners becomes a key area for policy action to improve the transacting environment for both parties. Training in administrative issues and monitoring mechanisms, as well as additional expertise from outsiders, are essential for reducing principal-agent problems and improving management in CFEs. Institutional changes to motivate owners and outside capital to invest in the enterprises may be necessary, as is streamlining of decision-making processes to balance community and business priorities. However, greater understanding of the non-monetary motivations that differentiate community firms from investor-owned ones is also necessary so that their comparative strengths can be magnified and used to their advantage.
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ItemApplications of GIS in community based forest management in Australia (and Nepal)( 2004)Community forestry is now a popular approach in forest management globally. Although local communities have previously been involved in forest management in various minor ways, community-based forestry is very new in the Australian context. Because of the multiple interests of forest users and other community interest groups, a wider range of up-to-date information is being requested in community forestry, than has been used in ‘conventional’ government-based forest management in the past. The overall aim of this research was to explore the potential and constraints for the application of Geographic Information System (GIS) technology in community forest management in Australia and to relate the results also to Nepal. Specific objectives were to: (i) review the applications of GIS in forestry and community forestry worldwide, (ii) determine stakeholders’ views on their requirements for the use of GIS in community-based forest management, (iii) prepare and demonstrate various practical applications of GIS requested by community groups in the Wombat State Forest, (iv) identify the strengths and limitations of GIS in community forestry, and (v) relate findings on GIS applications in Australia to community forestry in Nepal. This study involved a combination of three approaches: review of global literature on GIS, use of GIS and related technologies, and participatory action research. A wide variety of spatial information was identified through community groups as important for community forest planning and management.