COMMUNITY-MANAGED FORESTRY IN NEPAL: A REVIEW OF DOCUMENTARY FINDINGS

The review of 50 articles dealing with community forestry in Nepal provide with evidences of the significant influence of community forestry on several aspects of people?s life and development. The concept of the community forestry that underscores the value of institutional flexibility, community autonomy and participatory, itself is the a key to influence on the successes of community forest in the context of Nepal. The definition of the success of the community forestry is attributed to the impact it has created on biodiversity conservation, improvement of rural livelihood and welfare, empowerment of women and disadvantages people, contribution to sustainable development, increase in supply of forest product, wildlife protection, control on forest fire, grazing and over exploitation, its contribution to good governance and to local democracy. This paper analyses participatory approach on forest resource management and provides with sufficient evidence towards the success of community forest management practices in Nepal. Several studies on community forest management found that the major factor of forest development is the formulation of user's group to facilitate utilization of available forest resources with collective interest. Finding shows that nationally and internationally defined variables, indicators and principles have not been significantly practical in Nepal due to scientific and technical reasons. However, community forest management is the most successful concept implemented by the Government of Nepal which is one of the widespread and rapidly growing policy tool over the period where the community members are actively involved in the utilization of forest resources management and take benefits for the collective interest.