Community forestry should work to benefit impoverished communities, reiterates Forests Minister

Patan (Lalitpur), June 11: Minister for Forests and Environment Ain Bahadur Shahi Thakuri emphasized that community forestry should operate in a way that benefits extremely poor and marginalized communities. 

At the 'Third National Community Forestry Workshop' organized today in Lalitpur by the Department of Forests and Soil Conservation, Minister Shahi expressed confidence that the community forestry management system would contribute to the conservation of natural resources and sustainable forest management.

"Together with the success of the collaborative forest management approach, there are various challenges we face. With the practice of federal structure, some policy and legal complexities have emerged in different layers. The differences between federal laws and provincial laws have also added challenges in some areas. There is a need to maintain uniformity in the distribution of forest produce and revenue sharing between consumers and the government in the coming days,” said Minister Thakuri. 

He emphasized that consumers should be made stakeholders in the forest-based products they receive from the forests.

The Minister of State for Forests and Environment, Rupa Bik, shared that participatory forest management can be achieved, citing the example of a collaborative forest management system. She mentioned that challenges in collaborative forest management are increasing due to a lack of policy reforms, institutional capacity expansion, and cooperation among relevant bodies. 

Dr. Rajendra Prasad Mishra, the secretary of the Ministry of Forests and Environment, expressed happiness that collaborative forests are different from community forests and that they have been able to benefit a population of 5.1 million from 900,000 families.

The Dean of the Institute of Forestry Studies at Tribhuvan University, Thakur Silwal, expressed confidence in conducting a study on the benefits derived from the learning and understanding achieved so far, and how many people have benefited from it, during an analytical data seminar on the condition of the consumer. (RSS)