A forest community or community forestry? Beliefs, meanings and nature in North-western Nepal

In this chapter, I highlight how the history of community forestry in Nepal has been embedded within different understandings of ecosystems and development, including the Theory of Himalayan Environmental Degradation (THED). I briefly review the national programme and then examine the daily functioning of a user-group in Mugu District, north-western Nepal to give a nuanced snapshot of community forestry in action. Through this narrative I draw out the ways in which different knowledges are employed by different actors within community forestry contexts and how the methodologies and theoretical constructs used to investigate the program produce different knowledges of community forestry and the forests themselves.