ABSTRACT
Community Forestry (CF) is widespread across Nepal, engaging 55 percent of the rural population in management of 35 percent of the country’s forest area through an increasing number (well over 19,000 in January 2017) of locally based and participatory institutions, Community Forest User Groups (CFUGs), which are the most influential community-based institutions in Nepal. This chapter provides an outline of the growth and development of CF in Nepal, in a global and Nepalese context. Following an introduction to global forest values, links between forests, agriculture and food security, and participatory approaches to forest management, the chapter considers the specific context of Nepal and the opportunity that an investigation of CF in Nepal offers to the global context. The chapter outlines fundamental characteristics of Nepal, including physiography, population, social structures, income and poverty, agricultural and forest dependence, and social changes occurring such as urban migration and changing rural economies. The development of CF in Nepal is then introduced, including the expansion in the number of CFUGs and their distribution. The chapter concludes by outlining the structure of the book and how themes raised in the introduction are explored in greater depth in the chapters that follow.
