Community forestry and its impact on rural livelihood: A case of chaubas-bhumlu community forest, Kavrepalanchok district, Nepal

More than two decades have been passed since the introduction of the people participatory community forestry in Nepal. This paper explores changes in rural livelihoods with changed circumstances that have been largely brought by the community forestry. Chaubas-Bhumlu community forest of Middle Mountain was taken as a case study for the analysis. Based on the case study, the situation before community forestry intervention and the present situation after Community forestry have been analyzed at the household level. Households as units of analysis were chosen based on the systematic random sampling and were interviewed with structured questionnaire. Two key informant groups, one consisting of ten village elites and other ten elders, were formed and were discussed to access the community level information. The result indicates that community forestry is successfully achieving its objectives from resources demand fulfillment to increased economic benefits. However, economic improvement has been visible at the community level but not at the household level. It means only the access to resources use is not enough for the household economic development. On the other hand, the farm activities are gradually declining with increasing off-farm activities. This situation has led the "complex" farming system from a stable state, though stagnant, to a vulnerable state. This paper concludes (1) the present community forestry model lacks mechanism to utilize the income from the forest to households' economic benefits; (2) the farming system which has a major role in household economy has not been integrated to and supported by community forest; (3) the socio-economic development activities should go simultaneously with the development of community forest to multiply the total benefit from forest