Deliberative governance and community forestry in Nepal
Creators: name: Banjade, Mani Ram
Publisher: name: The Australian National University
Year: 2014
Subjects: subject: Community forestry Nepal
subject: Deliberative democracy
subject: Forest management Citizen participationNepal
subject: Forests and forestry Government policy Nepal
subject: Sustainable development Nepal

description: Despite important innovations in participatory and community-based forest governance globally, there is still limited understanding of how, when, and under what conditions community voices and local institutions are linked through deliberative processes to the often multiple layers of decision making and governance. The lack of such understanding hinders effective policy and practical innovations to achieve the widely-shared goals of inclusive development, livelihood improvement and environmental sustainability. This study uses a deliberative democratic framework to explore how Nepal's forest governance might be improved. Drawing on the concepts of deliberative systems, and adapting them to the context of multi-level governance, this research explores whether, how and to what extent forest sector governance in Nepal exhibits deliberative qualities. The study is based on established concepts of deliberation, that envisage that all legitimate actors engage in exchanging justifications free from coercion, manipulation, or deception to arrive at the most informed and legitimate collective decision. The process addresses empowerment of the marginalized, mediates differences, and enhances mutual respect. A systemic approach to deliberation seeks to integrate various components-principally communicative practices and institutional arrangements-that have a bearing on the overall quality of decision-making and governance. The principal methodology of this research is qualitative case study. The empirical data was collected from community, meso and national levels by talking to people in-depth, closely observing discursive activities, events and processes within a setting, and analysing documents, published and unpublished. Other, complementary, qualitative research approaches employed in the research include document and narrative analysis, action research, and auto-ethnography. The research has demonstrated that although power and hegemony operate to suppress opportunities for non-coercive communicative practice at all levels, forest sector governance in Nepal has shown the potential for promoting deliberative-inclusive, informed and reflective-processes in decision-making and governance. Governance at community, meso and national levels exhibits the attributes of separate but overlapping deliberative systems. By examining forest governance at these levels, this research has shown the analytical value of differentiating various deliberative systems in understanding multi-level governance. A growing number of actors and cross-scale networks are playing a crucial role in deliberative forest governance in Nepal. In particular, the expanding deliberative space to civil society organizations is evident at meso and national level forest governance. Similarly, the better performing community forest user groups have been successful in addressing the issue of power both through internal reflection and external support. The study identifies a number of challenges to expand deliberative forest governance that require urgent attention. For example, elites in all circles - civil society, politics and bureaucracy - form alliances that resist demands for accountability, and make decisions that are often legitimized by deliberative politics and scientific reductionism. In addition, while civil society organizations play a positive role in democratizing multi-level forest sector governance, they lack adequate communicative skills and competence compared to the techno-bureaucrats, donors and other professional groups. Likewise, the elite actors lack the incentive and interest in promoting deliberative governance; however, strategies are identified to address this.