Decentralised forest sector governance yields better results

As part of its knowledge networking initiative, SNV in Nepal together with its clients reflects issues on governance for strengthening forest based enterprises.  Based on ten years of experiences and learning in the Central Terai districts of Nepal, the publication “Decentralised Forest Sector Governance: Prospects and Learning from Central Terai Region, Nepal”, describes how a shift from a more traditional ‘sustainable forest management’ approach (with a key role for central government) to a ‘sector governance’ approach oriented towards the inclusion of all relevant actors in the sector (government, non-government, community groups and private sector) led to a better performance of the programme.

This publication also describes how the sector governance approach with a strong focus on the inclusion of multi stakeholders was able to specifically work on gender and social inclusion (GESI), leading to considerable behaviour change, decentralisation of the sector governance, and enabling to involve a variety of stakeholders, who were not included in the scene of the forest management activities undertaken by central government in the past.

In particular, this publication highlights the fact that the increased emphasis on working with the communities and their representative institutions  on governance issues (transparency, accountability, democratic participation, rule of law, effectiveness, efficiency and social inclusion) led to a more dynamic system and increasingly to more solid results. The publication provides further insight to how forests can be well managed from a conservation point of view and well used from an economic point of view.

The Biodiversity Sector Programme for Siwalik and Terai (BISEP-ST) is a priority programme of Ministry of Forests and Soil Conservation (MFSC) funded by the Government of Netherlands through SNV in Nepal until end of 2010. Presently, the MFSC is managing BISEP-ST with its own regular funds and operation in eight Central Terai districts, namely Chitwan, Makwanpur, Parsa, Bara, Rautahat, Sarlahi, Mahottari and Dhanusha. The programme aims to address the issues of governance in forestry sector particularly in Terai and Siwalik while exploring forest based livelihoods opportunities.

Click here to download the publication.