Governance to governmentality: Paradigms of community forestry governance in Nepal
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This paper explores how current practices govern decentralization processes in the community forestry sector of Nepal. Analysis of policy documents, legislation, decrees, and forestry sector programs over the past 40 years, combined with stakeholder and forest user groups interaction, shows that the community forestry development can be divided into three distinct phases, progression phase (1976-1993), till the enactment of the 1993 Forest Act where, the focus was on devising appropriate legislative and institutional arrangements for promoting community forests; governance phase (1994-1999), till the first amendment of the Forest Act in 1999, where priority was on handover of forest and sharing of responsibility between forest bureaucracy and forest user groups including capacity building and post-formation support and; governmentality phase (2000 onwards), starting with the enactment of 2000 Forest Policy, which is about devising a range of formal and informal technologies and strategies with a motive of maintaining or re-gaining control in a different than the traditional centralized, top-down manner. The basic philosophy of the community forestry, i.e., devolution of authority, remained unchanged; however, forest bureaucracy enforced, officially and unofficially, several guidelines and decrees that re-establish its authority over decentralized forest resources. This practice is continuing and flourishing even the country formulated new Forest Act in 2019 under the changed political
context of the country. The governmentality approach has enabled the forest bureaucracy to curtail the autonomy of forest user groups and enhance its control over forest resources and associated economic benefits.
Keywords: Forest bureaucracy, Devolution, History, Community Forestry, Nepal
ID: 3623214