2. DISCUSSION AND FINDINGS

Four case studies have been included to illustrate the way policy processes and development practice have brought about different degrees of sustainable access to natural resources by poor people. In this regard we are taking access as a broad term to represent access to such things as forest resources, as well as access to good jobs in rural areas, market opportunities, useful information, etc.; and, perhaps more importantly, access by the poor to policy dialogue processes that determine long term access to natural resources. By looking at issues of sustainable access we are looking at situations of institutional change where poorer people are empowered and institutional changes take place that help to ensure better social inclusion in the future.

We examine the case studies that inform this study by asking the following questions:

• What broad changes have occurred in indicators of poverty reduction, empowerment and social inclusion?

• What have been the roles of specific actors in the policy and development processes that give rise to these changes?

• What lessons can be learned from this analysis for our understanding of policy processes and development practice?

Later, in the conclusion to this report, we summarise and discuss suggestions for action that might be considered by different groups of actors who influence policy practice and development activities.

Throughout the discussion, it is clear that one forest resource access programme dominates of all other, both in the volume of literature generated about it, and in its role as a model development strategy. This is the Community Forestry (CF) programme of Nepal.

Under the CF programme there was historically, during the 1980s and early 1990s, a dominant strong coalition of government and donor partners focused around the creation of the necessary legislation and policy (the Master Plan for the Forestry Sector, Nepal, 1989; the Forestry Act, 1993; and the necessary Forestry Regulations, 1995) and providing the funds for its implementation. The programme focussed on a very specific type of access regime, the Community Forest User Group (CFUG). The dominant development narrative at the time concerning ‘the problem’ (e.g., sustainable management) and ‘the solution’ (through equitable access to community members, ostensibly based upon traditional and indigenous practices) was well articulated and widely accepted by the forestry development community. Implicit in the narrative was the assertion that not only would CFUGs manage forest natural resources better, but also short-term poverty would be reduced and long term social inclusion would be increased. Over time, the CF programme has become in many ways the prototype for other group-based development initiatives in Nepal (e.g., in other sectors, such as livestock, irrigation, etc.).

2.1 Competing narratives^[7]

In forestry, the CF narrative has remained in place and has been dominant until recently when it has been challenged by several other contending coalitions of actors. One comes from actors directly concerned with poverty reduction and social inclusion, and who see leasehold forestry as the means to achieve these goals. Another comes from actors concerned with the management of Nepal’s remaining national forest and their search for alternatives to CF by means of Collaborative Forest Management. A new and increasingly important narrative comes from actors who recognize the immense value of Alternative Forest Resources as important economic resources. Each is briefly discussed in turn. There are many more competing narratives, such as the one that characterizes people in forests as acting singularly as if in a static and traditional subsistence economy.

Leasehold Forestry (LHF)

Nepal’s Leasehold Forestry (LHF) Programme represents the first of the coalitions contending for the attention previously accorded to CF. LHF is focussed directly on poverty alleviation and social inclusion. From the perspective of this programme’s main actors, poverty and social inclusion can best be achieved through forestry if the law and regulations are changed so that the poor, the disadvantaged and typically marginalized in society (i.e., those who are typically excluded from equal access to resources) are given special long-term rights to lease and improve degraded forest lands.

There are problems, however, and as the case study describes the situation, this coalition has specific weaknesses. For example, since it began in the early 1990s it has worked until 2003 under a complicated coalition of four government agencies, with the Department of Forestry as a key partner. It has also been dependent upon a high level of donor funding, with the traditional make-up of special project staff, trainings, vehicles, maintenance and other recurrent costs. Thus, it has functioned rather independently from existing government forestry programmes as a ‘special project’ in the traditional sense, with parallel structures and dependencies that, in the long run, are not sustainable.^[8] Over time, the issue of integrating the LHF project into the existing CF programme has been raised (though never formally accommodated), and has became a metaphor for how to increase the poverty reduction and social inclusion effectiveness of the CF programme itself. Recently, other donor-funded forestry programmes have begun experimenting with the leasehold concept within the modified CF framework.^[9]

Collaborative Forest Management (CFM)

Both the LHF and the CF coalitions are being challenged by new alignments as result of the changing perspectives on the economic and revenue values of forest resources. This challenge takes several forms. One reflects the well documented value of timber resources in Nepal’s remaining national forests, especially in the Terai but potentially also in the high mountain forests as road-building provides commercial access to those previously isolated locales. Nepal’s big timber resources have both high revenue and high rent-seeking values. One policy adjustment now in process is designed to move the local management (hence, change the rules of resource access and utilization) of high revenue national forests away from the previously well-established CF model, which relies on locally empowered groups following participatory forest management principles, to a Collaborative Forest Management (CFM) model that, although it is also based on group action, has more to do with the protection of forest resources than with their utilization and, hence, is more centrally-controlled and less empowering to local people.^[10]

In the case of the Terai and adjacent Churia Hills where timber extraction is more dominant, the quasi-governmental Timber Corporation of Nepal (TCN) has long been responsible for managing and timber harvesting and marketing. As patches of forests have come under the management of local user groups through the older CF model, the government began to lose an important source of revenue (while the user groups ostensibly gained a source of revenue). One of the underlying rationales for the new CFM model is that it will ensure that revenue earnings from the remaining national forests will remain in direct control of the government.

Alternative Forest Resources (AFRs)

Another challenge comes out of the increasing value of alternative forest resources (AFRs) such cardamom, lokta bark and medicinal plants. A few years ago the so-called non-timber forest products (NTFPs) were seen primarily as inputs into ‘subsistence’ farming (primarily fodder for livestock and firewood for local household consumption), while now there are growing commercial markets for a wider range of AFRs as the handmade paper-making case study illustrates.^[11]

The growth of markets for products from AFRs brings with it a whole range of other issues that have often been discussed under the old ways of seeing things. The realities of the changes taking place ‘out there’, in the forest economy, however, are challenging the older classifications and actions. For example, cardamom is an AFR of growing importance for which public sector research takes place not in the MFSC’s Department of Forest Research and Survey (DFRS), but in the Nepal Agricultural Research Centre (NARC). The situation is similar for research on other AFRs. The processing and marketing of AFRs involves departments, organizations, and the like that do not come under the traditional ‘forests’ umbrella. In addition, private entrepreneurs are developing new AFR products, business networks and institutional arrangements, wherein traditional views of AFRs and NTFPs as forest resources and products have little relevance. For those in government service, these changes represent major challenges for the staff of the Department of Forests and other departments of government, as new modes of collaboration and sharing have to be developed.

2.2 Economic and financial imperatives

Revenue-seeking opportunities

A second theme that runs through all the case studies is the importance of economic and financial considerations. This is not surprising as development includes economic growth and the distribution of benefits and wealth over time. However, it appears that some of these issues were not central to many of the narratives and actions of actors during the earlier period of forestry development in Nepal (1970s-1990s), and have only come late into the narrative about CFUG development.

For example, the government has raised substantial revenues from the sale of timber from government-owned forests, based on government directives concerned with levelling a 40 percent tax on all CF-based timber surpluses sold outside the community forest.^[12] With the rise of CFUGs this source of review has been, predictably, threatened. The issue was not of great importance when the CF programme was mainly implemented in the Mid-Hills, where much of the timber and non-timber resources are traditionally used locally within the community as part of the local pattern of subsistence. There was no long-term tradition of hill forests supplying external timber markets, nor were the markets for alternative forest resources as extensive as they are today.^[13] There, timber was mainly used locally for buildings and construction works, etc., and non-timber products tended to be fodder, firewood, food (e.g., nuts, berries, tubers), medicinal resources, etc., most all of which were used at the household level within a community.

The issue of big timber revenues, however, has recently become quite central to forest policy making processes as a result of several factors related to the spread of the CF programme south into the Churia Hills and Terai. There, CFUGs are increasingly managing forests of potentially high and saleable timber values. Likewise, AFRs and other forest resource based products (e.g., stones and sand) are finding substantial external markets. It is not surprising, therefore, that the Ministry has become increasingly concerned with the national forest as a potential source of tax revenue.^[14]

Rent-seeking opportunities

A second set of economic issues that come out of the case studies relates to rent-seeking by government employees, and other authorities. Rent-seeking is defined here as the raising of personal income or influence on the part of government employees as a result of the position they hold in government, and the power they can wield over politically weak, marginalized and disadvantaged peoples. Rent-seeking includes such things as a forest officer taking a bribe from a contractor to secure a lucrative resource harvesting permit, or a donor-funded project officer awarding a consultancy more as a political or personal reward rather than on the basis of past experience and merit, or a police officer or forestry official persuading a forest resource trader to pay a special ‘service charge’ to ship goods past a roadside checkpost and on to market.

Different government laws, regulations and rules, and donor projects and programmes, each offer a variety of opportunities for rent-seeking. The overall culture in a particular part of government, project or programme determines the extent that rent-seeking takes place in a given place at a particular point in time. Underpinning all the formal discussions in policy and planning situations in Nepal is the informal set of considerations concerning rent-seeking. The issue is particularly germane in the forest sector because, unlike other sectors (agriculture, education, health, etc.), forestry has been a large generator of revenue from big timber and many AFRs.^[15] The issue of misuse of power in the forestry sector is recognized by government in statements such as this: ‘An excessive concentration of decision-making power in the higher echelons inhibits the enthusiasm and self-reliance of the people. In addition, opportunities to misuse power are created and people’s suspicions are aroused’.^[16]

Some of the recent FECOFUN and other NGOs’ public campaign against the proposed government tax of 40% on timber products sold outside of CFUGs is based as much on the lack of prior consultation with the people about it, as on a deep suspicion the tax is driven by rent-seeking motives. These fears are not without foundation. As we saw in the handmade paper case study, the growth of the industry in the Mid-West Hills region has been curtained by the rent-seeking behaviour of officials who are slow to process necessary papers for the movement of lokta bark out of the districts, and the service charges that have to be paid to officials enroute to the Kathmandu market. The Maoist insurgents are now also imposing similar service charges in many parts of the country that they control.

Profit-seeking opportunities

A feature that underpins the narratives of the contending coalitions in the policy arena concerns the profits that can be made from the sale of timber and alternative forest resources. In the past there was a traditional narrative that communities would manage forest resources and that most of the forest outputs would be consumed locally as part of non-moneyed systems of subsistence production and exchange. For example, timber was to be used locally for building houses, bridges, temples, etc.; fuelwood was collected for household use; and fodder was grazed or collected for local use. Whether this type of ‘ideal’ view of a traditional, subsistence society ever existed or not is not the subject of this analysis. Nonetheless, this was the view that many policy and development planners have held. Events of the last 10 years have dramatically shown, however, that some forest user groups are making a great deal of money by selling timber and AFRs. They are well integrated into local and international money-based markets, which also include labour markets, where young people, especially, go to other countries in order to find work in the remittance economy. In addition, depending on the particular timber and AFR there are very different existing and evolving ‘market chains’, each of which has a different set of institutional actors seeking profits and returns for any ‘value added’ they are contributing to.

Thus, although the community forestry programme may have begun on the assumption that it was primarily designed to support and sustain a subsistence economy at the local household level, as forests matured and as markets for forest resources and products have grown, new expectations have arisen. Profitable CFUG activities are now very important, and policies to thwart local profit-making activities, such as taxing surplus timber sold outside of the group, is becoming resisted.

2.3 Policy processes and development practice

This study and the case examples concentrate on the behaviour of actors in the macro arenas of development activity. In this area, there is frequent reference to such issues as ‘programme’ vs. ‘project’,^[17] and on the strengths and weaknesses of certain planning processes (e.g., the log frame debate)^[18] and on implementation, monitoring and evaluation techniques (e.g., ‘participation’ as ‘the new tyranny’).^[19] We now examine the findings of the Case Studies to see what they contribute on these various development debates.

Case Study 1 - Community Forestry: participatory forest management in action

The CF programme has been highly influenced by the government’s long-standing commitment to making changes in the legal framework for forestry management to allow for more participatory and decentralized development. Donor projects helped in facilitating the specific ‘user group’ approach to its implementation. Whether the donor projects were called ‘projects’ or ‘programmes’ seems rather unimportant to the analysis, although today the trend is more towards ‘programmes’, with the attendant meaning that this has for funding and management in the eyes of the key partners, HMGN and the donors.

What is more important under CF is the content of the projects or programmes, the way they are ‘embedded’ in the political and social context, and the way they are managed. As we have seen, during the 1980-90s donor-funded activities were designed as stand-alone projects, with heavy expatriate overheads and parallel administrative and management structures with little thought given to full integration within the participating line ministry. Directly funded project activities was ‘the way it was done’ at the time, with a large range of benefits to foreign technical assistants (TAs) and their Nepal government ‘counterparts’ and other personnel assigned to the projects.

For example, there were ample recurrent cost resources to work with in the special and often high budgets for project vehicles, office equipment, and their maintenance, etc. The TAs were generally paid high salaries, and those Nepalese specialists associated with the projects often realized increased take-home pay due to per diems, travel awards and other benefits (including salary ‘topping’ in some instances).^[20] Donors and government officials were counterparts and partners, not only to the formal arrangements of the projects, but also colluding on occasion in situations where rent-seeking took place. There is only a thin line between host government officers seeking rents, and that of an officer on a donor payroll who is aware that rent-seeking is taking place but chooses not to raise the issue as it might affect their job security or promotion, etc. While the term ‘rent-seeking’ is generally used in connection with the personal behaviour of government officials, it is not unheard of among expatriate project employees, that sub-contracts are not always awarded to the most meritorious group and that rules are interpreted ‘liberally’.

One might ask at this point: What does all this have to do with sustainable access by the poor to mountain natural resources? The answer, of course, is a great deal. If rent-seekers, aid dispersers, contract consultants, etc., are some of the main drivers of the policy and development process, then there may be little concern for achieving development goals such as empowerment, equity, social inclusion and access for the powerless and disadvantaged.

Case Study 2 - Targeting the poor: the leasehold forestry project

The LHF project is an example of where the intention of the project was a commitment to reducing poverty in the short-term and to providing access to natural resources to marginalized groups in a sustained way over the long-term. As recent reviews have shown, however, the design of the programme appears, to some extent, to have side-stepped many of the central issues that need to be addressed. (In hindsight, it is easy to say that if a political scientist or an applied anthropologist had been part of the design team, then some the macro- and micro- institutional issues would have been addressed.) What is clear is that legal provision for marginalized groups to establish rights to land is very important. Whether these issues are addressed in ‘projects’ or as parts of ‘programmes’ seems to be of far less importance than considerations of whether the forestry legislation can be changed to recognise the importance of long term social inclusion of previously excluded groups. Another consideration is whether the forestry sector can rise sufficiently to the challenge of poverty alleviation and other ‘second generation issues’ such as equity, social inclusion and empowerment, so as to enhance access of the poor and disadvantaged both to natural resources and to the policy narrative on access. There is already ample legislation to this effect, both in terms of the Forestry Act of 1993, and the Revised Forest Sector Policy of 2000, and in the Local Self-Governance Act of 1998 and related policy pronouncements. The issues is whether a coalition of policy and development practitioners can activate the legislation for this goal.

In some situations the drive towards programmes rather than projects also appear to be as a result of efficiency arguments on the part of donor agencies. As with all such arguments, however, one has to consider ‘efficiency’ from whose perspective. Large donor projects or programmes that cut down donor and government transaction costs can be both good and bad, depending on the ‘culture’ of the situation. The LHF project appears to be a situation with a great deal of ‘learning and change’ going on in the enterprise, resulting (apparently) in significant changes in the design of the forthcoming new phase of the programme. Some of the large donor projects in the forestry sector, however, appear to have continued for years without much ‘learning and changing’ as regards their ultimate goals and objectives about access, social inclusion and empowerment.

Case Study 3 - CFUG Federation: institutional innovation in practice

Both of the user group federations, the FECOFUN and NEFUG, are interesting from a combined development programme/project and policy perspective. FECOFUN, for example, was founded and designed as an indigenous, member-based institution and serves as a social mobilization organization (thus, technically not a true NGO), and it has remained so. The cause for which the FECOFUN was founded, as a voice of advocacy for CFUGs nationwide, has been supported by various donors and NGOs. And, while it is funded mainly by donors, the type of funding is very different from the modes of traditional donor projects and the new ‘programme’ type funding now found in the forestry sector. In this case, the creators and main actors within the FECOFUN have, themselves, sought out donor support for their cause. In this case, the staff have been social responsible entrepreneurs. While it is true that FECOFUN is within the civil society/private sector, it is wrong to characterize the federation as just another NGO seeking contracts and profits. That sort of general characterization (often mooted by FECOFUN’s detractors) is unfair, both to many NGOs and to the integrity of FECOFUN.

Without doubt FECOFUN is now a major actor in the forestry political economy arena, alongside the Ministry of Forests and Soil Conservation, the Ministry of Finance, District and Village Development Committees (DDCs and VDCs), other civil society actors (NGOs) and private sector entrepreneurs (including CFUGs, themselves) who manage forests and find markets for forest resources of all types.

The rise of NEFUG also represents an interesting institutional development. In this case there was strong but indirect government support for its formation, and it, too, has been given substance through support from donor agencies. Because NEFUG’s did not emerge out of a grass-roots movement of user groups, however, its long term sustainability will depend upon a range of determinants other than those that will effect the future of the FECOFUN. These will include its utility as a complement to the FECOFUN, its acceptance widely by an active rural user group membership and its continuing support from outside (and, subtly, from within the ministry). To date, NEFUG operates in only about a third of the districts of Nepal, while the FECOFUN operates in virtually all of them.

The links and contacts that FECOFUN has established in the rural, urban and international arenas are also well founded, though they are often changing. Against all of this, it can be seen that a narrow preoccupation with policy and project planning, monitoring and evaluation, projects vs. programme support means little unless seen in the context of these broader political economic and institutional determinants, and of their varied actors and the different agendas and reward systems within which each set of actors works. While it may appear obvious, it seems that those who influence policy processes and development practices need to be reminded of the following - that whether the various theories, narratives, tools and strategies found in manuals on policy and planning have any relevance to resource access issues depends on the context, and how coalitions of actors manoeuvre in specific situations. This means, paradoxically, that greater attention to understanding policy processes and the development practices of major actors at the macro level is needed. This position is in contrast to the large and complimentary literature that looks at village/regional level issues of common property resource management (CPRM).^[21] These micro-analyses have been useful and influential, but it is time to move on to pursue complimentary analyses on policy processes. This, in turn, entails looking at the culture of the actors at the macro level, and the ways that they relate to the micro level.

Case Study 4 - Entrepreneurship and access: handmade paper from lokta bark

In the case of the handmade paper study, we find a situation where the growth of the industry has taken place largely outside of any project framework. While the original UNICEF-supported project was catalytic in drawing attention to the industry and in demonstrating ways to attain a sustainable resource base and the economic potential of the market, the actual growth and major improvements of the industry has been led by actors in the private sector in ways that were not in any sense merely the ‘scaling-up’ of institutions from the earlier project. In fact, the existing organizations and institutions of ‘the project’ have had considerable trouble becoming dynamic and receptive to change in the ever-changing context of the worldwide handicraft niche market that it serves, and the changing political and economic context in Nepal.

Again, one might ask: What has this to do with access to mountain natural resource? And again we say: a great deal, for some of the current trend in donor and government agencies is to minimize transaction costs and increase ‘efficiency’ of operations. At this point one must ask: What are the goals and purpose of the aid enterprise? In the current situation, reducing the staff costs in an aid donor agencies (to minimize overheads) might well result in a far lower quality of partnership, hence in aid project or programme performance.^[22] Of course, we are not saying that increased donor management costs will result in more effective development practice for ensuring improved access by the poor to mountain resources. What we are saying is that simple-minded generalizations that do not look at the quality and nature of the ‘costs’ is unhelpful.

From the perspective of useful aid partnership, it is significant that the paper industry case shows that demand-led request for technical assistance and advice resulted in a very cost-effective consulting input from the perspective of socially responsible entrepreneurs in the industry. In the context of changing current policy and development practice, it would be instructive to see if a new project funded by USAID to promote business service organizations concerned with the marketing of alternative forest resources (AFRs) and products is based on an institutional analysis of current practice and effective ways to facilitate and support social responsibility in the AFR industry. The lack of concern in past projects with economics, access and social inclusion issues means that such projects should be directed towards such concerns.

2.4 Poverty reduction and social inclusion

Poverty reduction, social inclusion and related issues, all of which reflect deep concerns for access by the poor and disadvantaged to natural resources, have been at the heart of government and donor development planning for many years. Nepal’s current Tenth Five-Year Plan: Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper, 2002-2007 (May 2003), formulated by HMGN with the assistance and support of most aid donors and large international NGOs, describes intended development objectives and behaviours as more transparent and accessible than ever before. While current development concepts and words such as access by the poor, sustainable livelihoods, enabling environment, social inclusion, gender, empowerment, participation and full employment are frequently heard and seen in today’s development discussions and documents, most of these ideas and concepts are not new; neither are the notions of the ‘learning and change organization’, nor a political economy analysis of policy processes. Even at the most mundane level, project and policy cycle management manuals have in them core concepts of how to manage and monitor projects and policy effectively, to evaluate the lessons learned (best practices) and to do things differently and better the next time. In this context, it is useful to examine the case studies to see what they tell us as regards the way notions of alleviating poverty and enhancing social inclusion of the disadvantaged have changed in the last few years. Improving sustainable access for the poor to natural resources is a major way of reducing poverty and improving social inclusion.

A major concern of the CF programme is better management of Nepal’s mountain and hills forest resources. Poverty reduction and social inclusion, however, was not the primary goal; rather access to resources for subsistence use by community members, and sustainable management overall were the initial goals of the programme. In some situations there was a naive and innocent belief by some actors involved that CF would bolster community development in general, and would then lead to poverty reduction and long term social inclusion. While poverty reduction has taken place in some situations, much of the data available indicate that there have not been major changes in gender, caste, ethnic group, and elite/poor relationships, nor have younger people in communities been given a significant voice in important decision-making arenas. Many descriptive analyses of CF projects point out the widespread phenomenon of different forms of ‘elite capture’ that ultimately deny access to resources and to decision-making by the poor and other marginalized groups.^[23]

The previous lack of monitoring and analysis of poverty reduction and social inclusions issues is a little surprising. There is a large international literature that documents and points to the likely outcomes of ‘community development’ projects vis-à-vis equity goals.^[24] Some of those experiences are aptly summed up in a book entitled The Myth of Community,^[25] but there is an even longer and more in-depth literature that reviews and evaluates various models of ‘community development’. For whatever reasons, however, it appears that the international TA on some major donor-sponsored forestry projects and their partners were not aware of this literature, although within Nepal some observers have pointed, with emphasis, to the intransigent nature of social relationships at the village level in what they describe as a fundamentally feudal society.^[26]

In general, as regards access to natural resources and social inclusion, it appears that respective government agencies, donors and international NGOs do not appear to have rigorously monitored to take actions according to their own formally declared intensions. There are indications, however, that this is changing. It is interesting to note, for example, that the FECOFUN has made issues such as poverty reduction and social inclusion a major part of its mandate. For example, a strong representation of women in leadership roles in mandated in the federation’s constitution,^[27] and increasingly the federation is facilitating its member CFUGs nationwide to advance social inclusion as a group goal. While there are some negative assessments of the social inclusion outcomes of the CF programme,^[28] there is, at present, no comprehensive assessment of its effects on access, poverty reduction or social inclusion. We suspect that there has been far more social inclusion taking place in the nearly 13,000 FUGs in the country than has been reported, but there is little attention in the available documentation to this effect. Further study is also needed on the overall impacts of the CF programme on rural livelihoods generally.

In sharp contrast to the community forestry programme, the main goal of the leasehold forestry programme has been to improve the rural livelihoods of the most poor households and to increase sustainable social inclusion in their access to resources. In Nepal’s feudal rural society, the plight of the poor is a contentious issue - either politely ignored by the powerful local elites, or arguably being addressed in ways that are not easily accepted under current socio-economic circumstances. It may well be that for these very reasons, the LHF project has faced some serious problems.

For example, problems of eligibility, displacement, local cost-effective poverty assessment criteria, etc., are all very familiar issues in ‘poverty-targeted programmes’, but there appears to be only scant attention to them in the small literature and documentation available from the LHF project. Among other programmes to which the LHF planners and administrators might have looked for advice and wisdom, is the Small Farmer Development Programme (SFDP), so prominently involved in the project described in Case Study 4: Entrepreneurship and access: hand-made paper from lokta bark. The SFDP was started in the 1970s in Asia, and has had many achievements (and failings) in improving the rural livelihoods of poorer farmers.^[29]

It appears that the LHF project has had some significant effects. It has become a very popular programme, despite its problems, within the Ministry of Forests and Soil Conservation, and the Department of Forests, and it has brought to centre stage the need to include, in more than a rhetorical way, poverty alleviation and social inclusion considerations into the mainstream of the overall CF programme. As noted elsewhere, some of Nepal’s nearly 13,000 CF user groups have begun experimenting with ways to incorporate the leasehold concept into their planning, so as to further their own pro-poor objectives. There may be considerable positive institutional experience going on there that needs to be documented for the lessons learned and best practices.

The handmade paper case study illustrates that poverty reduction, community development, employment generation and social responsibility in private sector activities have a very long tradition in Nepal, and are not the product of recent development planner’s concepts and preoccupations. This case study illustrates well that a concern with rural livelihoods often necessitates a concomitant concern with hard economic analysis, so that markets for products from alternative forest resources are accessible and that the benefits for any value-added activities as a result of transport and processing is shared equitably.

2.5 Sources of institutional and technological innovations

One of the reasons for using an actor innovations systems framework to understand the process of change as it relates to access to natural resources, poverty reduction and social inclusion in the Himalayas, is because the framework focuses on sources of technical and institutional innovations and on the role of specific actors (groups, or coalitions) that lead to their spread. While development planners and policy makers often have a view of the world that social change occurs as a result of their plans, their policies and their projects, the innovations systems approach is much broader in recognising that much of development and change is ‘unplanned’ and, as often as not, useful innovations are created and spread with little if any inputs from planners and policy analysis. The case studies illustrate well some of the usefulness of the framework.

In the case of the CF programme, it is clear that the notion of the user group approach to develop was well grounded in much earlier institutional traditions of Nepal.^[30] The development of relevant legislation took place with significant inputs of the staff of an FAO project.

The institutional innovation leading to the founding of the FECOFUN came up from below and was certainly not the creation of a ‘think tank’, nor of project planners or a planning commission. The growth and spread of the FECOFUN is also driven from within, by its unique membership from the local level CFUGs of rural Nepal and not the result of donor funding.

Interestingly, in the case of the forestry sector, most policy and development planning has focussed around ‘institutional’ innovation, rather than technological innovations. Few documents or reports speak about the introduction and promotion of ‘new’ technology (as is so common in agriculture, for example), and it appears that linkages of the forestry sector with scientific research organizations is weak.^[31] This is surprising, as there is a great deal of overlap of some forestry concerns with agricultural and other rural technologies. In agriculture for example, there is a whole range of government, private and NGO bodies that search out, create, promote and ‘scale up’ improved technologies. Linkages between technical researchers, extension agencies and users is at the heart of many development initiatives. This does not seem to be the case in the Forestry sector. It is already happening on the ground, however, in the case of alternative forest resources (AFRs), quite often without support or facilitation from government agencies and policy.

Nonetheless, under the LHF project, given its central concern with enhancing the livelihoods of the poor, formal involvement of the Nepal Agricultural Research Council (NARC) was built into the programme design. We suspect that as more research is done on what is actually happening on the ground in CF user groups, and in the leasehold programme, far greater linkages with actors providing useful technological innovations will emerge; far more, that is, than is presently seen. Even at a cursory level, the very fact that some user groups embrace members who are also involved with ancillary development user groups, in livestock, irrigation, health and FFS, indicates to us that considerable contact with actors who might bring new technical innovations into forest activities may enhance the forestry-technological research linkages.

The case of the growth of the handmade paper industry is interesting as it shows that the most important innovations came at the start of the growth process, with the early UNICEF project staff playing an important role in introducing the idea of marketing lokta-paper cards to a global market. During the project period there were creative inputs for card design from TA consultants, while more recently, new designs have come mainly from the UNICEF marketing office in Geneva. In the wider handicrafts industry, technical and design innovations are coming from both inside and outside the industry, and it is significant that one of the first things the industry’s business support organization, Nepal Handmade Paper Association (HANDPASS), did shortly after it was founded in 1996 was to seek outside consultants for advice on developing an international marketing strategy.