In this study we are interested in understanding, over time, how community forest user groups (CFUGs) have networked and become federated to provide collective action on behalf of local forest users’ rights under the Forest Act of 1993 and the Forest Regulations of 1995. In so doing, we can see how forestry development and the policy process take place in a Democracy. The Federation of Community Forestry Users, Nepal (FECOFUN) was founded in 1995, and is what has been called a ‘social movement organization’ as distinct from a non-governmental organization (NGO). FECOFUN is a prime example of an indigenously-inspired, non-project designed organization that, during its first decade of existence, has had significant impact on how policy practices are played out and local access is enhanced in community forestry.
FECOFUN is an indigenous national network of community forestry user groups (CFUGs) founded by and for CFUG members.[170] As a national organization of users, FECOFUN is uniquely positioned to organize local user groups collectively and to link group initiatives at the community, range post, ilaka, district, regional and national levels. Since its founding in 1995, FECOFUN has registered nearly 11,000 group memberships in all but one of Nepal’s 75 districts.[171] The mission of FECOFUN is ‘to inculcate self-reliance and strength among forest user groups through promoting their involvement in the decision-making processes on the basis of participation in masse’ (FECOFUN 2000). Its objectives are shown in Box 7.1. And, while it has been supported and encouraged by various non-governmental actors, including some major donor financial assistance, its indigenous origins are highly significant. The federation was neither designed nor established under any formal development project initiative.
FECOFUN is described as a ‘social movement organization’, as distinct from an NGO, in that its office-holders and rank-and-file members are rural farmers, men and women. There are no development professionals on staff. As such, its members are of ‘likeminded individuals who are prepared to make claims about how personal or group life ought to be organized’ and who ‘differ from other types of formal organizations by prioritising the mobilization [of] their constituency for collective action with the goal of obtaining some collective good from authorities’. They are a group designed to encourage social change by challenging the status quo.[172]
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Box 7.1 The Objectives of the Federation of Community Forestry Users, Nepal (FECOFUN)
To these, FECOFUN is to coordinate with the DOF [Department of Forests] at the central level, and the DOF at the district level. FECOFUN fosters women’s roles in the decision-making processes, and 50 percent of positions at all levels of the FECOFUN organization are reserved for women members. FECOFUN adopts capacity growth of rural people through training at local levels as an integral part of its advocacy initiatives. It adopts a strategy to train leader FUG members so that they would be capable to independently develop and materialize programs. Source: FECOFUN (2000) |
In a recent description of the organization’s founding and activities, from an observer at the conception, birth and growth of FECOFUN, Britt describes the organization as being ‘instrumental in advocating forest user rights, lobbying members of Nepal’s parliament on resource-related legislation, negotiating solutions for problems with forest policy implementation, and mediating conflicts among community forestry user groups, the Forest Department and forest users, and a multinational forestry company and local people.’ She goes on to say that recent civil actions orchestrated by FECOFUN members against certain government directives and ordinances ‘include marches, demonstrations, signature campaigns, court cases, legal injunctions, petitions, hunger strikes, and sit-ins...
Through these kinds of engagements FECOFUN is beginning to shape new space within civil society where forest-related conflicts and questions of property rights and control over resources and their management can be more effectively represented, debated and negotiated.’ Thus, the kind of involvement that FECOFUN embodies, from the ground (community level) up, is ‘a radical departure from the kinds of top-down, extractive, centralized and tributary relations that have characterized forestry sector interactions to date’.[173]
The evolution of CFUG networking into the politically influential access-oriented federation that it is today is shown in Figure 7.1. The federation traces its roots from efforts during the early 1990s to create networks of user groups. In 1991-1992, small locally initiated informal networks began organizing among CFUGs located close to one another, the first of which arose in Bhojpur and Dhankuta Districts in eastern Nepal. In time, forestry project staff and DFOs began using these self-initiated networks for planning and information sharing, practices that still continue today in most districts. Some emerged around specific themes or issues, such as resin-tapping in east Nepal. Between 1993 and 1995 several national/regional workshops and seminars on community forestry were held. They attracted user group representatives from many districts nationwide, thus furthering the networking movement. These included the First National Forest User Workshop Seminar at Dhankuta in 1993, the Second National Forest Seminar at Kathmandu in 1993, the First South Asia User Workshop Seminar at Kathmandu in 1995, and the Community Forest and Private Plantation User Workshop Seminar in Kabre District, near Kathmandu, in 1995. These events provided CFUG members an opportunity to discuss technical and institutional issues, including the identification of ways and means to promote and advocate community forestry agendas and users’ rights over forest management nationwide, and to explore the need for a national level users’ federation.
Following implementation of the new Forest Regulations in early 1995, these various networking initiatives were merged, and in June 1995 an ad-hoc FECOFUN committee was formed during one of the national meetings. This initiative was given technical and financial support from several NGOs, bilateral projects and independent experts. FECOFUN was formally organized and officially registered in 1995 under the NGO Registration Act of 1976. Since then, FECOFUN has become a mainstream network of thousands of CFUGs throughout Nepal, and a common platform for community representatives to review, reflect and highlight the problems, perspectives and interests of local people dependent on forests and their multiple resources.
This progression from informal networking to federation is shown graphically in Figure 7.1.
Figure 7.1. Progress of CFUG Local/District Networking to National Federation
It was also during this same period of time, the early 1990s, that the roles of government personnel were also being reconsidered and modified through re-training, exposure visits and continuous interaction of forestry staff with various INGOs, bilateral projects, independent researchers and other specialists. It was the hope of the donors who sponsored the re-orientation trainings that the old top-down police-like roles of foresters could be transformed into more facilitative and consultative roles of working to support and encourage CFUG operations as the new locus of local forest resource management. (See Case Study 1 on Community Forestry.)
After FECOFUN was registered, a constitution was written with provision to establish district chapters throughout the country. As the district chapters are recognized as an extension of the national FECOFUN, they need not be registered separately in the districts. While the CFUGs are required to work in close coordination with the District Forest Offices (DFOs), FECOFUN is entirely independent of government except for the registration and renewal-related obligations that it must meet under the NGO Registration Act. Nepal’s legislation and practice in this regard are good.
The main objectives of FECOFUN are to network local CFUGs to help them expand and strengthen their legal rights over access, use and management of forest resources; to become, in short, what one analyst calls ‘catalytic, translocal organizations’.[174] See Box 7.1.
The organization has seven-tiered structure including:
General Assembly, the supreme body of FECOFUN, consisting of equal representation by women and men from all the districts) elected for five years.
National Executive Committee, the main executive body of the federation, comprised of one female and one male representative from each of the 14 Zones of Nepal)[175], elected five years.
National Council, comprised of one male and one female representative from each district and office bearers of the national executive committee, to serve for 1 year.
Steering Committee, the main working committee, comprised of a chairperson, vice chairperson, member-secretary, plus three members selected by the national executive committee, to serve for five years.
Zonal Coordination Committee, whose members serve for two years.
District Branch Committees, whose members serve for four years.
Range Post Level Committees, whose members serve for three years.
The FECOFUN today has a secretariat consisting of 20 full-time central working committee members, 17 full time technical and logistic support staff and nine temporary field staff. FECOFUN puts a high priority in involving disadvantaged and typically socially-excluded persons, especially women, among its officers and staff. The FECOFUN Constitution requires that 50 percent of all positions at all levels must be filled by women. There are, today, 14 women in the Executive Committee, and another seven women working on the central staff.[176] These units and persons coordinate and organize activities at central, regional (sub-national) and local levels in collaboration with a number of donor and technical support organizations. An advisory board, consisting of NGO activists and forestry project staff, provides guidance and inputs to the organization, and legal services are provided, as needed, to FECOFUN member groups both locally and nationally.
Recently, further questions over the representation, empowerment and social inclusion of poor, marginalized and disadvantaged groups other than of women (i.e. of ethnic minorities and Dalit artisan castes) have been raised within the federation. Thus, access of the normally socially-excluded groups is now high on the agenda. This includes their representation on the federation’s advisory board and the strengthening of good governance in these regards within local CFUGs.
According to the FECOFUN constitution, district chapters are formed when there are at least ten CFUGs registered as members of FECOFUN. Rangepost chapters may also be formed. Any CFUG with a registered constitution and an approved operational plan is eligible to join the federation. At the time of affiliation, each group pays a registration fee of 235 rupees (approximately $3), and an annual membership renewal fee of 100 rupees. In the case of district and range post level chapters, 60 percent of the group registration fee is transferred back from the central office to the district chapters (40 percent in support of range post chapter operations, and 20 percent for district operations).
As of August 2003, FECOFUN had chapters in all but one of the nation’s 75 districts. Federation membership has increased from 638 CFUGs in 1996 to 10,500 in 2003. In less than a decade, it has grown into truly representative national federation of forest user groups, from the original ad hoc committee of a few dozens groups at its start. In 2001, the Federation held its second general assembly.
The FECOFUN’s size and scale of activities are also indicated by the amount of financial resources it requires and mobilizes annually. In 2000-2001 fiscal year, for instance, it spent 6.5 million rupees (approximately $87,000) on administration and programs. Of this amount, less than four percent came from the Federation’s internal sources (e.g., from membership fees and publication sales) and 96 percent was raised as donor grants. Although this indicates great donor interest in the federation and its activities, raising more internal contributions to make FECOFUN financially sustainable is one of its greatest challenges, as such a heavy dependence on donors is considered undesirable in the long run. The move away from donor dependence to empowering member communities to support the federation would be a very positive move. In actuality, FECOFUN depends on only a few main donors, and its leadership actively seeks to avoid creating or reflecting a donor agenda or project structure. Dependence on donor funding, however, is problematic, and ways in which the federation can become more self-sufficient are now under discussion.
In the past few years, FECOFUN’s activities have been oriented mainly towards strengthening local institutions and advocating for the maintenance of local rights regarding access, use, management and sharing the benefits of forest resources, according to the standing legislation. FECOFUN activities have had considerable influence on the conditions, processes and outcomes of forest management at the local level, and on contentious forest policy changes at the national level. They include: (a) advocacy and critical awareness among members, (b) the promotion of community forestry support services, and (c) participation by the forest resource user constituency in the policy development process.
FECOFUN has also established collaboration with diverse groups of institutions, particularly with international NGOs, to facilitate the delivery of needed services at the local level. It is an active player in all key deliberations and processes of forestry at the national level, such as the influential Forestry Sector Coordination Committee (FSCC), the Nepal Participatory Action Network (NEPAN), and the Nepal N-Timber Forest Product (NTFP) Network (NNN), and locally in the few district where they operate, as members on District Forest Coordination Committees (DFCCs).[177]
Before the emergence of FECOFUN as a CFUG federation, all community forestry extension services were delivered through the Department of Forests and bilateral projects. The federation, for its part, has provided information and awareness-raising services from the citizen’s perspective and addressing citizen needs, activities that differ from those conducted by DFOs, donor funded projects and most other NGOs. The federation has helped local community groups to develop critical awareness of their legal rights and of technical services. It has highlighted the demand for appropriate forest management services at the local level. Key service areas promoted by FECOFUN include CFUG formation, institutional strengthening and technical capacity-building. Some awareness-raising activities have been tailored to specific government plans, proposals, ministerial directives and government orders that are considered detrimental to local interests and to the long-term sustainability of the forest ecosystem. One prominent example is FECOFUN’s successful campaign against the government turning over management of forests to private companies, thus retaining access rights for local communities. FECOFUN has also challenged the legality of the First Amendment to the Forest Act of 1993, which gives authority to DFOs to punish users’ group committee members. FECOFUN’s view is that this amendment violates the users’ judiciary rights by changing committee members’ responsibilities from the users to the DFO. And, in another case, the federation framed a legal challenge against a Cabinet Decision of May 2000 which placed a 40 percent tax on forest products sold outside of the user group.[178] The challenge was heard in the Nepal Supreme Court, and early in 2003 the court ruled that the tax had been levied without following proper procedures and was struck down, whereupon the MFSC legally reinstated it in the form of a temporary Ministerial Directive. In other instances, FECOFUN’s role has been more successful.
Thus, FECOFUN’s awareness-raising activities have helped to challenge and, in some instances, change some of the negative imbalance in traditional patron-client relationship between the central government and local user groups, a relationship perpetuated by the Ministry of Forests and Soil Conservation. Direct action and information services supplied by the federation have helped to strengthen and maintain legal and customary rights in regard to community forest resources.
In recent years, the role of government in community forest management has been highly contested, especially involving the confusing government orders, ministerial directives, cabinet decisions, circulars, and guidelines that CFUG members and others believe to be regressive and counter to the spirit of the original CF legislation. Due in part to FECOFUN’s activism in these instances, and that of other NGOs and advocacy forums, support of the Ministry to the FECOFUN has remained limited, and the two appear at times to act as ‘the government’ and ‘the opposition’. Nonetheless, this situation has served positively to provide a necessary checks-and-balance mechanism for maintaining democratic governance over the nation’s forest resources. These are types of contestations are very good indications of ‘Democracy at work’ and a clear indication that the process of policy making is moving in a positive direction.
Since FECOFUN’s First General Assembly in 1996, the federation’s presence has been felt in the agendas and programs of most institutions working in the forestry sector, and the name ‘FECOFUN’ is found in almost all community forestry-related reports and documents in Nepal. Principle forestry sector donors such as the World Bank, DFIC, SDC, SNV, USAID and others. Even the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Research (ICIMOD) in Kathmandu and the Regional Community Forestry Training Centre for Asia and the Pacific (RECOFTC) in Bangkok have recognized the valuable contributions of FECOFUN in bringing local perspectives into national policy processes and have provided various levels of funding to support the federation’s work. Along with other NGO alliances, including such influential groups as HIMAWANTI (Himalayan Grassroots Women’s Natural Resource Management Association),[179] FECOFUN has brought new consultative and participatory perspectives into the policy-making process, which were previously dominated by the government alone.
In the second or third year after the emergence of FECOFUN, there were efforts by some groups to split FECOFUN or create parallel federations, but these were unsuccessful. In August 2001, however, a new and separate group calling itself the Nepalese Federation of Forest Resource User Groups (NEFUG) was created. NEFUG was established as an umbrella federation to represent a more diverse group of forest resource users than FECOFUN, including Soil and Water Conservation Groups, Buffer Zone Forest User Committees, Leasehold Forestry Groups, and Religious Forest User Groups. It was founded with the encouragement of government officers in the Ministry of Forest and Soil Conservation and its various departments. While NEFUG also appears to be an indigenously inspired organization, its tacit relationship with the ministry stands in marked contrast with the FECOFUN’s entirely independent operations that are often in contestation with the government and its policies.
NEFUG held its first general assembly in October 2002. Twenty members were elected to the executive committee, with equal representation from female and male members. In addition, the executive committee also nominates seven additional members. At present, NEFUG maintains contact in approximately 55 districts, but formal committees have been established only in 24 districts, with ad hoc committees in another 22 districts. About nine more districts are in regular contact but, as yet, their membership is not formalized.[180]
NEFUG has evolved as an alternative platform for forest resource user groups with a wider potential membership, but the scale of the institution and its influence in the discourse on policy and management of forest resources has not reached the level of significance as that of the FECOFUN. By comparison, the size of FECOFUN, the scale of its activities and its area of operations have all progressively expanded to embrace the social, institutional and political spheres of the forestry sector.
What is significant about FECOFUN from a development actor perspective is that it represents the emergence of a new institution that is influencing the direction and content of policy processes in a significant way. This is an institutional innovation that has come from within Nepal to represent ‘the voice’ of CFUGs in challenging government. The emergence of NEFUG as a new actors on the development stage is different. It is more like a group which is helping in better implementation of declared government policy. We feel that NEFUG, too, is playing an important role by representing a variety of other forest resource user groups besides only CFUGs.
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[170] CFUGs are defined and
described in Case Study 1: Community Forestry-Participatory Forest Management
in Action. [171] Only the northern border district of Mustang is not represented within FECOFUN. [172] See Britt 2002:5. In her PhD dissertation, Britt presents an extensive discussion and analysis of the founding of FECOFUN and its significance within Nepal’s community forestry development. In categorizing it as ‘social movement organization’, Britt refers to Gamson 1975, Kriesi 1996, Lofland 1996 and McAdam et al 1988. [173] Britt 2002: 4, emphasis added. The ‘new space within civil society’ she refers to has a great deal to do with citizen access to both the natural resources (forests, in this instance) and to socio-political resources (e.g., policy dialogue) wherein decisions about control and access are made in the national arena. Britt calls this type of civil access space ‘dialectical opportunity space’, defined as ‘arenas of enablement... a negotiated process of “doing” (enablement) which facilitates and sustains the creation of a “space” where “doing” can be effectively done (empowerment)’ (2002:4, fn.6). [174] Veer 2003. [175] A zone is a politico-geographic division of the country consisting of a number of districts. There are altogether 14 zones in Nepal. [176] These figures of FECOFUN officers and staff are as of September 2003. Compare the high number (50 percent) of women on the FECOFUN Executive Committee with less than three percent female staff in Nepal’s civil service. [177] See Case Study 1, §1.5: Community Forestry Actors and Roles/Local Government Bodies. [178] N.K. Shrestha 2001. [179] HIMAWANTI is a remarkable organization, a network of grassroots women from across the Hindu Kush-Himalayan region dedicated to the protection and development of natural resources. It provides a forum for women to share experiences and evolve strategies, and to strengthen communications and alliances among themselves as the main users and conservators of forest, land and water resources (Bhatia 2001). HIMAWANTI is an active player in Nepal, in the development of women’s affairs and rights in association with natural resource management. It often works in alliance with other NGOs and with FECOFUN on various women’s rights advocacy activities. Two other NGOs which sometimes work with FECOFUN and are having an increasing influence on policy processes in the forestry sector are SAWTEE (South Asia Workshop on Trade, Economics and Environment) and Pro-Public. [180] These figures for NEFUG membership are as of September 2003. |
