Browsing by Author "Gautam, Ambika P."

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Community Forestry, Equity and Sustainable Livelihoods in Nepal
(2008) Gautam, Ambika P.; Karmacharya, Mukunda; Karna, Birendra
"Community forestry in Nepal was specifically designed to address the problem of environmental degradation and enhance livelihood opportunities through increased supply of forest products, generation of income and empowerment of the rural forest-dependent communities. The concept behind is that people's access to the forest and their involvement in decision making directly affects distribution of goods and benefits and, therefore, their livelihoods. Although the community forestry approach in the country has demonstrated notable successes in many cases, it still has several shortcomings. The difficulties relate to the inclusion and full participation of traditional users, especially the disadvantaged and marginalized groups, and the distribution of benefits to them. Based on the data collected from several community managed forests using the International Forestry Resources and Institutions research protocols, this paper examines various ways in which community forestry contributes to sustainable livelihoods, looks at the nature of dependence of the local people on the forest and how this is likely to change over time. Finally, the paper provides some recommendations for enhancing the contribution of community forests and forestry towards achieving sustainable livelihoods and alleviating poverty."
Evolution and Impacts of Community Based Forest Management in the Hills of Nepal
(2004) Gautam, Ambika P.; Shivakoti, Ganesh P.
"This paper first presents a brief overview of the evolution of community based forest management in Nepal. Impact of the community based forest management on the biophysical environment, changes on the availability of essential forest products to the user households due to changes in forest condition, and adaptation strategies of the households to changing availability of the forest products have been analyzed in a mountain watershed in Central Nepal. We report that the community based forest management programs had several positive impacts on the forest and the people of the study area but the programs also had some limitations and may face challenges ahead. The findings are expected to contribute in the identification of prevailing gaps in forest policies and implementation strategies related to community based forest management in Nepal and other Asian countries, which can be useful to adapt the existing systems to suite the local contexts for continued benefit of the local people and supporting ecosystems."
Variation in Management: Variation in Equity, Livelihoods and the Forest Conditions in South Asia
(2008) Kamran, Muhammad Asif; Shivakoti, Ganesh P.; Webb, Edward L.; Gautam, Ambika P.
"A number of studies have identified several important factors responsible for management of common pool resources; and both success and failure cases have been reported across management regimes. However a little work has been done on distributional effects of the resources in varying management structures i.e. to what extent the Community Based Natural Resources Management (CBNRM) approaches and others have been able to deliver the desired goals of ensuring livelihood security and equitable distribution of benefits to the resource deficit communities. This paper focuses mainly on these equity and livelihood issues. Our basis of analysis is governed by the information available in International Forestry Resources and Institutions (IFRI) meta database by selecting community level data using variables on livelihood and equity issues relating with resource uses and resource condition. The IFRI database includes information from several countries and several locations within these countries; we have selected variables for which information are comparable. We have used the user groups (which fall under the forest association) as unit of analysis to compare different management structures vis-a-vis their effect on the equity and forest dependence. Although equity covers varying dimensions including equal rights to access the resource, the rights according to efforts made by specific segment of the society and the rights considering basic needs of the different individuals in the community; this paper uses the definition characterized by equality rules making and effects of rules on group members involved in resource use and management as proxy variables for equitable distribution of benefits. Similarly forest dependence has been measured by variables such as % share in food, fuel wood, biomass and timber requirements of the user group etc. The forest condition being the dependent variable is measured by the foresters perception about the forest i.e. improving, decreasing or constant. The paper then investigates how the forest condition is influenced by equity and resource dependence variables under different management structures."