Customary Use Rights and Leasehold Group Approach for the Management of Degraded Forest Lands

Abstract

"Attempting to alleviate rural poverty through leasing government forest land to groups of landless and marginal farmers is an interesting new approach in the mid Hills of Nepal. Integrated support is provided to these leasehold groups by the forestry and livestock departments and Agricultural Development Bank both for leaseland development and for income generating activities on-farm and off-farm. Although forest land is, de jure, government property, de facto, customary rights are claimed by local communities. In the past, there were many social obstacles in transforming forest lands to plantations without motivation and involving local people. Lessons learned from the past and recognizing customary rights, a written community consensus is obtained from the local community to allocate forest land for leasing to groups of poor people. This is one of the most time-consuming and difficult tasks in the process of leasing land and engenders many conflicts. The legality and validity of these customary rights as well as community consensus are, however, questionable. Obtaining consensus is nevertheless one of the processes in which the whole community is involved in making decisions for allocation of common resources. This paper provides a detailed discussion of customary use rights of local people related to leasehold forest land, the types of conflicts observed during this process and the strategies adopted to resolve it."