Community Participation in Resource Management and Well Being of People in Nepal
Keshav L. Maharjan
Graduate School for International Development and Cooperation, Hiroshima University,
Higashi-Hiroshima, Hiroshima 739-8529, Japan, Email: mkeshav@hiroshima-u.ac.jp
ABSTRACT
Sustenance of resource management and well being essentially means sustainable use and management of
resources available to people, living in and around a vicinity of a geographically set region integrated
ecologically, socially and culturally, in activities, such as, agricultural production, forest use, water use, etc.,
so as to rationally conserve the environment, taking in to consideration the future use. Sustenance of
resource management would mean appraisal of traditional ways of resource uses, continued for centuries and
even millennia, but often prone to be neglected in this modernizing world. With little exercise of systematic
arrangements of locally available know-how, resources and organization in a location specific way, the
production can be enhanced in a sustainable manner, without much depending upon external assistances and
or interventions. These measures would be locally available and cheap, much cheaper than getting knowhow from other countries and international organizations, which would fail more than succeed due to
difference in environment and socio-culture of the society and the context in which they are developed
originally. Such location specific measures can be adopted in farming as well. The farming with these
measures is termed as location specific environment adaptive farming. Further, these measures can be
practiced and achieved at the farm level, in a small holding scale. But, it is necessary to formulate a set of
well-defined policies to achieve effectiveness. This is very essential for sustaining vast numbers of very
vulnerable small and marginal farmers, often living at fragile regions at a meager subsistence level.
In the context of rural development, nurturing sustainability in the process of development, it is felt that this
issue deserves much attention than many of the other issues. With this in mind the conceptual framework of
location specific environment adaptive farming and its application in the Nepalese farming will be discussed
here. In doing so, the characteristics of the Nepalese farming will be perceived first, and their recent
dynamisms with implications to sustainable resource management and well being of the people will be
discussed. Various development interventions of the government, local and international non-governmental
organizations (NGO), activities of the people, individuals or groups in this regard will be summarized in
brief.
In the discussion a case of forest use with community participation will be considered as the livelihood of
Nepali people depends much upon forest resource which plays a critical role in their well being, especially
where access to alternative sources; energy for cooking, nutrition for animals, materials for fertilizing
agricultural fields and constructing materials for shelter, are limited. This issue will be addressed in this
paper by examining the forest resource management practices, participatory and or otherwise, and its affect
on forest coverage quality and the well being of rural people in two different stages in a village, with 389 ha
of forest occupying 56% of the total village area, lying in the steep hill of Mahabharat Range in the southern
hills of Kathmandu valley, Lalitpur District. This discussion will also highlight the difference of well being
among the main ethnic/caste groups in the village; Brahmin/Chhetri (high Hindu caste), Magar/Tamang
(Tibeto Burmans) and Kami (occupational caste: cobler).
Finally, some discussion to deal with these issues and a policy formulation at the local level, including the
nature and modalities of incorporating the community based organizations, will be done from the view point
of end users that considers local needs, local resources and their usage, local environment, society and
culture.