15. Murbica Transformation of the Nepali State

15. Murbica Transformation of the Nepali State

Resisting the Environmentalist State

(Ben Campbell)

Population, Development and Natural Resources.

Kathmandu University.

Submitted To:                                                                                                      Submitted By:

Professor Amulya Ratna Tuladhar.                                                        Murbika Prasai.

                                                                                                                                   Master’s in Development Studies.

                                                                                                                                   31^st May 24, 2011.           

Abstract:

Before 1957, a large segment of the country’s forests were owned and managed privately, although some forests were under other forms of tenure, such as those owned by religious trusts or the State.  In 1957, the government nationalized all forests and took over their management responsibility.

Resisting the environmentalist state by Ben Campbell has been taken from the book Resistance and the State: Nepalese Experiences by David Gellner.  This paper includes the role of the state and the people in ownership and conservation of the resources (mainly forest). Humans have not always lived under states. Before there were no specialized agencies of law-enforcement, taxation, or justice; disputes were settled through mediation.

In pre-modern times some people lived under states, others lived at the margins of states, and still others lived beyond the reach of the states and even in ignorance of them. By contrast, everyone today lives under a state, at least nominally. Land and forests are the most important natural resources in Nepal. The state has direct control over these resources through various policies, legislation and institutions. Although the Government has introduced participatory approaches in managing natural resources, particularly in the management of forestry resources, the outcomes have been variable depending upon the level of autonomy given to the local people. Forests, as common property resources, are easier to manage using a participatory approach than land.

Contents:

1.     Summary

2.     Authorial Context

3.     Roles and Influence of Institutions

4.     Analysis from major analytical OTB categories and themes

a.     Management and Tenure system in community and leasehold forestry.

i)                   Community Forestry

ii)                Leasehold Forestry

b.    Linkage between Land and Forest

c.      Conflicts in Land and Forest Management system

d.    Centralized Land Governance

e.      Abolition of Collective Rights

f.      Privatization in Nepal

g.     State Response for Land Reform (Government Initiatives)

h.    Comparison of Community and Government Managed Forest

i.       Present Land Tenure System

j.       Key Actors

i)                   The State

ii)                Political Parties

iii)              Civil Society Organization and Rights Holders

k.    On the whole Land Reforms has failed so far in Nepal

l.       Conclusion

m.  References

Summary:

The country’s total surface area is 147 181 km2 and it has a population of 24 million people. Its forest ecosystem and vegetation varies with altitude, which ranges from near sea level to the highest point on earth. Nepal’s forests are broadly divided into two ownership categories: national and private. National forests are further categorized into: (1) government-managed forests; (2) community forests; (3) leasehold forests; (4) religious forests; and (5) protected forests. Community, leasehold and religious forests are managed by local communities or user groups, while government-managed and protected forests are directly administered and protected by government agencies. Private forests are managed by individual households. The present study focuses on community and leasehold forestry.

The colonial forms of land designation interrupted customary interactions with forests, pastures, and soil by inserting public/private categorization of tenures. These have exercised oppressive impact on the daily lives and ways of production of the rural majority throughout the world. In 1976, Langtang National Park was created which covers Rasuwa and Sindhupalchok district to protect a representative sector of the central Himalaya. The Tamang communities consider the Langtang National Park as their ‘own place’. Before there were tall trees, these would then be cut down and when dry the branches were set fire to. Mostly potatoes were planted before leaving the site to fallow.

People having connection with park hierarchy and financial resources are able to circumvent the letter of the law for conservation enforcement. Apart from forest products, it is the impact of increasing numbers of wildlife that most concerns the villagers of the entire national park. The hunters from the Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation periodically stay in the village. However, hunting is more like a game for privileged kind of meat like of wild boar. In the name of protection practice of criminalization of livelihood took place.

Under the UNDP’s Park-People program, negotiations have been conducted to set up village management committees for the rights over forest ‘buffer zones’. The model for participatory conservation was prepared for the mountain region. Its source is a global generic design of the Park-People program for giving poor people some access to the revenue benefits of protected areas.

Back in the sixteenth century, the state created incentives to convert hill forests to agriculture in order to reap land taxes, but protected the Terai (fertile lowlands) forests as military security until the nineteenth century, which continued to the end of the ‘modernization’ era of development regimes in Nepal, natural resources existed to be exploited. The structures of the state were not brought into account of crises that instead saw the state as a critical architect of the necessary solutions. Jung Bahadur killed a tiger at Bokhajunda, huge rope hunting-nets were ordered to be made for trapping live game to carry off to Kathmandu. This showed misuse of power and authority.

Since the mid-1980s, however peasants have been regarded as the unavoidable vehicles for environmental protection through various versions of co-operation, whether a community forest user groups, or as a committee- coordinated conservation area residents. In the literature of Nepal, the autonomous community organization has been most explicit in discussions of the east Nepali form of communal land tenure known as Kipat, which was abolished formally in the early 1960s at the time of Land Reform. According t one of the protagonists, Kipat meant that the Kiranti could do whatever they wanted on their own land as their wish. The payment of taxes depended on the power that headmen could exercise as kings were too busy to intervene. But, after the transition of collective Kipat to private raikar, forests and pastures in particular thus came to be considered government land.

Himalayan societies make many kinds of interruptions t people’s direct ecological engagements, such as prohibiting ploughing on full-moon days. State controls often define hierarchical relationships of power towards sub-ordinate groups. When considering the shift from state protectionism to buffer zone negotiation, it is an effect of convergence between global neo-liberal de-regulatory policies within post-Panchayat Nepal.  

The people in Rasuwa district are living in shifting residence between fields, forest and pastures at different elevations and times of year, taking fertility from crop cultivations and diverse biotic habitats up and down the mountainside.

According to Hindu mythology pilgrims are of great importance which involves people coming from Kathmandu and for whom the mountain sites and the water sources connect too much larger models of sacred landscape. It is at more at this level the authorities of the National Park historically claim territorial administrative domination in the area, and express the cultural legitimacy of their environmental sovereignty.

Tamang’s practice of environmental engagement differs from modernist categorical impositions of nature-culture dualism introduced through conservation. The authority of governments claiming power over resources is spurious when it comes to implementing responsibilities. In the areas where national parks, outside the extent of intensive central administration, sovereignty and control separate out. Globalism centralizes control of resources, but, as the writer have argued for the Tamangs in the Langtang National Park, it also destroys the ways in which local communities understand their environments.

An understanding of historical relationships between communities and the state in interpreting strategies adopted to negotiate the reproduction of livelihoods in the face of regulatory authority. Simply devolving environmental responsibility from state to community is unconvincing in view of the unequal political relations between local communities and the center. It is not possible to overcome ecological under privilege by transferring roles, rewards, and duties to an ideal construction.

Authorial Context:

Resisting the environmentalist state by Ben Campbell has been taken from the book Resistance and the State: Nepalese Experiences by David Gellner.  This paper includes the role of the state and the people in ownership and conservation of the resources (mainly forest). Ben Campbell is a researcher from Department of Social Anthropology, University of Manchester, United Kingdom. The other publications of the writers are as follows:

1.      ‘Forms of Cooperation in a Tamang Community of Nepal’, Anthropology of Nepal: Peoples, Problems and Processes.

2.      Conversing with Nature: Ecological Symbolism in Central Nepal.

3.      Animals Behaving Badly, Natural Enemies: People-Wildlife Conflicts in Anthropological Perspective.

4.      Changing Protection Policies and Ethnographies of Environmental Engagement.

Some of his forthcoming publications are as follows:

1.      ‘Introduction: The Politics of Environmental Engagement’, Re-placing Nature: Ethnographies of Connection and Administrations of Distance.

2.      ‘Nature and its Discontents in Nepal’, Re-placing Nature: Ethnographies of Connection and Administrations of Distance.

Roles and Influence of Institutions:

CFUG (Community Forest User Groups) members carry out annual planning which provides a broad framework for developing a detailed plan and monitoring system. The Department of Forest combines the outcomes of the district and regional planning workshops and submits the consolidated proposal to the Ministry of Forests and Soil Conservation and the National Planning Commission. The annual program budget, which is then prepared by the Ministry of Finance with recommendations from the National Planning Commission, obtains final approval from Parliament. Community forestry projects are funded by donor agencies that include the Danish International Development Agency (DANIDA), DFID, the Government of Australia, GTZ, the Swiss Development Cooperation (SDC) and the Cooperative for Assistance and Relief Everywhere (CARE) Nepal. Donor-funded projects provide technical and financial assistance for organizing the ilaka- and district-level planning workshops and meetings.

Analysis from major analytical OTB categories and themes

About 87 percent of Nepal’s population pursues subsistence and semi-subsistence farming systems that integrate crop production with animal husbandry and depend on forest products for household use and animal husbandry. Forests thereby also contribute to maintaining soil fertility by supplying materials for the domesticated animals that generate farmyard manure, which is still the main source of fertilizer in Nepal. In addition, forests are a source of wild fruits and other edible plants, and the major source of medicinal plants. In summary, forests are an inseparable part of Nepalese livelihood systems, as is recognized by existing policies and reflected in the legislative instruments currently in force.

                                 

With differences in the distribution of resources, class differences emerge in society between the privileged and the underprivileged, the ‘haves’ and the ‘have not’, the exploiter and the exploited, and the ruler and the ruled (Engels 1880). The political ecology approach emerges to internalize the sensitivity of the diverse socio-political forces and their relationship to environmental change. The phrase 'political ecology' combines the concern of ecology and a broadly defined political economy. Together this encompasses the constantly shifting dialectics between society and land based resources, and also within classes and groups within society. The political ecology focuses on the political causes of environmental change and the struggle for access to, and control over, environmental resources (Paudel 2005).

Two laws and the policies related to them have the greatest influence on forest resource tenure: the Forest Act of 1993 and the Lands Act of 1964. The first provides tenure systems for forests − including private, leasehold and community forestry − while maintaining State ownership of all forest lands. Forest Act was promulgated and enforced in 1961. This was the first law specifically designed to protect nationalized forests, while “maintaining the interest of the common people”. However, this law too failed to address the problem of encroachment of forests, as it declared all lands except cultivated land to be State property.

Enactment of the Private Forest Nationalization Act of 1957 marked the beginning of forest policy in Nepal. The act aimed to protect, manage and utilize national forests and promote public welfare. Earlier, during the Rana regime, vast tracts of forests were under the private management of elite groups, including members of the royal families and their relatives. The Rana family held all real power in its hands. The law of the land prescribed the hereditary roles that people of different castes could follow and the relationship between castes. In principle all land belonged to the king, and could only be held by individuals under various forms of conditional tenure.

The Rana political system was an undisguised military despotism, its main domestic preoccupation was the exploitation of the country’s resources in order to enhance the personal wealth of the Rana rulers and his family. Any government revenues in excess of administrative expenses were pocketed by the Rana ruler as private income.

At the beginning of the twentieth century there was much uncut forest land and it was government policy to encourage the settlement of virgin land with 5 or 10 year tax break, especially in the Terai bordering India. The Panchayat Forest (PF) and Panchayat- Protected Forest (PPF) Regulations of 1978 were promulgated, devolving forest management responsibility to local bodies. The village Panchayat was the lowest political and administrative unit. Degraded national forests were handed over to the village Panchayats for either plantation or protection and management.

The tax basis of the regime shifted from land to indirect taxes, mainly on imports. The Panchayat regime relied on foreign aid to fund its day-to-day running. Large amounts of money concentrated in the capital, Kathmandu, so that both the elite and the less well-off that were based there certainly saw dramatic improvements in their standards of living and in their access to global culture. Caplan’s early ethnography of Limbu-Bahun interaction over land in east Nepal showed how literacy and contacts in the bureaucracy gave Bahuns an overwhelming advantage when land started to become scarce (Caplan 1970). 

As the 1980s progressed, the contradictions grew between the Panchayat state’s rhetoric of national solidarity and all-round development, on the one hand, and the facts of corruption, stagnation and decline on the other. Development involves the state trying to mobilize people and imposing new rules. Those relating to forests are amongst the most radical. The nationalization of the forests in 1959 is widely agreed to have been a disaster, and was reversed in 1978.

More recent legislation to protect forests has been enacted and put in force without sensitivity to local conditions. Villagers have overnight been criminalized for doing what they had always done and have to do in order to survive (Harper and Tarnowski, Campbell 2002). Harper and Tarnowski also show how discourses of decentralization often mask greater central control and how discourses of democratization are rapidly mastered by local elites and used to preserve their own position through control of the crucial committees or user groups. Medical and forest related projects are two of the main ways in which the state makes impact on villager’s lives and imposition of National Park is the third. For many, government restrictions or demands appear- despite the language of empowerment and poverty alleviation- as oppressive and authoritarian. 

                                                

After the restoration of democracy in 1990, the CFUG (Community Forest User Groups) concept emerged formally in 1991, when a Community Forest Policy was issued. This policy is widely recognized as an excellent example of local empowerment and the involvement of users in forest resource management (Joshi and Pokharel 1998). In accordance with the provisions made in their operational plans, CFUGs are authorized to protect and manage the forest and establish plantations. The operational plan of a community forest is prepared by the CFUG, with technical assistance from forestry rangers and/or NGOs and approval from the District Forest Officer. It describes how to protect, manage and utilize the forest, fix the price of, sell or dispose of its products, and punish violators. A community forest should be managed and its products utilized in such a way that there is no negative impact on the environment.

The handing over of community forests accelerated rapidly during the 1990s, but gradually declined in later years. This was mainly because most of the accessible forests in the hills and mountains had already been handed over, but also because the government had restricted the handing over of large tracts of forest in the Terai. Government policy is to manage larger forests in the Terai under the Collaborative Forest Management Programme. In accordance with provisions in the Forest Policy of 2000, only scattered and disjoined patches of forest are handed over as community forests in the Terai.

Management and tenure systems in Community and leasehold forestry

COMMUNITY FORESTRY

Forest management in community forests

Initially, community forest management was oriented towards the production of timber, fuel wood and tree fodder from plantations of pine and other species. Later, the strategy changed to the management of natural regeneration. Most community forests are protection oriented, but the thinning, pruning, singling and the removal of dead and fallen trees are common practices. A selection system is therefore used in the management of community forests, and there is little intensive forest management. However, fuel wood, timber and fodder are still the prime products extracted from community-managed forests. In a study on land-use change, Jackson et al. (1998) found that shrub- and grassland had been converted into more productive categories of forest land, reflecting the care that communities take in managing and conserving their forest resources.

LEASEHOLD FORESTRY

Forest management in leasehold forests

In leasehold forestry, leasehold groups at first emphasize protection measures such as warding off grazing animals and forest fires. Forestry and livestock officials provide technical inputs and support for this, and such protection helps to invigorate the natural regeneration of local grass and tree species. The leasehold forestry program therefore aims to diversify the income sources of leasehold group members through the use of the leased land and off-farm income-generating activities. Long-term land tenure provides leasehold groups with a strong incentive to invest labor and inputs for short- and long-term crops on the leased land, thus providing an opportunity to improve their livelihoods.

Linkage between Land and Forest

According to the Department of Forest Resource Survey (DFRS), Nepal has a total forest cover of 5,828,000 hectares or 39.6% of the total land area. Analysis of the distribution shows 5.6% is in the high Himalaya, 60.1% in the mountain region and 48.1% of the forest is in the mid-hills. 70.4% is in the Churiya and 23% in the Terai. There is some overlap between these geographical regions. The forest was nationalized in 1957 and the management and protection of the forest was brought under government control. The Forest Department became increasingly active and local people found them excluded from the system; people who had occupied the land for generations but had no documentary proof of ownership. From 1963-1979 36% of forest land was destroyed and converted into agricultural land, with landlords continually encroaching and illegally appropriating forest land for personal use.

Conflicts in Land and Forest Management System

Forest area has been encroached upon by the army, security forces, landless people, People's Liberation Army (Maoist), government projects and development projects such as road building and electricity installation. In some parts, Community Forestry User Groups (CFUG), a federation of community forest users established in 1991, protested against forest encroachment by landless people and freed Kamaiyas. There is a constant battle between CFUGs and landless people over the issue of forest encroachment. CFUGs support the landless people’s right to land ownership but they do not want community forestry land to be used for this purpose.

Centralized Land Governance

Land management is heavily centralized in Nepal. All decisions relating to land management are taken at the Ministry level which serves to alienate people living in rural and remote areas. Poor people cannot fund visits to the capital and instead pursue matters through local government structures; these are cumbersome, weighted against them and inherently corrupt. Furthermore, land administration is procedurally complex and agricultural laborers simply cannot cope with the bureaucracy. The 1964 Land Act was created primarily to protect the interests of the powerful elites who wanted centralized control; despite subsequent amendments this fundamental tenet remains unchanged. The Ministry of Land Reform and Management has extended units across the country but is not decentralized as they do not have the power to settle land issues at a local level.

Abolition of Collective Rights

Indigenous peoples have a special relationship to the land and its natural resources; by practicing a subsistence lifestyle they are wholly dependent upon it for their livelihoods. In recent years increased economic development and natural resource exploitation have caused tremendous strains on indigenous communities as they find themselves gradually displaced from their native land. This is a problem facing indigenous communities throughout the world but is especially acute in Nepal. The current threats to the collective rights of indigenous people include: oil exploration, mining, dam building, logging, cash cropping, cattle ranching, national parks, nature reservations and tourism.

Privatization in Nepal

When the World Bank (WB) sponsored the Structural Adjustment Program in the 1980s privatization was placed on the agenda. The government of Nepal had no choice but to accept the WB's strategies as they were linked to the foreign aid assistance. The government did little with respect to privatization until after the restoration of democracy in 1990. The newly elected government began implementing its privatization policy in 1992 with 51 public enterprises being identified for privatization during the first phase.

Privatization strategy offered four options:

1. Immediate privatization

2. Privatization with preparation

3. Liquidation

4. Restructuring

The initial strategy for privatization was supported by the WB and International Monetary Fund (IMF) and tied to various loan conditions with the WB and the Asian Development Bank (ADB). Technical support to expedite the privatization process was given by the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), WB, USAID, DANIDA and DFID. The Privatization Act, promulgated in 1994, provided six options: selling shares, forming cooperatives, selling assets, leasing, offering management contracts and other approaches as deemed necessary by the Government. The Ninth Plan (1992-1997) further defined the long term strategy for privatization. Despite multiple arrangement options it is interesting to note that between 51% and 72% of the shares of newly privatized companies were controlled by an elite group of entrepreneurs. According to Manandhar and Bajracharya (2004) the government privatized the companies but not the land, which they kept under State control.

There has never been a consensus on privatization in Nepal. The Nepali Congress (NC) considered privatization as an internal necessity whereas the Communist Party of Nepal (CPN Maoist) and United Marxist Leninist (UML) saw it as an external compulsion. Critics were alarmed at growing foreign influence in the economy, the further consolidation of economic power in the hands of few rich businesses, the lack of transparency and the under-valuation of assets. Nepal is in the process of integrating into regional and global trading platforms which require a series of commitments to privatization and liberalization. As a member of the WTO, Nepal has a legal obligation to align its economic policy with global requirements. Nepal has recently entered into a WTO network that requires promoting an open market economy which has serious implications for landholdings; multinational companies and the private sector could acquire large tracts of land which would further alienate and marginalize poor farmers.

State Response for Land Reform

Government Initiatives

Perhaps the first State response in favor of the ordinary person was the abolition of slavery in 1934. Freed slaves were given land and settled in a region of the Terai named Amalekhgunj (or the settlement of the freed slaves). Nothing further happened until the advent of democracy in 1951 when a commission was formed, under the leadership of Naradmuni Thulung, to consider a land reform process. It recommended land ceilings and tenancy rights. In 1959, the government passed an act to cease the Birta system, thus ending the age old feudal tradition of land distribution, at least in principle. It is said that one of the key reasons for the subsequent dismissal of the elected parliament was the scheduled Land Act. The 1964 Land Act was promulgated under the autocratic regime of the late King Mahendra. The Act met with strong opposition from land owners and was compromised by the tacit agreement that it would not be strictly implemented (Shrestha, 2002).

In 1987 the government distributed cleared forest in an attempt to assuage the building resentment directed towards the autocratic Panchayat system led by the king. Following the People's Movement in 1990 a number of commissions to study land reform were instigated by consecutive governments. In 1996 the fourth amendment of the 1964 Land Act gave registered tenant farmers the right to claim 50% of the land they cultivated. Any claims, however, had to be made within six months of the amendment; it formally terminated the right of tenancy for tilling thereafter.

At this time, many tenant farmers had temporary proofs of cultivation obtained during the Cadastral Survey, a land survey carried out after the 1964 Land Act, but they had not been officially registered as tenants. Without this official registration, they were ineligible to claim ownership of the land and it formally terminated the tenancy rights of 500,000 families. The Maoist insurgency and mounting pressure from land rights activists forced the government into tabling a fifth amendment to the 1964 Land Act in 2001; this created a provision to lower land ceilings but the law was immediately repealed by the Supreme Court who deemed it unconstitutional.

COMPARISON OF COMMUNITY AND GOVERNMENT MANAGED FOREST

Community Forest:

The basic objectives are:

a. meeting the bona fide needs for forest products of the people living near forest areas;

b. managing good forest areas with a view to sustaining the supply of forest products. Degraded areas can be part of a community forest, but as long as there is a choice, they are seldom accepted, and currently account for less than 5% of community forests (Kanel, 2004). Communities select the best option.

This includes everyone living near forest areas, irrespective of their economic, social or ethnic status. There are no targeting criteria to address poverty. CFUGs are comparatively large and heterogeneous. The approach aims mainly to manage existing forests. It is a preventive measure against the degradation of forest through regulating the harvest of forest products and controlling grazing and forest fires, etc. Forest products are available to beneficiaries only at specified times of the year. For example, fodder collection may be allowed only during certain periods. Manages forests on the basis of operational plans; the benefits must be shared with the whole community.

CFUG members have little incentive or interest in implementing the operational plan. An individual member can get fuel wood, fodder and timber for subsistence at fixed prices, but cannot use the revenue generated from the forest, which is normally spent for community development. Individual households therefore have less interest in the forest. Community forestry is not legally mandated to alleviate poverty, but forest conditions have been considerably improved in these forests.

Most forests are handed over for 5 years, extendable indefinitely for periods of 5 to 10 years if they perform satisfactorily. There is no specified time limit for reverting community forests back to the government. In the hills, there is no need to share the benefits from the forest with the government. In the Terai and Inner Terai, 15% of the benefits from forest product sales − mainly of Sal (Shorea robusta) and Khair (Acacia catechu) − to non-members is paid to the government. CFUG members maintain a feeling of "our" community forest. Forest is protected and forest products are collected. Fuel wood and timber are the main products, but NTFPs are also gathered. Only the forestry organization is involved.

Government-managed forestry, administered by the District Forest Office

The objective is not explicitly expressed, but the general perception is that it is to fulfill the forest product needs of people in general. The target group is not spelled out. There is no group approach. Covers forest areas other than community, leasehold and other forest for specific purposes. A forest management scheme is prepared to harvest amounts of forest products each year. Forest products are available for all the citizens of the district; surplus products are sold at auction.

Manages forest according to the forest management scheme; really consists only of gathering fallen trees. There are no incentives, other than the District Forest Office’s responsibility; forests are therefore degrading. Limited amounts of timber from government managed forests are available to victims of natural calamities at subsidized rates. Other households can obtain limited amounts for house construction and agricultural tools. But the sale and distribution of forest products through the District Forest Product Supply Committee are not effective, and people are not getting timber easily.

Forests are directly administered by the District Forest Office, with no people’s participation. 15% of revenues collected from forests are shared with the local government District Development Committee; the remaining 85% go into government funds. As it can be managed as common property, forest is often treated as an open-access resource; hence the “tragedy of commons” applies. There is no feeling of ownership among the local communities. Forest is protected by the District Forest Office staff. Timber is the main product, but NTFPs are also collected. Only the District Forest Office is involved in protection.

Present Land Tenure System

State ownership was the traditional form of land tenure in Nepal; the land simply belonged to the state and its rulers. After 1946, six major forms of land tenure were recognized: Raikar, Birta, Jagir, Rakam, Kipat and Guthi. All except Guthi were subsequently converted into Raikar and these are the two that officially remain today. Within Raikar, there are three further kinds of tenure: land which is cultivated (or left fallow) at the owner‘s discretion; land which is contracted or leased to another party; land which is tenanted and tilled by tenant farmers. In all cases the owner is liable for taxation.

The lease or contract system operates within specific conditions agreed between the leaser and the lessee; usually this contract involves a 'share of produce' between the land owner and the cultivator. This tenancy based tenure uniquely allows for the condition of 'dual ownership' as both the land owner and the tenant are seen to exercise control over the land. Tenancy based tenures also expose tenants to various forms of exploitation. For instance, fear of eviction forces the tenant to submit to unfair rental conditions. Informal land tenure continues to exist in the form of State-owned and public land occupied by landless people, conflict victims, rebel groups and bonded laborers. It mostly occurs in urban and semi urban areas but can also be found in rural areas. It is neither officially recorded by the government nor recognized by the cadastral system of Nepal.

The buffer zone management approach allows people who live around the national park to access forest resources, particularly grasses and reeds, from a ‘buffer zone’ around the park. However, the buffer zone management approach has also been criticized for not being participatory and accessible to people, particularly the poor (Paudel 2005; Soliva et al. 2003; Budhathoki 2003). The conservation area management approach is being implemented in Nepal within certain protected areas and a number of community development activities, including conservation, have been carried out. This approach was first adopted in 1985 with the Annapurna Conservation Area Project (ACAP), which has had a mixed impact. Although ACAP has had a positive impact in promoting community development and conservation activities, it has been criticized for not addressing the livelihoods needs of poor people in the area.

Conservation politics does not consider the issues of poverty and livelihoods as an urgent need to be addressed. The biodiversity conservation discourse appears to be so strong that the Government has a policy of expanding protected areas into human habitation, even though Nepal already contains a wide expanse of protected areas covering around 18.57 per cent of the total landmass. Attempts to exclude people from conservation benefits have undermined the livelihoods of people.

There are a number of policies in place related to poverty reduction and natural resource management in Nepal. But these policies have been formulated without consulting the poor. The elite politicians and bureaucrats develop these policies, and the priorities represented in the policies are largely set for them. There is no evidence that the poor have influenced the NRM policy process in any way in Nepal. Moreover, no policies have been developed yet to guarantee the land ownership and rights of small farmers and landless people in Nepal.

To overcome the deprivation, destitution and oppression of the poor, women, Dalits, indigenous people and other marginalized groups, we have to recognize the role of freedom of different kinds. Individual agency is central to addressing these deprivations. Individual agency can be constrained by the social, political and economic opportunities that are available to individuals. The term ‘agency’ here in represents the autonomy and freedom of individuals (Giddens 1984); the degree to which they may act independently of, and in opposition to, structural constraints, potentially reconstituting the existing social structures through their freely chosen actions. For example, marginalized groups in Nepal have not been ‘free’ to earn a reasonable livelihood because their access to resources that form the basis of this livelihood has been constrained. It is important to recognize both the centrality of individual freedom and the forces of social influence on the extent and reach of individual freedom. Individual freedom needs to be considered as a social commitment (Sen 1999).

Under new concepts of development, the expansion of freedom is viewed both as the primary end and the principal means of development. Development, in this sense, consists of the removal of various types of bondage that leave people with little choice and little opportunity to exercise their reasoned agency (Sen 1999). Economic and political freedoms reinforce one another, rather than conflicting (as is sometimes assumed). Institutions such as the state, the market, the legal system, political parties, the media, public interest groups and public discussion forums, among others, are important to ensure the livelihood rights of people. These institutions need to be seen as democratic ways of enhancing and guaranteeing the substantive freedoms of individuals (Sen 1999).

For example, Nepal's community forestry processes have entered the debate about social transformation towards a pro-poor, inclusive and more democratic social system (Timilsina et al. 2004). The transformation process has to transform both the agency and the structures of society, which are historically constructed and embedded in social traditions, values and norms. In some of the community forestry user groups, the empowered agencies have changed the structure (norms, values and rules) to favor poor and marginalized users.

KEY ACTORS

The State

There are two main government agencies that are instrumental in directing land access and tenure issues in Nepal. The National Planning Commission (NPC) has an overall responsibility for setting development policy and strategy; it operates as the central agency for evaluating, facilitating and monitoring development plans, policies and program, and provides a platform for discussion and consultation on economic development. The NPC operates under the directive of the National Development Council in exploring and allocating resources for economic development. The Ministry of Land Reform and Management is responsible for actually implementing policy and strategy.

Political Parties

There are eight major political parties and each has proposed multidimensional programs to develop the agriculture sector; all agree that it is the backbone of the economy and have prioritized it as such in their manifestos. The major parties have included land reform as part of an overall agricultural program rather than as a separate issue, while accepting land rights as a key factor in the development of the agricultural sector.

Since the reinstatement of democracy in 1990 parliamentary elections have been held on three occasions (1991, 1996 and 1999). The issue of land reform has been discussed on each occasion and with increasing levels of understanding of the matter. The following are consensus agreements between the major political parties:

1. Prioritize the land reform agenda and realize the need for land reform.

2. Land reform is a vital component of overall agricultural development.

3. End dual ownership over land.

4. Establish fertilizer factories.

Most political parties present a sympathetic front to the concerns of squatters, landless peasants, freed bonded laborers, indigenous/disadvantaged people, tenants and other similar groups of landless people. They are also concerned about accelerated land fragmentation and the issues surrounding commercialization and privatization in agriculture. They vocally urge 'revolutionary' or 'scientific' land reforms as an urgent requirement. The political parties all agree with land reform in principle; the challenge is to hold them accountable to their manifesto commitments.

Civil Society Organizations and Rights Holders

Civil Society Initiative:

Civil society has matured under democracy and has established its importance in several specialized segments; human rights and development, democratic advocacy, community empowerment and poverty eradication. Civil society has a vital role to play in building public opinion and facilitating debate on land related issues. It has an important task in empowering and enabling landless tillers to exercise their rights and also in guiding and advising state policy makers towards a peaceful inclusive resolution as a means to ensuring social justice. Although many of the recent land rights movements were supported by civil society organizations their involvement has been inadequate.

National Land Rights Concern Group (NLRCG)

It was realized that a greater civil society alliance was required to tackle the complex political issue of land reform and to organize the disadvantaged community to influence political action. To this effect, NGOs and other civil society organizations formed the NLRCG, incorporating a diverse range of expertise, from media to human rights, ex-politicians and social activists. Together they assist both poor tillers and the State in resolving land issues. The alliance adopted a capacity building strategy for deprived tillers and landless farmers, developing leadership skills to launch rights claiming initiatives.

On the whole land reform has failed so far in Nepal

Land reform is not new to Nepal, with initiatives begun from the 1950s. There have been successes, such as the early removal of land authority from local overlords, and most recently land allocations to some ultra-poor and fee waivers successfully encouraging women to register land in their own names. A small amount of private land has been redistributed (under one percent of cultivated land) and 180,600 ha has been earmarked for partition to registered tenants (but partially implemented). An unknown number of land poor families may also have received plots in the 1970s and 1980s under parallel schemes to open up to the Terai to farming and especially through the regularization of squatter camps which followed.

Nonetheless, the fundamental task of classical land reform is to ensure secure, sufficient and equitable access to land by all those who till, and this has not been achieved over half a century of reformism in Nepal. While farm size has on paper declined this is much more due to inter-generational subdivision and distribution among family members to conceal farm sizes than to adherence to limitations on farm size.

Regulations in the 1930s furthered privatization and by which time the meaning of Raikar had shifted from ‘state land’ to meaning private property. The holder was still a tenant and Government still did not need to pay compensation when it wanted the land for a public purpose. However sale, mortgage and tenancy were legal without any restriction – so long as land tax was paid. Commoditization of rights also gathered pace in this period with advancing capitalism. The active instrument was registration, the handmaiden of privatization and associated evolution of taxation. Recordation of grantees entrenched their entitlements as property rights.

The outputs compare poorly with redistributive reform around the world. The better of these have seen more than 60% of rural households benefit (e.g. Vietnam, China, Taiwan, Japan, Korea, Cuba, Ethiopia, Mexico, Russia, Armenia) and deliver land to nearly a billion beneficiaries overall. However, the results are not worse than for the Indian sub-continent as a whole, excepting the Indian state of West Bengal. Failure to reform the farm-based economy has failed transformation overall.

Meanwhile the uncertainties created by poorly enforced reforms have played a main role in inhibiting agricultural development and prosperity. Half a century after the first significant land reform legislation (1957) neither land owners nor tenants and workers have clear and stable control over the founding means of production – the land. Out-migration from agriculture has become the major escape route but largely excluding the most poor. Agriculture itself stagnates. Perhaps worse, failure to perform, or misconstrued reform, have often made things worse for the disadvantaged majority.

NEPAL, Policies and Strategies (1992)

                       

•         A National Conservation Strategy for Nepal endorsed by HMG in 1988, proposed a conservation action agenda. The Master Plan for the Forestry Sector (25 year plan) has placed emphasis on program approach and consists of community and private forestry, national and leasehold forestry, soil conservation and watershed management, and conservation of ecosystems and genetic resources, as priority program under the six primary development program.

•         Similarly, forest-related Acts include provisions to prohibit deforestation, cultivation and grazing on, and illegal removal of, products from government forest land; protection of demarcated forest and afforested areas; proper management of wildlife and their habitat in national parks and wildlife reserves; management of community forests; and conservation of nature and natural resources. Likewise, there are Acts that forbid the use of explosives for catching and killing aquatic life, that consider environmental aspects during mineral production, and that allow for cultural heritage conservation. These Acts will be reviewed and amended as and when necessary to align them with environment and development concepts.

•         As poverty is the root cause of environmental degradation, the basic strategy aims to secure a link between economic and environmental policies aimed at poverty alleviation. Another important aspect is population control. The strategy for fertility control has encompassed expansion of services, enhancing the role of women and mobilization of local communities and NGOs. Since land is a scarce resource, policies are made to use it more judiciously.

•         The strategy for conserving biological diversity focuses on neutralizing the conflict between the people and the parks. Similarly, pressure on traditional energy sources, primarily fuel wood, will be reduced by developing alternative energy sources. The emphasis will be on harnessing the country's immense hydro energy resource. The strategy for control of pollution will be developed based on minimum allowable standards of air, water, land and noise pollution. Institutional capabilities are being strengthened to initiate coordinated actions.

•         The present experience in managing protected areas will be utilized to take future initiatives in managing and extending areas for conservation of biological diversity. The policy of zoning protected areas, with surrounding buffer zones for conservation and allowing access to local users will be promoted in parks and reserves.

•         Nepal's community forestry approach has been highly successful. Although the idea of community forestry was introduced in the late 1970s, it was expanded after the enforcement of the Forest Act, 1993. The Community Forestry Program executed by the Department of Forests under the Ministry of Forests and Soil Conservation aims to protect, manage and use forests through local forest users' group (FUGs). Community forestry is a major component of the Master Plan for the Forestry Sector

Source: Overview of Policies, Legislation, and Institutions, World Bank, 2007, Nepal.

Conclusion

Rights and ownership over natural resources are essentially a phenomenon of the political economy, especially when they involve the diverse interests of different individuals, groups and the state. Tension between the state and communities in relation to NRM (Natural Resource Management), especially in relation to the management of valuable resources such as forests and land, manifests in different ways. In the Terai and high hills, the state appears to be reluctant to hand over authority over forests to local people. This is due to the political economy (the relationship between production and distribution) of the highly valued forest resources. Similarly, the creation of landless people in Nepal resulted from the gradual evolution of land as a highly sought after commodity. Landlessness is the result of structural problems that have existed since state formation in Nepal.

However, as the development paradigm shifts over time, discourse on people’s participation in NRM pushed the state to involve local people in the use and management of forest resources? Forest, as a common property resource, is easier to handle than land, when it comes to a participatory approach to its use and management. Community forestry has become a priority program in NRM and is considered as the ‘mother program’ of community-based natural resource management in Nepal. Nevertheless, given the resistance from the Government and bureaucracy to the devolution of power to communities and the antagonistic behavior towards community forestry user groups, a constant interaction with the political process is needed to institutionalize these achievements.

While critically focusing on the prevailing inequity in Nepalese society, natural resource management needs to create opportunities for positive discrimination in relation to marginalized groups and the poor, such as providing them with the exclusive right to decide on the management of, access to and control over natural resources such as land and forests. A complete transformation of the natural resource sector is needed in the search for sustainable livelihoods, a transformation that ensures inclusive democracy in the processes and institutions related to natural resource management.

People’s movements are a powerful instrument for change in NRM policies and to ensure proper implementation. The mobilization of people through mass movement empowers individual agency and strengthens their ability to realize their rights. People’s movements put aristocratic and bureaucratic classes under pressure and compel them to enter negotiations. In other words, people’s movements help to break the present production relations, thereby impacting on the political economy. Organized and conscious movements are more relevant at the moment as Nepal is undergoing a process of state restructuring through the Constituent Assembly process.

References:

1.     Gellner, David N. (2002). Resistance and the State: Nepalese experience. Social Science Press, New Delhi.

2.     Wily, Liz A. et. al. (2008). Land Reform in Nepal: Where is it coming from and where is it going? Nepal.

3.     Singh, B.K. et. al. (2005). Community and Leasehold Forestry for the poor: Nepal Case Study. FAO of United Nations, Rome, Italy.

4.     UNCED. (1992). Natural Resource Policies of Nepal and UNCED Nepal Report Summary. Nepal.

5.     Acharya, Krishna P. (2008). Forest and Livelihood. Nepal.

6.     Timilsina, Netra P. (         ). Natural Resources Governance and Livelihoods in Nepal: Political Economy and Political Ecology Perspectives. Nepal.

7.     Basnet, Jagat. (2009). Land and Land Tenure Security in Nepal. Community Self Reliance Center, Nepal.

8.     Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS), Nepal.