Decentralized approaches to natural resource governance can promote conservation while reducing poverty in the Global South. However, the local benefits under decentralized governance are often unequal, reflecting extant social inequalities. There is a lack of rigorous evidence from national-scale studies showing how decentralization programmes affect inequality compared with what is observed in decentralization’s absence, and extant theory leads to competing hypotheses about such effects. We use data from a large-scale forestry-sector decentralization programme in Nepal during 2001–2011 to test general theories regarding the effects of such initiatives on inequality. We analyse census micro-data from two nationwide censuses, which we merge with administrative data on the implementation of decentralization and analyse through a two-way fixed-effects estimation approach. We find evidence suggesting that Nepal’s programme delivers significant poverty-alleviating benefits to the dominant ethnic and caste groups and comparatively smaller benefits to members of marginalized minority groups, resulting in apparent local increases in rural inequality associated with the programme. Thus, even relatively progressive programmes, such as Nepal’s, may lead to potential trade-offs between poverty alleviation, environmental conservation and inequality outcomes. Improved compliance with equity provisions may help to equalize effects, as could more substantial targeted benefits.

This article shows how discourse analysis can be a methodological tool to scrutinize texts under the aegis of Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation, sustainable management of forest, and conservation and enhancement of carbon (REDD+). A discourse is a perspective of an individual or an organization, which always tries to achieve a dominant position in the society. Texts used in discourses are impossible to understand properly in isolation. They are the reflections of social practices. Discourses, which contain multiple meanings, are also used as devices to make texts meaningful in regular communication. Analysis of discourses is called discourse analysis. Laclau and Mouffe (1985) believe that social structures (norms, rules and institutions) are created by pre-existing discourses of society, thereby we humans conceive objective reality according to the existing discourses. Alternatively, Fairclough (1995) believes that discourses not only reflect social structure but are also bounded by them. Both perspectives have been used as methodologies to analyse discourses, nonetheless Fairclough’s discourse analysis is more pragmatic than Laclau and Mouffee’s. The term ‘REDD+’ implies a discourse about forming new forestry institution in developing countries like Nepal, which is articulated in the name of mitigating deteriorating climate of the world. We suggest combining both perspectives to scrutinize the issue like REDD+. We found that discourse analysis is a suitable method to scrutinize REDD+ in the Nepalese context where people consider forest as a vital source of earning livelihoods and the foundation of sustaining local environment. Journal of Forest and Livelihood 13(1) May, 2015, page: 44-55

Rights to forest products are difficult to decide in situations when traditional management institutions exist parallel to formal ones. Such situations raise the question of whether the institutions are complementary or prescribe contradictory rights and management principles. Based on a household survey and key informant interviews, the article focuses on how diverging management principles can be harmonized to satisfy national forestry goals in Nepal. Villages in the Trans-Himalayan district of Mustang used to manage forests according to their traditional institutions but after 1993 they were included in a new management regime called Conservation Area Management Committees (CAMCs). The findings revealed that the villagers appreciated development initiatives undertaken by the CAMCs but three disjunctions regarding forest management existed between the CAMCs and traditional institutions: there was a disjunction between the two sets of rules for forest resource utilization; there were role dilemmas of local residents who were entrusted with CAMC implementation; and there were spatial disjunctions when formal administrative forest borders did not coincide with customary ones. The simultaneous existence of two institutions thus blurred the rights to forest resources. The author concludes that knowledge of the disjunction between parallel institutions is vital for accommodating new management schemes such as REDD+.

Nepal’s community forestry program is widely regarded as successful. At its peak, the program enlisted a large share of the rural population as managers of the country’s communal forests. However, recent empirical evidence suggests that voluntary participation in the program is in decline. Analyzing the empirical literature, we describe this surprising pattern of decline and discuss potential negative impacts. We also use political-economic reasoning and extant evidence to theorize about the drivers of this decline, arguing that livelihood diversification and profitable out-migration have altered the forest–people relationship in many villages, weakening incentives for participation in community forestry. Finally, we assess the viability of several institutional options for either replacing the program with other management approaches or reforming it to boost incentives for participation in light of the noted socioeconomic changes in rural Nepal. We argue that well-designed payment schemes or reforms that enable local people to commercialize community forests could both support participation by enhancing the associated benefits, and institutional changes related to local meetings and labor requirements could do so by reducing the associated costs. The replacement of community-based approaches with top-down management or privatization, however, appears risky due to a potential lack of government capacity and the possibility that such institutional changes could damage livelihoods or create negative externalities for some households. The consolidation of community forests also presents governance and management challenges. Our analysis suggests the need for greater scholarly attention to how environmental policy tools withstand social and economic change and to environmental policy succession—or how environmental policies are reimagined when they are no longer an appropriate fit for the local context.