Gender and Forest Tenure in Nepal: The South Asian Context

The uncertain threat of climate change necessitates adaptation strategies, and forestry management is highly pluralistic, involving multiple actors across scales. Power dynamics, including donor and national state, state and community, and men and women, affect the design, degree, and extent of implementation and consolidation of forest tenure. Nepal's Community Forestry framework provides a case study for exploring implications for gender equity in a wide range of forest tenure arrangements and practices. The country's diversity of customary and statutory forest tenure arrangements, pioneering experience in decentralized forest governance, and consolidated advances in grassroots civic networks with substantive women's participation offer ample opportunity to examine the connection between gender-sensitive forest tenure reforms and improved livelihood indicators, forest conservation, and overall gender equity. Scholarly insights on gender and forest tenure emphasize the importance of women's access to and control over forests and their resources for sustainable forest governance. Tenure can be defined as authority enforcing claims to a "bundle of rights" on certain principles, including rights and specific benefits derived from them, management, and alienation. Forest tenure shapes the definition of who can use which resources, for how long, under what conditions, for whose benefits, and on what basis. To enhance women's access and control, scholars argue for improvised structures, such as policies, quota, and leadership positions for women, women's networks, and gender units in forestry departments. However, existing literature has paid little attention to how authority enforced through forest tenure is tested, implemented, and contested, and how these power relations between men and women affect the sustainability of forest governance. Nepal's experience with forest tenure is complex, with various forms, structures, and processes associated with forest reform and their implications for gender equity and forest governance. The country's forest tenure arrangements include government-managed forests, community forests, and leasehold forests. The evolution and status of gender and forest tenure in Nepal are influenced by the country's geography, demographics, and history, including the Democracy Movement of 2005-2006 and the decade-long civil war. The "bundle of rights" associated with forest tenure includes rights and specific benefits derived from them, management, and alienation. Forest tenure security refers to the certainty of these rights and authority. To enhance women's access and control, scholars argue for both improvised structures and a better understanding of how power is lived, contested, argued, and consolidated. The paper aims to demonstrate the strong connection between gender-sensitive forest tenure reforms and improved livelihood indicators, forest conservation, and overall gender equity in South Asia, drawing on Nepal's Community Forestry framework as a case study.