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Caste and Social Justice in Common Property
Forest Management in Nepal•
Abstract: This paper presents an empirical assessment of the role caste, and other household socio
economic characteristics, on both collective action and use of common property resources
in Nepal. Primary data are drawn from a survey of 308 households belonging to 8
different forest user groups in the mid hills of Nepal. Econometric evidence shows that
households belonging to the lower caste groups have limited access to the decision-
making body of forest user groups. These results indicate that the empowerment and
increasing the participation of the lower caste and marginalized groups within the
community forestry program are critical to increase their access to local level decision-
making body and achieving social equity objective of community forestry program.
JEL classification: 012,013,Q23
Keywords: Nepal, Caste, Common Property, Forest
1. Introduction
• We would like to thank Dr E Somanathan for very useful discussion.
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Recently a flourishing body of literature has suggested that community management of
common pool resources (CPRs) can be a viable way to achieve environmental, economic
and social development goals (Ostrom 1990, Baland and Platteau 1996). A large
theoretical literature shows that communities can develop mechanisms limiting extraction
from CPRs (see Sethi and Somanathan 1996 for a discussion) and environmental
conferences such as the 1992 Earth Summit and the United Nations Conference on
Environment and Development have taken the position that “sustainable development”
requires community management of resources (Leach, et al 1999). Evidence of successful
self-governance of natural resources by the users themselves has engendered considerable
optimism that turning responsibility over to organized user groups at the local level will
improve the efficiency, equity, and sustainability of the resource base (Meizen-Dick and
Knox, 1999). An increasing number of scholars advocate that decentralized collective
management of CPRs by their users could be an appropriate system for overcoming the
'tragedy of the commons' situation (Ostrom, 1990; Berkes, 1989; Wade, 1988; Jodha,
1986; Baland and Platteau, 1996).
Recognizing the high potential of community-based approaches to natural resource
management (NRM), the past decade has witnessed an increasing emphasis on
community-based resource management, with a realization that local communities are
better equipped to manage these crucial resources in a sustainable way. In Nepal, as in
other developing countries, the development of community-based resource management
has led to devolution of forest management from centralized government control to local
user groups. In the case of community forestry (CF) in Nepal, local forest user groups
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(FUGs) retain the forest management and utilization under a community-based property
rights regime which has become the main operational strategy for the CF program since
the late nineties. This process has been continuing since the mid-1980s when national
forests were progressively handed over to FUGs. Under this program, local villagers
came together as a FUG and the government handed over certain sections of national
forests as community forests, in which the community had traditional use rights.
While the implementation of the CF programme has succeeded in halting the ongoing
trend of deforestation, evidence on equity and distributional benefits from CF
management is scant in quantity and somehow contentious (Richards et al., 1999;
Springate-Baginski et al., 1999; Adhikari, 2005, Adhikari et al., 2004; Kumar, 2002).
Researchers have described the positive impacts of the CF programme on forest
regeneration and improvement of the biophysical condition of forests, but at the same
time they have questioned the equity and welfare implications of this institutional change
(Branny and Yadav, 1998, Das, 2000; Kumar, 2002). Recently, international donors,
government policy makers and academics are increasingly concerned as to why CF
programs do not have the same level of success and desired impact on the livelihood of
the poorest sections of the community for whom the programmes were targeted.
Socially constructed differences can lead to inequitable access to decision-making and
participation in local level collection action in many villages of the developing world
where local communities are more heterogeneous. In Nepal, the most contested issue
with regard to equity aspects of collective action is the role of caste. Indeed, there is an
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increasing realisation that scheduled and lower caste groups are disproportionately
represented in the decision-making process. This results in marginalization of these
communities from both social and economic point of view.
The caste system and its attendant practices have been outlawed and declared punishable
offences long way back, but these laws are difficult to implement. According to Article
11(4) of the Constitution of the Kingdom of Nepal 1990, "no person shall be
discriminated as untouchable or debarred from attending public places or using things of
public utility on the basis of caste. Such an act shall be punishable by law." Further, there
is a strong national debate is going on to bring lower caste into the mainstream national
politics after the recent political moment. But Janajatis (various ethnic groups) and
lower-caste people such as Dalits still live in conditions of great poverty and social
disadvantage, forming the most impoverished segment of the society. Although
untouchability exists in its extreme form especially in the hills and mountains but the
sense of untouchability has been found less in the urban areas of the country.
With regard to management of community property resources in Nepal, gender and caste
debate is increasingly being the focus of the discourse in empowerment, poverty
alleviation and natural resource management. About, 42 per cent of the population of the
country is below poverty line; of them 35 per cent belongs to untouchable caste groups.
In his study aimed to analyze community-based organization (CBOs) and local
democracy in Nepal, Dhakal (2006) pointed out that, ‘the males and high caste groups
are, for instance, dominant in terms of number and influence in CBOs compared to low
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caste groups and women and that the CBOs, which are usually considered to be a key
mechanism for social inclusion, can be liable to elite capture.’ Although a number of
development interventions try to address the issues of caste and social exclusion, the
access to broader political and economic system by socially and economically backward
communities in Nepal is still questionable. In the context of natural resource
management, the debate is that households belonging to higher caste groups often have
privileged access to village leadership and decision making process of the local
commons. Further, power relations within the community and how they are contested and
reproduced over time is getting proper attention when it comes about access to lower
caste households to the resource at the community level (Nightingale, 2002).
In this paper we address the issue of caste and exclusion in collective action using a case
study of eight different community forest users groups (FUGs) in the middle hills of
Nepal. The paper is raising the following questions for empirical analysis. Is there any
relationship between lower caste and other household socio-economic characteristics
(i.e., education and wealth status) on the probability of being elected as a member of the
FUG executive committee (forest management decision-making body)? We, therefore,
propose to integrate the available knowledge with certain additional variables which have
local and contextual significance in order to explore how attributes of households, with
focus on caste, influence the access and the management of the local community forests.
To study the role of lower caste (and other socio-economic variables) in determining the
composition of the executive committee of the CF, we estimate a probit model to assess
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the role of lower caste and the other explanatory variables on the probability of becoming
member of the executive committee of the CF. Besides the focus on caste, we control for
the role of participation of the household in community gatherings. We, thus, included in
the set of explanatory variables the number of attended meetings regarding community
development issues at the village level.
The paper is organized as follows. In the following section, we provide some accounts of
caste and access to decision-making with special emphasis on community-based
development intervention and resource management. In section three, we discuss
methodological issues, survey design and data collection. Section four reports on the
econometric models and section five provides the results obtained from the analysis.
Finally, the paper concludes in section six with major conclusions and policy
implications.
2. Caste, Forest User Groups and Access to Decision Making
Like other parts of south Asia, Nepal also demonstrates a distinct social stratification
based on the caste system and encompasses a wider socio-economic heterogeneity
(Adhikari and Lovett, 2006). The dogma of the caste system though, still remains a
contentious issue, continues to act as an obstacle in the development of indigenous
communities belonging to the lower social class. The caste system in Nepal can be traced
back to the migration immigrants from the Gangetic plains and the ascendancy of the
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Hindu religion. These happened during the early Christian era. The system has been
modified to accept within its fold many ethnically Tibeto-Burman groups that were
indigenous to the region apart from the Indo-Aryan speakers from the plains. An
important part of the caste system is that lower caste people are considered to be
untouchable and they face a multitude of disadvantages in land endowment, socio-
economic marginalisation, and participation in decision-making process and employment
opportunities (Lawati, 2005). Usually, there is no marital relation with untouchable, and
the upper castes do not allow them to enter their house. In the western part of Nepal, they
also practice sprinkling water (act of purification) when the upper caste touches someone
belongs to untouchable caste. Further, the low-caste people are deprived of utilizing most
of the temples, funeral places, drinking water taps and wells, restaurants, shops and other
public places where their admission is strictly prohibitive.
Outcastes –who treated as untouchables are basically Dalits who are engaged in different
professional activities such as Kamis (Iron-smiths), Sunars (Gold-smiths), Lohars (Iron
smiths), Vishwakarmas (V.K.), Sobh, Snehi Nepali, etc. They have been named after the
professions they are found to be engaged in. For instance, one who is engaged in works
related to gold is a Sonar; the person who makes things out of copper is a Tamta; on who
is engaged in iron-related works is a Lohar, one who is engaged in making utensils from
wood is a Chunara; one who constructs good from bamboo is called a Parki; cloth
weaver a Koli and Sarki for the person engaged in leather work. Pradhan and Shrestha
(2005) posit that there is no agreement concerning the exact number of Dalit castes in
Nepal making it difficult to estimate the exact population. For example, the National
Dalit Commission lists 28 Dalit castes, whereas the 2001 Census lists only 16 Dalit
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castes. The largest Dalit group is Kami (blacksmiths) with 30% of the Dalit population,
followed by Damai (tailor cum musicians) 13%, Sarki (cobblers) 11%, and Chamar
(sweepers) 9% (Pradhan and Shrestha, 2005).
Caste and social dominance generally govern the beliefs and practices about rights and
responsibilities, powers and privileges with respect to the different resource management
activities (Singh, 2004). It should be noted that decisions related to access, distribution,
management, and responsibilities with regard to local level resource management are
rooted in social and cultural institutional mechanisms (Bhatia, 1997).
Caste discrimination is being a strong determining factor of exclusion in various forms of
collective action. For instance, in his study of 39 traditional canal systems in India, Baker
(1997) concluded that upper-caste farmers are always in better position to use more water
as they are located at the head-end of irrigation water supply. Further, Tiwary (2006)
systematically explored water resource access structure and highlighted the cumulative
inequality that scheduled caste group’s face in rural India. Caste does not only matter for
participating in collective action but also other economic activities such land ownership
and asset formation. For example, lower caste people from the Terai region (Madhesis) of
Nepal face difficulties in getting their citizenship certificates, without which they are
unable to buy land, get loans from banks, and apply for government jobs. Pradhan and
Shrestha (2005, pp. 15) pointed out that, ‘while the Janjatis, in general, do not face such
discriminations, they, like the Dalits and Madhesis, experience political and cultural
exclusion, which in many cases translates into economic exclusion. Representation of
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lower caste people and ethnic groups in the judiciary in Nepal is just 2.4 % and the civil
service is about 2.3% (Pradhan and Shrestha, 2005). Further, only 15.15% of the top
party leaders are Janjatis, and only 15.76% are Madhesi and there are no Dalits among
the party leaders . The disadvantages of ethnic and minority groups is also reflected in
the human development index (HDI) as hill castes, such as the Brahmins and Chhetris
and some better off ethnic groups, such as the Newars, Thakalis, and Byasis, have a
higher HDI than most other ethnic groups and Dalits. Further as Dalits have little
decision-making powers, attend fewer trainings and meetings, and are not able to capture
benefits from various community development activities such as credit or savings
schemes (Pradhan and Shrestha, 2005).
Given the socio-economic hierarchy posed by caste inequality, poorer households usually
affiliated to lower caste groups do not necessarily benefit as much as the relatively richer
households from higher caste background in deriving benefits from local development
intervention. For instance, ethnic minorities and indigenous people, who represent a
significant number of landless households marred with poverty, have tended to lag
behind in benefiting from any community-based development initiatives in Nepal.
Although there is a gradual breaking down of social barriers between higher and lower
castes, it still remains influential despite the fact that this is officially declared non-
existent. Although the caste system is strong social institution both in Nepal and India,
however there is a difference when comparing caste systems in these two countries. For
instance, India has a much stronger affirmative action program and preferential politics as
the government provides reservations for government jobs and of university seats in
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programs of higher education for people hailing from scheduled castes, scheduled tribes
and other backward communities. As a result, the issue of case is much more politicized
and perhaps a little less discriminatory. Nonetheless, even with the rapid urbanization
and education of India's largely rural, agrarian population, the effects of caste are slowly
being eradicated, but meet up with stiff resistance in many parts of the country.
As discussed earlier, one of the concerns in community-based management of forests in
South Asia is the contentious debate about the level of representation of lower caste
households in the decision making authority. A caste with numerical preponderance,
occupying a comparatively higher position in the local ritual hierarchy, possessing a
greater share of the village land and also having greater contacts with the outside world is
generally regarded as ‘dominant’ in the community (Singh, 2004; Srinivas, 1959).
Beteille (1983) points out that in Indian villages access to local common-property
resources is often restricted to privileged caste groups. The outcasts or schedule castes are
often among the poorest of the poor and are frequently excluded in the decision making
process. With regard to joint forest management in India, Hildyard et al (1998) argued
the structural dominance enjoyed by more powerful groups in joint forest management is
very evident. They argue that participation requires wider processes of social
transformation and structural change to the system of social relations through which
inequalities are reproduced and that without this transformation marginalized caste
groups could not get enhanced access to the resource base.
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Graner (1997) argued that the shift in forest management from state control to
community ownership in Nepal, has not necessarily helped poor people belonging to
lower caste groups, but have often worked to their disadvantage. In many cases, the poor
are not included in the forest management decision-making body (i.e. forest users
committee), as fuel wood sellers and other occupational households are not effectively
represented in the operational regime. Adhikari’s (2003) study reveals that the nature of
representation in the executive committee of the FUG is more biased towards the better
off as only 15.7 per cent female were represented in the FUG committee and the rest of
are all men usually from the upper caste. Thapa et al. (1998) posits that even if a person
from the lower caste group is represented on the committee, they are often not listened to
and have less bargaining power at the community meetings and assemblies. In terms of
resource exploitation, Adhikari et al (2004) observed that lower caste households are
benefiting less from community forests than households belonging to higher caste groups.
Singh (2004) noted that the dominant caste generally leads in regulating water
management affairs in India. In his study on power, equity and conflicts in South Asia,
Bhatia (1997) pointed out that, ‘while some conflicts in community-based resource
management are caused by disagreements related to access and distribution of
community forestry resources, in many cases the causes are actually based on class, caste,
gender, and power but manifest themselves in the guise of community forestry’.
However, this position is also contested by other scholars. For instance, a study
conducted by Sharma (2002) concluded that the use of forest products from the
community forests by wealth and caste fails to reveal any discrimination against the poor
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or lower caste people. Sharma further argued that community forestry still remains a
viable development strategy for securing basic needs as it can contribute to poverty
reduction because the poor and low caste households have easy access to forest products.
Pokharel (1997) also argued that community forestry has become a vehicle in bringing
change in social processes empowering poor and disadvantaged members of the
community as the program is able to raise awareness among disadvantaged and
marginalized members of the group in matters related to inequality, social injustice and
their exclusion from social and political processes including the benefits from
mainstream development. He further argued that, ‘community forestry has made a
significant contribution to increasing people's participation in many marginalized sections
of the community because their representation has increased in users committees and
many of them have begun to voice their concern in meetings and assemblies’. In this
context it is interesting to examine how the caste system influences the participation of
rural households in managing the local commons especially how caste influences access
to resources and leadership status of households in the regulated form of common
property resource management
3. Survey and Variables
Data are drawn for a survey conducted in 2000 in two districts in the middle hills of
Nepal, Kavre Palanchok and Sindhu Palanchowk. The middle hills comprise the central
area of Nepal with a mixture of agricultural and forested land. The majority of the
population in this area are subsistence farmers, depending on the surrounding agricultural
and forested land, with livestock playing an important part in their livelihood options
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(Adhikari, 2003). The middle-hills run from east to west across the center of the country,
sandwiched between the low laying Gangetic plains (Terai) and the snow-capped
Himalayan Mountains. Altitude in the middle-hills ranges from 300 m in river valleys to
5,000 m on hill tops. Land uses in this region are categorized as cultivated land, non-
cultivated inclusions, grasslands, forestland, shrub lands and other types of land use.
Community forestry has been in existence in the middle hills for up to twenty years, and
therefore provides a suitable environment in which to study the resource use patterns by
gender and caste since the introduction of the forestry system has been in existence for
some time. Since there is a fair degree of variability within the two districts in terms of
bio-physical and socio-economic characteristics, deliberate selection of sites was
considered likely to yield more information on the nature of project impact for a
minimum level of study resources than would a strictly random selection of sites (Collett
et al., 1996).
While villages formed the second stage of sampling, selection of FUGs formed the third
stage of the sampling frame. The next task was to select forest user groups (FUGs) from
the two districts under consideration. In order to address the research questions posed in
the previous section, four Forest User Groups (Saradadevi FUG, Jyala Chiti FUG,
Mahavedsthan FUC and Thuli Ban FUG) in Kavre Palanchok districts and four FUGs
(Gaurati FUG, Shree Chhap FUG, Janghare FUG and Karki Tar FUG) in Sindhu
Palanchowk district were selected.
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Since the main focus of this study was to assess the use of forest products by households
and assess farm and non-farm endowments of households, households are the final
sampling units in the sampling design. Within these FUGs a sample of households was
selected for interview based on their wealth ranking. This wealth ranking was
constructed after carrying out a participatory rural appraisal exercise within each village
that ranked households according to criteria that the villagers themselves considered
important in assessing a household’s position within the village (Adhikari, 2003). Key
to the ranking was the amount of land owned, the amount of off-farm income, food
sufficiency and the quality of land within each household. Households were therefore
selected for interview to ensure that a representative sample of households from each
wealth group was chosen. A total of 330 interviews were conducted, with twenty one
questionnaires being excluded from the final analysis because they were incomplete.
The survey focused on obtaining demographic information, land holding and tenure
information, use and management of the community forest and awareness and more
importantly participation and membership of households according to the caste of sample
households. We concentrated more on the household’s level of participation in the
management and implementation of the community forest.
The Tole (hamlet) level meetings were held separately for men and women in a smaller
and homogenous group to check their level of participation in the forest users committee.
This helps to arrive at a consensus on the perceptions of the group on issues like
community forestry, their awareness of and participation in the functioning of the FUG,
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role and membership of the committee and operational rules of the FUG, management of
the forest, distribution of products, and management of community funds and so on.
Group discussion was also helpful to discuss and define a consensus on the perceptions of
the group. Gender issues, benefit and cost sharing practices, decision making processes,
participation and representation in users’ committee, caste and gender representation in
users’ committee (apex body of FUG), nature of existing conflicts, ownership over
agreed upon decisions, and institutional procedure were assessed by group discussion. In
general, the group meetings sought to uncover the specific resource needs and opinions of
women, occupational castes and ethnic minorities including issues of welfare, equity, and
each group’s participation in forest resource management.
[TABLE 1 – ABOUT HERE]
From the survey a set of variables was selected for inclusion in the econometric model.
The variables used in this analysis are summarized in Table 1 which defines the
explanatory variables incorporated in the econometric analysis. Table 2 reports the
summary statistics.
[TABLE 2 – ABOUT HERE]
4. Analysis
To analyze the role of lower caste status, other socio economic variables and the level of
participation on both the probability of becoming a member of the FUG committee , we
estimates the role of the set of explanatory variables in determining the probability of that
specific household having one of their members in the FUG committee. We will refer to
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this equation as the “membership equation.” Therefore, socio economic characteristics
(rich, education, age and lower caste), participation and the labour units per household
are also assumed to be determinants of the memberships in the common property forest.
The membership equation is given by
Mi= wi′δ+ηI (1)
Where Mi is a binary variable that is equal to 1 if the household has a member in the FUG
committee and 0 otherwise, wi is a vector of covariates for household i, δ is a vector of
coefficients for the membership equation and η is the random disturbance.
We assumed that the extraction equation is linear. To test for the presence of collinearity,
the computation of the variance inflation factors (VIF) was implemented. We found that
the VIF values of all the explanatory variables were between 1.03 and 1.2. Thus, no
evidence of collinearity was found.
5. Empirical results
Table 4 reports the econometric results for both the membership equation and the
extraction equation1. The former is specified as follows:
Prob [Memtype=1] = F (constant, lower caste, rich, age, education, participation,
labour) (2)
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. Heterogeneity can lay an important role in this analysis (Edmonds, 2002). To control for
institutional and other unobservable forest user groups effects on fuelwood collection and
FUG membership we estimated the models both with and without fixed effects. To
appreciate the qualitative difference between these two models, we present in table 3 both
results. The Huber/White/sandwich estimator of variance was used. Further, for the 308
households belonging to the 8 different FUGs that manage a specific forest, we allowed
observations to be not independent within group (although they still are independent
between groups). Therefore, the observations are independent across groups (clusters) but
not necessarily independent within the group. From the inspection of the latter we found
that the probability of becoming a member of the FUG committee is sensitive to socio
economic variables. The estimated coefficient for lower caste is negative and statistically
significant (at 1% level). This implies that belonging to the caste of the untouchables is
negatively correlated with the probability of being elected as a member of the FUG
committee. This supports the argument that untouchable households are marginalized and
are not part of the decision making and governing body of the forest user groups.
Relatively better off households, instead, have a positive estimated coefficient
(statistically significant at the 5% level). This observation is similar to that of Singh
(2004) who argued that leadership in water management issues is exercised by the senior
group from the dominant caste in India.
More educated households are also more likely to become part of the FUG committee.
Indeed, the estimated coefficient for education is positive and statistically significant at
the 1% level. Age, instead, negatively affects the probability of membership. However,
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the estimated coefficient is statistically not significant. The level of participation in
community meeting seems to play an important role in determining the probability of
FUG membership. Indeed, the estimated coefficient is positive and highly significant.
Households that allocate time to participate to community meetings that relates to the
forest management, have better chances to become part of the decision making body.
Labor units per household, instead has been found highly not significant.
The calculation of the marginal effects highlighted the relative importance of the
variables lower caste and rich. The former displayed a marginal effect equal to -0.1 and
the latter equal to 0.07. The marginal effect calculated for the variable education was
0.075. Therefore, among the socioeconomic characteristics, lower caste the largest
impact on the probability of membership in the FUG. The level of participation has been
found to have the largest impact of all the explanatory variables (0.16).This result stresses
the important of household participation in community meeting.
[TABLE 3 – ABOUT HERE]
5. Conclusions and Policy Implications
Community-based management of common pool resources has been gaining momentum
in many developing countries due to their contribution on rural livelihoods and
environmental conservation. However, there is a strong debate among scholars as to
whether collective action is more equitable in heterogeneous society with a number of
socio-economic differences among actors and that these types of cooperative action
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empower the marginalized and poorer sections of the society in question. This paper
focused on some of these issues related to collective action taking a case study of
community forestry in Nepal.
Forest is considered to be crucial resource for livelihood security of the poor. Collective
action towards management of forest resources is legitimized by the government by
providing forest management ownership and authority to the local people. In Nepal, it
was expected that community-based management could reconcile the goals of social
justice, equity, development, empowerment and sustainability of forest resources. Policy
documents related to community forest explicitly recognize social equity and poverty
alleviation as fundamental objectives. Although the CF program in Nepal has been able
to meet some of these requirements (such as improvising the resource base, watershed
management and supply of forest products to the rural households), access to decision
making by lower caste and marginalized households has not been a universal result.
This study reveals that caste is playing an important role in local level collective such as
being elected as a member of governing body of FUG. Econometric evidence shows that
while richer and more educated households are more likely to be part of the governing
body the untouchables are marginalized. Their participation in the FUG committee and
the decision making process is less likely.
These results indicate that institutions of CF management are so far unable to recognize
that there are different types of resource users having different economic and social
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status, perspectives, knowledge systems, values, understanding and objectives (Anderson
et al., 1998). CF intervention, at least in the sites covered by this study, has not taken into
account the issue of caste although there are few initiatives to increase the women and
marginalized caste into the decision-making body. Although the program itself has
emphasized the provision for equality in opportunity in all aspects of management, the
decision-making process as well as in sharing cost and benefits. Nevertheless, given the
inherent socio-economic inequality in village communities, the equality of opportunity as
envisioned by the program did not necessarily reflect equitable outcomes.
Local elites are found to be advantaged in both accessing the decision making committee
and extracting benefits from the forest. The overall observation is that despite the
enormous potential of CF to significantly improve livelihoods and poverty reduction in
the Mid-Hills, the poverty alleviation agenda set by the government through the CF
program is unlikely to be achieved unless intervention related to empowering and
increasing the participation of the lower caste and marginalized group within the
community forestry program are properly materialized. Despite its focus on forest
management in Nepal, this study can contribute to the broader ongoing debate on
common pool resources. Indeed, the results stress the important role that lower caste and
local elites may have. Caste inequality, as well as other socioeconomic characteristics,
could undermine the success of collective action unless local institutions are strong
enough to tackle inequity in access and opportunities at the local level.
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Table 1 Definition summary statistics for the explanatory variables
Variable Name Variable definition Mean Std Deviation Min Max
Membership Dummy for membership in the committee (if member =1, 0 otherwise)
0.18 0.38 0 1
Lower caste Dummy for lower caste (if untouchable caste =1, 0 otherwise)
0.12 0.32 0 1
Education Average education of adult family members (per capita total number of school years)
3.97 2.3 0.14 10.2
Rich Dummy for wealth (if rich =1, 0 otherwise) 0.29 0.45 0 1
Age Age of the household head 43.7 12.89 22 84
Participation the number of attended meetings regarding community development issues
4.32 5.047 1 36
Labor Days allocated for fuel wood collection per member of the household
1.15 0.77 0.07 5.33
Table 2 Correlation matrix
rich lower caste education age labour participation
Rich 1
lower caste -0.1587 1
education 0.1389 -0.2845 1
Age 0.1805 -0.002 0.2167 1
labour -0.1042 0.1029 -0.2542 -0.1743 1
participation 0.1255 -0.1346 0.0333 0.0006 0.0463 1
27
Table 3 Probit equation results
Variables Coeffs Std Err Coeffs Std err (A)
Without FUG fixed effects
(B) With fixed effects
Lower caste -0.6*** 0.017 -0.79*** 0.1932 Rich 0.32** 0.14 0.45*** 0.1916 Education 0.38*** 0.013 0.0377*** 0.0154 Age -0.3 0.35 0.10 0.171 Labor 0.003 0.21 0.1479 0.195 Participation 0.85*** 0.15 0.86*** 0.179 Constant -0.32 1.38 -1.63*** 0.381
Model (A) Log Likelihood; -91; Wald chi2 (6) = 402.76; Prob > chi2 = 0; Pseudo R2 = 0.33 – Model (B): -91; Pseudo R2 = 0.3536 Significance levels are denoted by one asterisk (*) at the 10 % level, two asterisks (**) at the 5 % level, three asterisks (***) at the 1 percent level ; N=308;Note: Robust standard errors are used.