Property Rights And Natural Resources: Socio-Economic Heterogeneity
Distributional Implications of Common Property Resource Management in Nepal
Bhim Adhikari (2001)

Introduction

This study deals with local level economic consequences of common property resource (CPR) institution in the context of community-based forest management in Nepal. Development of the local economy while managing common property resources has emerged as the top resource management policy in Nepal in the past few years. This initiative has emerged largely due to a strong disillusionment with the performance of the centralized management policy in providing sufficient incentives for the resource users to manage local resources on a sustainable basis.

The past decade has witnessed an increasing emphasis on community-based forest management and the handing over of national forests to the local community with a focus on poverty alleviation. Although local control over natural resources is now regarded as a win-win solution for government, local people and the environment, the empirical evidence regarding the impact of CPR institutions and thus local level economic consequences of community-based forest management is rather thin.

Current debates on community forestry in Nepal concern:

• What makes the system of community-based forest management successful in sustaining the resource and distributing its products?
  
• What are the local economic consequences of CPR management institutions?
• What are the determinants of household level income from CPR?
  
• How do the community-based property rights over forests affect the livelihood strategies of the poor?