Community based forest management was introduced in Nepal to improve the livelihood of forest dependent communities through the sustainable utilization of forest products. Now, COFSUN Nepal will orient forest facilitators and mobilize them into the community forests to conduct Participatory Well Being Ranking to identify the pro poor in the community, provide them technical support to prepare Livelihood Improvement Plan (LIP), build capacity and provide financial support to implement LIP.
Nepal's half (53%) of the population live on poverty line in 2003-04 & made significant progress achieving 1st MDG reducing to 25% poor in 2011-12. Despite this, it still is 2nd poorest country in Asia and 18th in world (IMF, 2014). A study in 15 CFUGs of 5 districts in Nepal reflects that, 22% fund was invested in LIP (COFSUN & FECOFUN, 2014) which is 13% lower than the provision. There is clear gap and need facilitation & support to both CF committee and poor for their livelihood enhancement.
This project will orient & facilitate CFUGs to allocate 35% fund as per provision for the livelihood enhancement of pro poor. The identified pro poor through participatory well being ranking will be strengthen their capacity with training and technically support to prepare their livelihood improvement plan. The project will provide financial support for their livelihood improvement plan implementation. The 35% allocated fund of Community forest will also be invested in livelihood improvement.
The long term project impact will be increase in the income of pro poor which will support in their livelihood. The allocation of fund for poor will support in establishing good governance of forest user group. The implementation of plan will also support in the sustainable use of the forest product along with sustainable management of community forest. The project will benefit 20 community forest user groups of 4 districts and 100 pro poor with livelihood improvement plan and implementation.
This project has provided additional documentation in a PDF file (projdoc.pdf).
