Women conserve, men still conservative

Kusum Devi Dagaura has chaired a community forest group in Kailali for three years. In that time, the forest has thrived on her watch, but she has never been allowed to take any decision.

The Mohanyal Community Forest Users Committee seven-member executive committee includes five women and two men. The men call the shots.

“Sometimes they pretend to listen to us, but in the end, whatever the men say goes,” says Dagaura.

As chair, she once suggested that timber from their forest be provided for free to the most underserved, including the Dalit and indigenous communities. But the men disagreed, and the poorest in the village had to pay to use timber they helped protect.

Once Dagaura was assaulted during a dispute over forest conservation, and she asked the committee to bear the cost of treatment. The two male members refused.

Dagaura is from the Tharu community, and a freed bonded labourer. She never went to school but learnt to read and write participating in an adult education program.

Many community forests across Nepal are led by women, and rules require a woman to be either the chair or secretary of working committees, and that stipulates that half the members are women.

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The Federation of Community Forestry Users Nepal (FECOFUN) includes 22,415 community forests across the country, out of which 1,072 are headed by women. Kailali is among the districts with the most community forests in Nepal with 700 locally protected forest committees out of which 150 are led by women. 

Women have played a crucial role in forest conservation, and expanding Nepal’s forest cover, which has grown to nearly 46% of the country’s area from just 25% 30 years ago.

Tej Rani Chaudhary is a member of the Hariyali Community Forest Users Group, which has a male chair and five women among the total eight members in the working committee. The forest was registered 20 years ago by Chaudhary and a group of women.

“When we registered the forest, the men scoffed at us and questioned our ability to manage it,”  recalls Chaudhary. “It wasn’t just unkind words, the men undermined our efforts by allowing their animals to graze in the forest and even smuggled logs out.”

When the women resisted and brought the forest to a healthy state, the men took over control of the committee. Chaudhary says, “When the forest improved, we were forced to hand over leadership to the men.”

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Women forestry committee members add that the men constantly belittle them, discouraging them from voicing any opinion during the working committee meetings. But the women are resisting.

“Whenever we do not agree with the points being made during committee meetings, we simply get up and walk out in a group,” says Chaudhary.

Women who chair or are members of community forest user committees say that despite being in leadership positions, they are tasked with forest maintenance and conservation, while men have control over the budget, accounting, and resource distribution.

“They task the women with fire control, tree plantation, fencing, and conservation, without being paid anything,” says Dagaura of Mohanyal Community Forest.

Karna Rawal, vice-president of the Kailali chapter of FECOFUN, says that men reject the authority and dominate the decision-making processes in 60% of community forests that are led by women.

“The non-acceptance of women in leadership is not just limited by male office-bearers, but also by other employees,” he admits.

Women who lead community forests also face pressure from family members and society. Jhuma Chaudhary, who heads FECOFUN’s Sudurpaschim Province chapter, says the role of women in Nepal’s community forestry success story is being undermined by discrimination.

She says: “Women are actively participating in conservation, but have not yet been given control of resources that help manage our forests better. We must ensure that changes. Starting now.”