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Chapters Planning for forests through participation

Introduction

  1. Foreword
  2. Message from the Executive Director
  3. The year that was
  4. Working towards impact

Ensuring forest landscapes provide climate solutions

  1. Eight forests, six countries and a shared framework for learning
  2. New terms for community forestry in Riau, Indonesia
  3. Community forest groups in Nepal invest in recharge ponds
  4. Moving beyond monoculture in Viet Nam’s coffee farms

Securing rights and inclusive governance

  1. Making forest tenure processes work for women
  2. Planning for forests through participation
  3. Strengthening inclusive governance in Chitwan’s buffer zones

Supporting growth of forest landscape-related businesses

  1. Building a mangrove business around mud crabs
  2. From forest management to forest income
  3. Building stronger coffee businesses in Viet Nam’s Central Highlands

Securing finance for sustainable forest landscapes

  1. Restoring watersheds, one tree at a time

Generating evidence for influence

  1. Chiang Mai’s community forests take ownership of biodiversity data
  2. Building a regional research community
  3. From development site to urban conservation area
  4. Mapping oil palm from the ground up
  5. Thai community forests earn Green Globe recognition

Engaging the public on forest landscape issues

  1. A new generation of forest guardians
  2. Community members map their forests in western Thailand
  3. Peering into curtained forests
  1. Board of Trustees
  2. Our project donors, partners and networks
A farming valley and village in a forested area in Nepal.
Securing rights and inclusive governance

Planning for forests through participation

Participatory planning strengthens local forest governance in two communities in Nepal

The quality of forest governance depends not only on the plans communities adopt, but also on who helps shape them. In Nepal, participatory planning processes are helping ensure that local priorities and rights are reflected in the decisions made about forest landscapes.

Building a shared vision in Bheriganga

In Nepal's federal structure, agroforestry sits in an awkward space, with responsibilities spread across both the agriculture and forestry sectors. Municipalities have often been left to navigate these gaps on their own.

Bheriganga Municipality in Surkhet, far-west Nepal, had been managing its forests and farmland without a formal strategy. With support from RECOFTC Nepal, it set out to change that.

Through our ‘Securing and protecting investments and capacities for environmental sustainability’ (SPICES) programme, we worked with ward representatives, farmers and local government officials over several months in 2024. Together, we sought to understand what agroforestry looks like in practice across the municipality.

We held multiple municipal consultations and field observations. A province-level workshop brought together ministries, research institutions and development partners to discuss the draft against broader policy.

By December 2024, the municipality formally approved a 10-year agroforestry strategy and action plan that links the municipality's natural resource management to its Sustainable Development Goal commitments.

The plan is expected to serve as a reference for other local governments navigating the same unclear boundaries of agroforestry.

Two community members stand beside bamboo steps on a forest path in Nepal.

Renewing community governance in Bedhigoth

Some 400 kilometres east, in Sindhupalchok, the Bedhigoth Community Forest User Group faced a more immediate governance problem. Its operational plan was no longer aligned with Bagmati Province's 2022 sustainable forest management guidelines and did not adequately reflect the community's current priorities.

In May 2025, our ‘Scaling-up equitable governance in area-based conservation’ (SEGA) project conducted a ‘site-level assessment on governance and equity’ (SAGE) assessment at Bedhigoth. The SAGE process brought together CFUG members, local government and forest office officials to discuss governance gaps.

We provided technical support throughout the drafting process, and by August 2025, the Division Forest Office approved a revised 10-year operational plan. Since then, the community forest user group has moved quickly to bring the new plan to practice. So far, it has initiated a fireline construction training, cleaning drives and silvicultural operations in collaboration with local partners.

In both Bheriganga and Bedigoth, the approved documents were milestones. However, the more important work had already happened in the groundwork, field visits and conversations that shaped their respective plans.

RECOFTC’s work is made possible with the support of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation and the Government of Sweden.