Effects of Community and Co-management Systems

Does community management improve the conditions of local natural resources? With 104 randomly sampled forests in the Middle Hills of Nepal, we address this question. Forest conditions were evaluated by aerial-photo analysis and forest inventory. We find that co-management systems, which are the forest users groups registered at the local forest offices, contributed to increase tree regeneration. In the case of Nepal, the official support from the forest offices enhanced the functions of community management. However, community management systems without any external support are not ineffective. Our analysis suggests that they reduced the incidents of forest fire and grazing activity