Doctoral Dissertation Research: Promoting Sustainable Communities: Community Forestry as a Conduit of Change

社区林业旨在通过本地化森林管理为社区群体提供资源获取、创收和更大的社会公平。它的实施代表了环境治理的更广泛转变，从中央命令和控制条例转向公私伙伴关系以及自愿和分散的办法。尼泊尔经常被引用为社区林业的成功案例，超过14,000个社区森林用户群体控制着超过110万公顷的林地，使尼泊尔35%以上的人口受益。这些组织在森林管理方面取得成功的基础上，开始推动其他可持续性倡议，包括沼气技术。这项研究有两个目的。首先，它探讨了参与社区森林项目是否以及如何促进更广泛的环境意识和价值，包括对其他环境可持续性项目的兴趣，如沼气。其次，该研究探讨了国家和全球环境可持续性运动是否以及如何影响尼泊尔社区林业和沼气技术项目的形式和内容。该研究将结合最近关于人们如何以及为什么内化环境主义观点并将其付诸日常实践的观点，以及政治生态学对政治、话语和可持续性之间关系的长期努力，从而推动政治生态学领域的发展。这个多地点的案例研究探讨了尼泊尔两个地点的社区林业和沼气倡议之间的联系。在贾帕区，多个社区森林组织正在推广沼气，其中一个获得了80万卢比的政府贷款以继续其工作，而在廓尔喀区，这些组织正在参与一个新的沼气推广计划。这些地点代表了可以推广沼气的一系列条件，贾帕的环境条件比廓尔喀的环境条件更有利于沼气，贾帕的农民比廓尔喀的农民拥有更多的土地和牲畜。考虑到沼气在提高生活质量方面的潜力，了解这些项目是否以及如何在理想和具有挑战性的环境下取得成功至关重要。数据收集方法包括民族志田野调查、参与者观察、深度访谈、调查、参与者绘图、焦点小组、主要文献和二手文献。对所收集数据的内容分析将解释为什么受访者会或不参加社区森林组织和采用沼气技术，以及他们如何从更广泛的环保主义者的观点和议程方面看待这些行动。本研究旨在了解利用参与分散、自愿形式的环境治理（这里是社区林业）作为实现更广泛的环境公民意识和参与其他可持续性倡议的途径的影响。因此，了解各个团体如何在促进多方面可持续性的项目之间设计协同效应，不仅与尼泊尔的社区林业有关，而且与在世界范围内促进和实施环境和社会可持续实践的努力有关。这个支持尼泊尔研究的奖项是由SBE/GSS和国际科学与工程办公室共同资助的。

Community forestry is designed to provide community-based groups with resource access, income generation, and greater social equity through localized forest management. Its implementation is representative of broader shifts in environmental governance away from centralized command-and-control regulation, and towards public/private partnerships and voluntary and decentralized approaches. Nepal is often cited as a success story for community forestry, with over 14,000 community forest user groups controlling over 1.1 million hectares of forest land, benefiting over 35% of Nepal's population. Building on their success in forest management, such groups have begun to promote other sustainability initiatives, including biogas technology. This study has two objectives. First, it explores whether and how participation in community forest programs promotes broader environmental awareness and values, including interest in other environmental sustainability programs, such as biogas. Second, the study explores whether and how national and global movements for environmental sustainability influence the form and content of community forestry and biogas technology programs in Nepal. The study will advance the field of political ecology by combining recent perspectives on how and why people internalize environmentalist views and put them into daily practice with political ecology's longer-term efforts to theorize the relationships among politics, discourse, and sustainability. This multi-sited case study explores the connections between community forestry and biogas initiatives in two locations in Nepal. In Jhapa district, multiple community forest groups are promoting biogas, with one receiving an 800,000 rupee government loan to continue its work, while in Gorkha district, such groups are participating in a new biogas promotion program. These sites represent a spectrum of conditions under which biogas can be promoted, with environmental conditions in Jhapa more favorable to biogas than those in Gorkha, and with farmers in Jhapa owning more land and cattle than their Gorkha counterparts. Given biogas' potential to improve quality of life, it is critical to understand if and how such projects can succeed under both ideal and challenging circumstances. Data collection methods include ethnographic fieldwork, participant observation, in-depth interviews, survey, participant mapping, focus groups, primary documents, and secondary literature. Content analysis of the collected data will explain why respondents do or do not participate in community forest groups and adopt biogas technology, as well as how they view these actions with respect to broader environmentalist views and agendas. This study seeks to understand the implications of using participation in decentralized, voluntary forms of environmental governance---here, community forestry---as a pathway towards a broader sense of environmental citizenship and participation in other sustainability initiatives. Understanding how groups design synergies between programs that advance sustainability on many fronts is thus relevant not only to community forestry in Nepal, but to efforts to promote and implement environmentally and socially sustainable practices worldwide. This award to support research in Nepal is cofunded by SBE/GSS and the Office of International Science and Engineering.