DISES: Influence of Community Forestry on the Dynamics of the Integrated Socio-Environmental Systems

Forests are extremely important because they serve as homes for millions of animals and plants. Those organisms live, provide people with wood for building houses and for cooking, and they cool the climate by absorbing carbon dioxide. Unfortunately, forests continue to be cut down, especially in poor countries. To prevent forests from further decline, people in some communities are protecting them with what is called Community Forestry. In community forestry programs people in a village work together to decide what to do with their forests. About a third of the forests in poor countries are managed this way. However, community forestry does not always work. This project will find out why some villages in Nepal are successful in community forestry while others not. The researchers will work closely with local stakeholders to improve their forest management strategies that can benefit communities worldwide. In addition to this impact on forestry the project will train graduate and undergraduate students and leave a lasting legacy in Nepal. The United States will economically benefit from this research as a result of better community forest management through resource preservation and reduced carbon dioxide levels. The main goal of this project is to study how can be improved to better preserve the forests and support the lives of forest-dependent people. To achieve this goal, this research will address the following questions: (1) How do community forestry practices affect people's livelihoods and their social interactions? (2) How do those practices influence rural out-migration? (3) How do they affect land-use? (4) How has COVID-19 influenced rural people's livelihoods and their dependence on community forestry? (5) How has community forestry influenced the ecosystem's provision of goods and services? The researchers will interview households about their forest management practices, the origin of management rules, and the role of community members in making rules. They will also be surveyed to determine detailed information about their agricultural practices, out migration patterns, and if community forestry has helped buffer COVID-19 impacts. Remote sensing data collected by satellites, in situ hydrological data on the ground, and statistical, ecological and hydrological models will also be used to estimate how much water forests use, and how much carbon dioxide they absorb from the atmosphere. Eventually an Integrated Modeling System will be developed to study the interactions among forests, human activities, and the ecosystem goods and services the environment provides. This project will advance theory on common pool resource management, rural out migration, as well as the land use and forest-ecosystem service relationship. The new knowledge to be gained from this research will be highly valuable when developing new policies for sustainable community forestry in Nepal and other countries. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.