Navigating policy debates of and discourse coalitions on Nepal's Scientific Forest Management

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.forpol.2022.102768Get rights and content

Highlights

  • We employed discourse network analysis to diagnose debates of and coalition on SciFM.

  • Informal and tight-knot networking is decisive in public policy pathway.

  • Networking is more influential than scientific rationale in Nepal's forest policy.

  • Longevity of the policy decisions depends on the broader political commitment.

Abstract

The debate over production and protection oriented forest management is long-standing in various part of the world. Taking a case of scientific forest management (SciFM) of Nepal, we aimed to analyze how policy actors, their interests and interactions (networks) shape the discursive shift of forest management practices. We employed the discourse network analysis to diagnose the policy rupture of SciFM, by using various qualitative data collection methods, including experts' consultation (n = 6), key informants' interviews (n = 36 from 9 stakeholders' group), systematic review of Nepal-based literature (n = 30), review of national policy and study reports (n = 12), and experiential observation. We carried out the stakeholder mapping, including their pattern of interactions and inter-dependencies; and analyzed the power and influence over SciFM. Based on the navigation and analysis of the actors' network, pattern of interaction, and coalition for and against SciFM, we have intensively explained how SciFM, which was developed on the background of techno-bureaucrats' dominance for the last 25 years in Nepal, has been demolished within a year because of persistent ideation of the Federation of Community Forest Users, Nepal (FECOFUN), strong and (in) formal networking of politicians, FECOFUN, and high level bureaucrats and investigation committee. The inference that we draw from our study will have policy implications to other countries that have similar socio-political context. Based on our analysis of the discourse network, we suggest navigating the concerns and gaining (in) formal confidence of (possible) policy entrepreneur, including but not limited to political leadership irrespective of the scale and size of their interest (or need) for sustaining policy decision.

Introduction

Policy changes in the forestry sector are determined by the changing global context as well as local social and economic conditions (Laudari et al., 2020). Moreover, policy pathways are largely shaped by the interests and networking of the stakeholders predominant at national and sub-national level (Ayana et al., 2018). In the verge of global normative perspective of ecosystem services and local economic considerations of forest resources, forest policy in many countries, especially in the developing ones, has been contested with production-oriented and protection-oriented management priorities (Miura et al., 2015). With no exception, Nepal's forestry sector has also witnessed different practices of forest management – exploitation of forest resources for revenue generation to protection oriented management to fulfill local's basic needs (Aryal et al., 2020a, Aryal et al., 2020b; Laudari et al., 2020).

In the last four decades, however, forest management approach has been highly debated whether it be production or protection oriented. Nepal has achieved considerable success in protection oriented forest management through community forestry program, which is also no exempt from critics for being passive and underutilization of forest resources (Aryal et al., 2020a, Aryal et al., 2020b; Maraseni et al., 2019). Realizing this weakness, the government of Nepal made its first attempt to active forest management in Terai1 through developing operational forest management plan (OFMP) in 1995 which could not get success as planned because of its weak institutional arrangements (Bampton et al., 2007; Laudari et al., 2020). Afterwards, the government introduced Collaborative Forest Management (CFM) program in 2000, aiming at implementing silvicultural interventions in Terai region of Nepal through introducing (revised) Forestry Sector Policy-2000 (Bampton et al., 2007). However, many scholars and the national federation of forest users' groups, the Federation of Community Forest Users, Nepal (FECOFUN) criticized the initiative by arguing that there was ambiguity in tenure rights and security; lack of appropriate and uncontested policy provisions for cost and benefit-sharing among collaborators; limited decision-making space for forest-managing communities and local governments (Dhungana et al., 2017; Malla, 2001).

Again in 2012, the government of Nepal introduced new vision- “Forestry for Prosperity”, aiming to re-introduce the concept of active forest management in the name of “scientific forest management (SciFM)” program in ten districts (Poudel, 2018). In the following years, the government endorsed Scientific Forest Management Guideline-2014 to guide and institutionalize SciFM in the field level (Awasthi et al., 2020). The periodic plans and fiscal policies of the government of Nepal, including 13th (2013/14–2015/16), 14th (2016/2017-2018/19) and 15th (2019/20 – 2023/24) plans and National Forest Policy-2015 also prioritized SciFM program for enhancing the productivity of forest and forest products (MoFE, 2019; NPC, 2019). SciFM was aimed to implement in at least 50% forest area of Terai region to cater the annual gains of about USD 130 million from SciFM practices (MOFE, 2014). Till June 2020, SciFM was implemented in nearly 750 community forest, more than 30 collaborative forests and 7 block forests (in 58 districts of seven provinces), covering 0.177 million ha forest2 (Oli, 2020).

After about ten years of systematic implementation, several conflicting perspectives, and accordingly various actors have appeared in SciFM program (Poudyal et al., 2020a). Scholars concerned about uncertainties surrounding policy and legal issues (Joshi et al., 2018), commodification of forest product, and excessive bureaucratic control on its implementation (Basnyat, 2020; Basnyat et al., 2020). While others argue that SciFM has been able to improve forest condition and generate income and employment opportunities for the forest users group (Awasthi et al., 2020; Khanal and Adhikari, 2018). Criticizing the role played by technical staffs in SciFM program and so-called rampant felling of sound trees in the name of SciFM particularly in western lowlands of Nepal, the government (from the cabinet decision dated on 28 May 2020) banned collection and harvesting of all type of tree species in the country until further decision. In addition, the government instituted a high-level investigation committee to review and investigate plausible illegal logging that is reported in Nepal's Terai. While at the same time, the parliamentary committee also formed a sub-committee under the Public Account Committee to probe the issue.3 These (investigation) committees visited the field and prepared the report and submitted to the respective authority (Budhaair, 2021). Immediately after receiving the report from those investigation committees, the government endorsed the recommendations suggested by the committees and dismissed SciFM policy practice in Nepal on 24th January 2021.

The discursive struggle of SciFM for the last 25 years, policy endorsement and systematic implementation of SciFM for the last decade, and now, the dismissal of SciFM at the beginning of 2021 have aroused various issues that are the interests of network analysis and discursive practices. There are extensive bodies of literature which have documented various social, organizational and practical aspects of SciFM in Nepal. It includes stakeholders' perception on the SciFM practice (Bhusal et al., 2020b; Joshi et al., 2018; Poudyal et al., 2020a), forest users' participation in SciFM process (Baral, 2018; Rutt et al., 2015), benefit-sharing mechanism of the community-based forest that adopts SciFM (Basnyat, 2020; Bhusal et al., 2020b); the financial implication of SciFM approach (Basnyat, 2020); species diversity and regeneration dynamics of SciFM practices (Awasthi et al., 2020; Awasthi et al., 2015). Researchers have also documented governance and power recentralization issues of SciFM (Baral, 2018; Basnyat, 2020).

Although the previous studies have tried to assess social and technical implications of SciFM program, very few studies have navigated: a) how the narratives of SciFM were communicated among the stakeholders, including politicians, forest users' network and bureaucrats; b) what types of actors and stakeholders groups were emerged, and how they form policy networks; c) how the actors and stakeholder groups perceive and express their underlying policy beliefs; and d) how the discourse network(s) drive to policy rupture regarding SciFM practice in Nepal. As discursive practices and networking play a key role in shaping the policy process and policy outcome, it is deemed important for scientific communities, policymakers, and practitioners to understand the dynamics of socio-political networking that (de) shape the policy process of the country. In this perspective, we aim to unpack the policy rupture of Nepal's SciFM by employing discourse network analysis.

Policy processes are seldom the matter of rationale of choices or scientific justification but the outcomes of information flow and interpretation, influence, and coalitions among a cluster of actors in a certain policy domain (Brockhaus et al., 2014; Haelg et al., 2020). Both state and non-state actors are linked together by their specific interests and resource interdependencies. Study on policy discourses includes both the network analysis of actor-centered approaches and qualitative analysis of content-oriented approaches (Leifeld and Haunss, 2010). Characterization of policy actors and interactive processes of one or various forms of coalitions and influence is explained through the social networks of policy actors (Peterson, 2003; Rudnick et al., 2019). Besides, analysis of policy ideas, all the way through its creation, interpretation, communication, and its implication is understood through discourse network analysis. In this regard, discourse network analysis (DNA) is a relational perspective on policy discourses, based on social network analysis and qualitative content analysis, to explain policy debates as dynamic networks (Ghinoi and Steiner, 2020; Leifeld, 2018; Leifeld and Haunss, 2010).

DNA is the extraction of actor-centered content-oriented deep structures of complex policy discourse and its formalization (Leifeld and Haunss, 2010). Thus, it serves in understanding of discourse coalition in the political arena and networks of actors involved in political debates and coalition for a specific policy issue (Ghinoi and Steiner, 2020). DNA has been growingly used to measure discourse coalition and policy debates, which is central to investigate networking and collation among actors through the discursive struggle (Leifeld, 2020; Muller, 2015). Actors, concepts, and affiliation or agreement relationship between actors and concepts are the fundamental elements of DNA (Ghinoi and Steiner, 2020; Leifeld and Haunss, 2010). It further explains the position of actors as well as the networks of actor and concepts, including congruence and/or conflict networks. The flexibility of DNA as it can be combined with other policy network approaches, and its wider applicability to understand actors' preferences on policy alternatives, linguistic peculiarities, beliefs, interpretative and formalization dynamics has broadened its scope in explaining why and how a certain policy is institutionalized or deinstitutionalized (Buttel, 1997; Hall, 1993; Leifeld, 2020; Leifeld and Haunss, 2010; Sabatier and Weible, 2007).

Policy practices can be explained through various analytical approaches such as advocacy coalition framework, critical discourse analysis, policy paradigms, punctuated equilibrium theory and others. Advocacy coalition explains how actors make coalition and form networks by sharing a set of normative or causal beliefs (Sabatier, 1998), but it deals with multiple policy issues at time and it is more actor-centered approach rather than analysis of deep structure of discursive practices (Leifeld, 2018; Leifeld and Haunss, 2010). Critical discourse analysis explains the ideation and narration of policy issues and also explains content based discursive practices (Wodak, 2006), but poorly explains the dynamics of actors' network in shaping the discursive shift (Leifeld and Haunss, 2010). Similarly, policy paradigms and punctuated equilibrium theory explain the actor-centered approach to illustrate shifts in policy choices but merely explains the content-based analysis of discursive practice and its influence in policy outcomes. To this end, DNA covers all the aspects of actors' position, their preferences and networking as well as the ideation and narration of the content through the discursive practices, in order to formalization (i.e., institutionalization or deinstitutionalization) or policy outcomes through the analysis of deep actors and content networks (Ghinoi and Steiner, 2020; Leifeld and Haunss, 2010; Wallaschek, 2020).

The SciFM, policy intervention in the Nepalese forestry sector, is neither the outcome of a single event nor a single political issue. Emergence and development of SciFM policy, along with its downfall has more than three decades of historical discursive struggle encompassing a range of policy actors from various government and non-government organizations, including central and local government, community and market sector, experts, national alliances of forest user groups, international organizations and donors, and non-government organizations (NGOs) as well as civil society organizations (CSOs) (Poudyal et al., 2020a). DNA, in this regard, allows to track changes in discourses and discursive practices over time (Leifeld and Haunss, 2010). Analysis of the policy churning of SciFM, therefore, needs to be done at different levels (i.e., from the nature of broader organizations and their networks to perception and interests of individuals within/among certain stakeholder groups), considering power structure, affiliation and conflict networks, the pattern of interactions and inter-dependencies. DNA is the most suited approach to scrutinize the political debate and network dynamics of SciFM in Nepal.

Section snippets

Methods

This study followed various participatory research tools for data collection and data analysis. Expert consultation, key informant interviews, review of literature and policy documents, and experiential observation were the key methods employed for collecting data for this study (Fig. 1). We undertook a literature survey and review to identify major policy issues and to assess and evaluate the policy dynamics of SciFM in Nepal. Since the structured program of SciFM has implemented since 2012,

Policy events, nodes and linkages

Master Plan for Forestry Sector (MPFS) is the first and formal policy document of Nepal that spelled out the need for adopting sustainable management since 1989 (HMGN, 1989). The plan, under national and leasehold forestry program, aimed for both establishing and management of national production forests to supply wood to urban and wood-deficit areas and implementing silvicultural practices and yield regulation in natural forests.4 To translate the SFM

Actor's networks, pattern of interaction and discursive coalition

Longevity of the policy decisions depends on either the broader political commitment or at least, discursive network of wider stakeholders (Giessen et al., 2016; May and Jochim, 2013). In a country like Nepal, with fragile political systems and disturbed governance mechanisms, a policy decision is optimized until the emergence of new political architecture of environmental governance (Laudari et al., 2020; Mcloughlin, 2015). The rise and fall of SciFM discourse in Nepal have followed both

Conclusion

In this study, we have presented an approach to analyze how actors and their interests interact to form a discursive network and how such networks lead to a particular policy outcome. Our analysis shows that (in) formal networks of actors - be it with government authorities or non-governmental organizations play a pivotal role and the involvement of political actors in a certain network largely dictates the pathway of policy outcomes. We further observed an interesting sensation that

Funding

No funding is received for this study.

Declaration of Competing Interest

None.

Acknowledgement

We are thankful to the research participants for their meaningful participation for data collection.

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      Being aligned, the Forestry Sector Strategy of Nepal has also aimed to implement SciFM in at least 50 % of forest areas in the Southern lowlands of Nepal by 2025. However, after a series of protests and campaigning from a group of community actors against the SciFM (see in detail: Aryal et al., 2022), the government of Nepal suspended SciFM policy in 2021. Differing perspectives and worldviews, actors’ coalition, and political interest might be one scholarship of analysis, but the conflict of knowledge is among the most populated discursive struggles in this policy domain.

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