A Devkota, Kirti creator Routray, Jayant Kumar Chairperson Boonjit Titapiwatanakun Examination Committee Thapa, Gopal B. Examination Committee Government of Japan Scholarship Donor text th Bangkok Asian Institute of Technology 1994 monographic eng

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117 leaves Since 1978, bilateral and multilateral agencies, have implemented the new paradigm of forest management and protection as people centered approach recognizing by community forestry program with opposed to the earlier paradigm "forest centered approach". Simultaneously in many instances villagers are managing forest resources by self initiation using the indigenous knowledge or traditional systems. This comparative research study of traditional and project assisted community forestry system has been conducted to determine the management organizational, functional, institutional, participation, benefit sharing and people's empowerment in two villages of Nepal namely Taklung VDC of Gorkha district and Goganpani VDC of Dhading district from May 15 to July 20, 1994. Group dynamism, group effectiveness, active participation, participatory planning, cohesiveness, regular user's and group meeting are better off in the project assisted area while intra ethnic conflict, political bias, elite exploitation, and gender biased are major impediments of traditional forestry systems specially in heterogeneous settlements. People's participation in group meeting, decision making, planning and voluntary contribution, awareness and empowe1ment are higher in the project assisted area, but women's participation, awareness and empowe1ment are not significantly differences. Economic harvesting, equal benefit distribution, sharing, sustainable and persuasive use of forest products are positive in the project assisted area. This study shows that heterogeneous ethnic groups are not interested to forest management and protection due to conflict, domination discrimination, exploitation, unequal participation, inter personal competition, political clashes those are the prime social evils which play a catalytic role to suppress the traditional community forestry program in heterogeneous settlements of the study area. Another highly sensitive problem investigated by the study was un-balanced situation between wood production and consumption in both the traditional and the project assisted area. The research reveals that 53.33 percent of study villages in the project area as well as 66.66 percent in the traditional villages have been in wood deficit situation. Finally, this study concludes that traditional forestry system can foster only in homogeneous settlements. However, project assistance is needed for awareness, empowe1ment, socio-technical-economic development in an integrated project basis with long run sustainable forest resources. A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Science Thesis (M.Sc.) - Asian Institute of Technology, 1994 Forest policy Nepal Asian Institute of Technology. http://203.159.5.9/ait-thesis/detail.php?q=B15967 http://203.159.5.9/ait-thesis/detail.php?q=B15967 070898 20260817173407.0