Sustainable development and the legacy of socio-ecological risk: the example of community forestry in Nepal

Responses to risk have been insufficiently incorporated into sustainable development pathways. Development interventions can both generate new socio-ecological risks and fail to mitigate the risks experienced by rural communities. We analyse perceptions of socio-ecological risks within community forest user group households in Bagmati province in central Nepal across a three-year period. Community forestry has successfully returned the forest to the middle hills of Nepal, helping to mitigate landslide risks and conserve biodiversity, but other risks are being produced and reinforced within the forest as it transitions. Households are becoming less active in community forest management and are accessing smaller percentages of their income from agriculture and forestry. At the same time, wild animal and wildfire risks are increasing. Climate change is seen to be a key driver of a range of new risks in association with the forest. Perceived household food self-sufficiency has declined recently within all municipalities, with increasingly high levels of households going into debt to support food security. People are valuing the forest for the ecosystem services they provide, including improving biodiversity, supporting subsistence agriculture and stabilising landscapes, but most respondents were not using the forest either to mitigate food insecurity or generate financial incomes. Forests must be managed to continue to be part of the solution, not the problem. As new levels of risk become apparent, knowledge of risk perceptions and interactions with the forest need to be integrated reflexively within policy and practice to guide sustainable development outcomes. • The very success of modern reforestation is generating new risks for communities • There are exogenous/endogenous, downside/upside and contemporary/future risks • Human-wildlife and wildfire risks are increasing with forest cover and climate change • Households go into debt rather than use the forest to mitigate food security risks • New forms of whole-of-system understanding will be key to guiding integrated policy