The Landscapes of Democracy project is focused on the question, under what conditions does environmental governance become undermined by conflict and violence? This question is motivated by deep concern that environmental change appears to cause crises of legitimacy, conflict and violence, undermining Nepal’s forestry programs that have been global paradigms for democratisation of resource use. The aim of the sabbatical was to use Nepal’s forestry sector as an empirical lens to understand how state transformation and crises of authority and legitimacy have emerged through the course of several major political transitions since 1950. The sabbatical research focused mainly on the era of community forestry (from 1988) but also extended back to the 1960s and the beginning of the forestry department.

An in-depth case study of the role of the Forest Department and international organizations, gender and social inequalities (‘subjectivities’), everyday working of user-groups, and ecological change were brought together to address broader theoretical environmental governance questions of conflict, democracy and transformation of societies and ecologies. The sabbatical research focused on historical and up to date research in Nepal on conflicts over forestry governance. The research in 2018 was particularly timely as the 2017 elections in Nepal led to a major restructuring of the entire government, with the nation now divided into seven provinces and a redistribution of legislative powers at the central, provincial, and local government levels.

The work used an interdisciplinary methodology, weaving together historical sources and in-depth qualitative data with biophysical analyses. It is based on qualitative interviews at different levels within Nepali society and government, in-depth ethnography at the village level, aerial photo interpretation, vegetation inventory and analysis of forestry policy that includes historical documents from the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and Forestry Department documents from 1957-1963 that detail the early establishment of Forest Offices across the country. Semi-structured interviews were also done with 4 people still living who were integrally involved in writing the original forestry sector plans in the early 1960s and later iterations of it in the 1970s and 1980s. Interviews were also done with 6 leading figures from community forestry who were instrumental both as government officers and as development practitioners working for internationally funded projects in the 1990s and early 2000s.

The first most important finding was that local government has been particularly affected as the territorial and jurisdictional logic of governing has shifted both upwards (to the province) and downwards (to new municipalities). Within these changes, the forestry sector was one of the most contentious and uncertain arenas. The Forestry Department took a national level decision that their activities should be located at province level rather than municipality, a decision which was politically possible due to several conflicts in relevant laws. As a result, local forest users faced a time of uncertainty, something which is continuing as governance arrangements are finalised. By looking at the forestry sector, the research was able to understand how political power and authority was changing in the new structure. Struggles over political authority have left vacuums wherein local people have taken initiatives. In some places, these initiatives have been conservation oriented, but in other places, they have allowed a significant increase in damaging extractive activities (logging, gravel harvesting). It is not possible to generalise the impact of political change as its effects have been very different across localities, but it does suggest closer investigation which the team identified (below) plans to do.

The second important finding was that forests are increasingly seen as a source of cash income rather than subsistence extraction. Major socio-economic and cultural changes over the last 20 years have had a large impact on forestry governance. Today, many young people migrate abroad in search of work or education, and those who have not are often involved in more than just farming. Particularly close to small, but growing urban centres in rural areas, forestry management has been severely challenged by these changes. This research showed that community forestry was a successful program that gave governance of forests over to community user-groups, and over the course of 25 years, led to approximately 25% increase in forest cover nation-wide. After the end of the civil war in 2006, however, forests became less important as sources of agricultural inputs and firewood, and more valued for commercial extraction purposes. In one case study followed since the early 1990s, this means that the current forest leadership is interested in extracting gravel and to some extent timber from the forest, rather than protecting the integrity of the forest ecosystem for long-term subsistence use. In other places, the specific dynamics varied, but nevertheless showed significant tensions between people using forests for subsistence and those interested in extraction.

The third most important finding was that changes at the Forest Department and at user-group level reflect wider social and political tensions. There are significant gaps between the priorities and interests of people from different age generations which have caused conflict and even violence at the local level. Our research revealed that party politics is shaping how village-level disputes unfold, as well as being highly contentious at the national level. Such political conflicts have a direct bearing on resource governance. Use of forests, control over forest management and the level at which decisions about forests can be taken have all been important sites wherein the implications of the new political structure have been struggled over. These findings show where the potential for political change occurs, in struggles that happen in the everyday.

The sabbatical research also led to theoretical development of the concept of the socioenvironmental state. This framework uses the idea of boundary making to reveal where possibilities to re-imagine public authority and socionatures lie, and therefore the potential for invigorated, creative responses to environmental challenges. It looks at three moments of boundary making: (i) state–society boundaries that emerge from contested attempts to claim competence to govern nature/resources and struggles over recognition of those claims; (ii) society–nature boundaries that emerge from competition for authority and struggles over who and what belongs, which bring ‘natural resources’ into being and who is considered capable of governing them; (iii) the exercise of power in an environmental governance domain and how it opens up new citizen-subject boundaries, involving fluid subjectivities, new forms of inclusion and exclusion, and possibilities for transformation. These insights build a performative notion of resources and states to better account for the relational emergence of environmental change, governance, subjectivities, and polities. By shifting the object of analysis to boundary-making, the concept shows how the micro-politics of subjectification, local resource use, and the contradictory adherence to and refusals of authority and subjection are both produced by and productive of wider political economies, socionatures, governance, and political struggles.

From this work, the following new research questions have been derived: (i) what are the terrains of struggle?; (ii) what new authorities, subjectivities, and resources emerge?; and (iii) how are micro-politics creating new larger scale terrains of struggle and vice versa? These questions helped to frame a successful VR Sustainability and Resilience grant (2019) that will continue to explore questions of resource governance and transformative pathways in Nepal, Kenya and Nicaragua and brings in international researchers from Norway, Australia and Nicaragua as well as Sweden.

Colleagues in Nepal and internationally including Dr. Dil Khatri, Dr. Manohara Khadka, Dr. Bharat Pokarel, Dr. Hemant Ojha (Australia), and Dr. Dinesh Paudel (USA) were consulted on findings and the new framework. This group plans to convene a workshop to discuss what is happening with community forestry now and to write something collectively. My sabbatical research revealed some disturbing trends motivating us to compile our knowledge.

The work was disseminated through several international journal publications and at national and international seminars including: the POLLEN conference, Oslo (June 2018); the Perry World House Global Shifts Colloquium, University of Pennsylvania (April 2019); a seminar at the University of Stockholm, Department of Anthropology (May, 2019); a workshop at the University of Helsinki (May, 2019); and the Nordic Geographers Meeting (June 2019). I will also use the results for a keynote lecture at the German Geography Congress (September 2019). A book manuscript is underway from the work.

Outside of academia, a publication in Current History, a popular science journal was published in 2018. A Himalayan Policy Lab was organised in Kathmandu in collaboration with the Southasia Institute of Advanced Studies (Dec 2018) to debate some of the findings among other issues. The Policy lab creates a safe space wherein scholars and practitioners can come together to share their experiences of doing research at different levels, and to find ways to collectively influence policy. We plan to follow up with another lab in 2019.