Counteracting hegemonic powers in the policy process: critical action research on Nepal’s forest governance

Abstract

Confronting hegemonic power in the policy process remains a formidable challenge. Critical inquiry and civic resistance have been seen as two possible solutions to address this challenge. However, how and to what extent critical inquiry tackles this challenge is rarely explored. This article outlines a Critical Action Research (CAR) approach and then discusses how this approach was put into practice in Nepal’s forest policy processes during 2000–11. It demonstrates the potential and limitations of a civil-society-based critical inquiry in the context of a centralized system of forest governance facing pressures for participatory reform. This use of a CAR approach aimed to tackle three forms of power – that exercised by the state forest authority; that of the international development agencies; and that of the national political decision-makers – in Nepal’s forest policy processes. Finally, the article identifies theoretical and methodological issues that were demonstrated in this engagement with the policy process.

Keywords:

• public policy
• critical action research
• deliberation
• forest governance
• critical social theory
• Nepal

Acknowledgements

The main people who contributed to the CAR were the following: Krishna Paudel, Shambhu Dangal, Basundhara Bhattarai, Mani Banjade, Naya Sharma, Netra Timsina Harisharan Luintel, Sushila Rana, Tara Bhattarai, Kamal Bhandari, Amrit Adhikari, Kalpana Giri, Dharam Uprety, Dil B Khatri, Ramesh Sunam, Govind Paudel. Helpful comments on the research were received from Frank Fischer, John Dryzek, Andrea Nightingale, Celayne Heaton Shrestha, Hari Dhungana, Fraser Sudgen, Mani R Banjade, Krishna Shrestha, Naya Sharma, Dil Khatri, Robert Fisher, Joe Hill and participants in two seminars the author delivered, one at the University of Kassel, Germany, and the other at the Maulana Azad National Institute of Technology, India.

Notes

1. 1. Such as International Labor Organization (ILO) convention 169, which emphasizes local indigenous people’s rights over natural resources.

2. 2. In particular, the following research projects helped us develop and refine our CAR approach: Participatory action research on community forest user groups conducted in collaboration with the University of Reading (2001–4); Adaptive collaborative management research conducted in collaboration with the Centre for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) and with support from the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and International Development Research Center (IDRC) (2002–7); and Knowledge systems and natural resources management research, in which we studied how actors learn natural resource management (with support from IDRC) (2003–5).

3. 3. Forest Protection Special Act 1967.

4. 4. The Global Forest Partnership offered support to hold workshops, to conduct diagnostic studies and also to hold some empowerment sessions for grassroots users.

5. 5. Personal communication, Dr Naya Sharma Paudel, 31 January 2012, Kathmandu

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Hemant Ojha

Hemant Ojha is founder and former chair of ForestAction Nepal, the founding chair of Southasia Institute of Advanced Studies and is affiliated with School of Social Sciences at University of New South Wales. He has worked for over 15 years in Nepal as a community rights activist and researcher in natural resource management and rural development, and his current research focuses on deliberative politics in environmental governance. He is the author, with A. Hall and R. Sulaiman, of Adaptive Collaborative Approaches in Natural Resource Governance (2013, Routledge).