Krishna Shrestha

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Associate Professor of Global Development at UNSW Sydney

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted every sphere of life and livelihoods around the world. Many migrant workers from the Global South, such as Bangladesh, working in the Gulf countries were reported to be impacted by COVID-19, but the direct voices and views of migrant workers themselves and their households are largely unknown. This research adopt...

Disaster impacts are gendered. Women are often disproportionately vulnerable to and affected by disasters. However, little research exists on how Indigenous women from the Global South experience disasters and how they respond and contribute to the post-disaster recovery. This paper examines the experience of Indigenous women in the disaster recove...

Nepal's community forestry is well studied and widely acknowledged, but its experience of Community Forestry Enterprises (CFEs) as a form of community entrepreneurship has not been part of a robust scholarly debate. While CFEs are considered a means to enhance community livelihoods and reduce poverty, a growing body of literature suggests that it i...

A growing body of research analyses institutional dimensions of adaptation and disaster risk management at the local level, highlighting the positive role of local institutions. However, the question of when institutions could also limit adaptation is much less explored. Drawing on the case of a landslide in the Nepal Himalayas, this paper advances...

Community management of forests are considered to be vital for responding to Climate Change (CC) impacts. However, the questions of how do local communities perceive climate changes and how or whether their activities contributing to addressing climate change impacts are still widely debated. This paper aims to examine Nepal’s community forestry st...

Nepal's urban regions are facing increasing levels of water insecurity under a changing climate. The country has a long history of water policy development while climate‐related policies are also emerging at different levels of the new federal republic. It is unclear whether public policy is on the right track to ensure urban water security in the...

Community forest resources have huge potential for improving economic and social outcomes to enhance the livelihoods of local communities. The diversity of stakeholder power and preferences are vital but inconsistent in forest production, distribution management, access, utilisation, and stability among stakeholders at inter-community levels becaus...

We use case studies of the Diné in the United States of America, and the Musahar people in Nepal, to understand how indigeneity is enacted in relation to the developmental and conservationist impulses of the dominant American and Nepalese states. We mobilize the concept of ‘waterscapes’ as assemblages of practices, technologies, emotions and worldv...

Context Community Forestry (CF) resources possess huge potential for better ecological outcomes to enhance the society's livelihoods world wise. This is achieved only when a Community Forestry Management Plan (CFMP) is designed and actively operated at the local community level. The outcomes of several researches have revealed with the vested inter...

Anthropogenic climate change is creating numerous challenges for rapidly urbanising countries. Foremost among these challenges is securing potable water for the urban population, while at times, mitigating flood risks. This article presents research on urban water issues in the rapidly growing city of Dhulikhel in Nepal within a global purview of c...

Motivation Affirmative action has attracted significant development policy interest worldwide. One of the key criticisms of such policies is that it undermines meritocratic principles, but there is little evidence and analysis on how such policies are being implemented and shape meritocracy, particularly in low‐ and middle‐income countries. Purpos...

Understanding people’s attitudes towards the urban forest is crucial to advance sustainability goals and for proposing policy changes in local governments. With global cities such as Sydney becoming highly multi-cultural, it is vital for local governments in cities to be responsive to the diverse voices and interests of their residents. This paper...

The use of biochar in agroforestry practices is a new concept in Nepal. The soil application of biochar is a promising alternative to increase productivity and reduce chemical fertilizers. To test this concept, an action research project was implemented in two villages of Lamjung district in the middle hills of Nepal. This study aimed at assessing...

Cities in the global south are facing complex challenges of climate change, unplanned development and ageing water infrastructure. Climate change is likely to undermine the ability of urban water supply systems to meet both the present and future needs of the population. Concerns have been raised about the existing water management policies inabili...

Whether and how science can improve public policy is a highly contested topic in both the scholarly domains and the world of policy and practice. The research community often finds itself frustrated over the continued neglect of research evidence by policy makers. At the same time, policy makers see researchers as addressing their own questions of...

In recent years, there has been a growing realization that improving market access for smallholders will lead to improvement in income and food security. However, market failure often limit smallholders’ fair access to market opportunities. To address this problem, a market-oriented agroforestry action research program was implemented in six sites...

Nepal is one of the leading countries embracing community forestry with about 45% of households being members of community forest user groups. However, there has been a failure to deliver the full potential of forest wealth because of a lack of proper silvicultural management, a constraining policy environment and a complex socio-institutional cont...

About half of the households in the mid-hills of Nepal are severely food insecure, and the development of agriculture and forestry sectors could hold keys to reduce food insecurity and achieve other sustainable development goals. This paper presents results from a bio-economic model, Enhancing Livelihood from Improved Forest Management in Nepal (En...

The governance of environmental resources holds the key to the future of sustainable development in the Hindu Kush Himalaya (HKH). 1. Institutional innovation—for landscape level governance, upstream-downstream linkages, and for translating policy goals into action; 2. Upscaling and institutionalizing decentralized and community based resource mana...

p>This paper focuses on the participatory market chain analysis of agroforestry products in six sites of two districts (Kavre and Lamjung) of Nepal. In total, 93 market actors were involved in the study, in which 80 persons were purposively selected from Local Resource Person (LRP) and Local Resource Group (LRG) members and 13 persons were randomly...

Farmers in Nepal mid-hills have practiced agroforestry for generations as main source or supplement of timber, firewood and fodder from government forests. The nature and extent of agroforestry practice is being challenged by rapid social and economic change particularly in the recent rise of labour out-migration and remittance income. Understandin...

Many policies on disaster governance and community resilience aim at enhancing justice outcomes at the local community level. In so doing, they tend to focus on equal distribution of a set of rights and goods among the communities. However, these rights and goods are defined by an underlying value structure, and such structures tend to mirror the i...

p>There is growing interest by forest users, government forest officers and policy makers on maximising forest goods and livelihood provisions from community forestry in a sustainable manner. However, the way several mature community forests are currently managed based on selection, e.g. negative thinning and crown thinning, is questionable as it r...

p>This paper explains what we term the ‘silvo-institutional model’ for a more productive, sustainable and equitable management of community forests in Nepal. The paper draws on four years of action research in six research sites of Kavre and Lamjung districts, complemented by the review of silviculture-based forest management by Government of Nepal...

Socio-economic diversity can help to bring about innovative development in agroforestry practices. The diversity of households in the mid-Nepal hills was analysed using survey data from 521 randomly selected households in six villages. A cluster analysis derived the following household typology based on socio-economic variables—Type 1: resource-poo...

Why should a parcel of agricultural land be abandoned when there is a scarcity of food? In this paper, we address this question in relation to the hills of Nepal, where agricultural land is being abandoned at an unprecedented rate, despite looming food scarcity. Responding to studies that have highlighted land abandonment trends, we conducted in-de...

There is an increasing recognition of the contribution of forests to food security of poor and marginalized people. However, empirical findings remain limited on how forests contribute to food security. Drawing on four case studies of community forestry in Nepal, this paper discusses pathways through which forests are contributing to food security...

This Policy Brief investigates and elaborates on the following three key points: 1) Planning of community forestry (CF) and local governments (LG), currently in silo, should be integrated for food security, livelihoods and sustainable development. 2) Lack of institutional mandate, comparmentalized thinking, reluctance in resource sharing, and the a...

This paper demonstrates that a new crisis has emerged in the Himalayas in recent years, as five decades of well-intentioned policy responses failed to tackle escalating environment and development challenges. It then suggests some practical pathways for achieving what we term transformative resilience in the region. Our analysis draws on a critical...

This paper demonstrates that a new crisis has emerged in the Himalayas in recent years, as five decades of well-intentioned policy responses failed to tackle escalating environment and development challenges. It then suggests some practical pathways for achieving what we term transformative resilience in the region. Our analysis draws on a critical...

The Nepal government has in the past made several attempts to manage its forests through employing silviculture based interventions. However, most of these initiatives were either not implemented at all, or when implemented, failed to achieve stated objectives mainly because of weak political will, low institutional capacity and poor governance. Cu...

Since the publication of Elinor Ostrom’s seminal work on common property institutions and natural resources management (NRM) in the early 1990s, there have been considerable advances in theoretical and policy debates relating to community-based NRM. While community institutions continue to remain a strong element, the recent shifts in scholarly deb...

The growing challenge of food insecurity in the Global South has called for new research on the contribution of forests to food security. However, even progressive forest management institutions such as Nepal's community forestry programme have failed to address this issue. We analyse Nepal's community forestry programme and find that forest polici...

Community forestry in Nepal is an example of a successful participatory forest management program. Developments in community forestry in four decades have focused on the social and governance aspects with little focus on the technical management of forests. This paper presents a silviculture description of community forests and provides silvicultur...

This article examines Nepal's recently prepared Forestry Sector Strategy (FSS) (as of 2014) in terms of the use of scientific evidence and the quality of stakeholder participation. By reviewing the content and analyzing the context of its development during 2012–2014, we found that the transitional politics and overt influence of international deve...

This chapter outlines a Critical Action Research (CAR) approach to enhance the interplay between research and social movement practices. The authors argue that such interplay is crucial to improve the quality of democratic policy process. Such interplay has the potential to address some of the concerns related to the continued lack of effective del...

Despite three decades of Community Forestry (CF) development in Nepal, studies report that CF’s actual contributions to livelihoods remain far less than the potential. Moreover, as Nepal is facing increasing food insecurity challenges, a question has emerged whether, how and to what extent CF can contribute to food security of the rural poor. Given...

Using a multilevel governance lens, this paper analyzes ongoing reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+) readiness initiatives in Nepal. We present the evidence of what is happening around these preparatory activities in relation to handling forest tenure issues, stakeholder engagement, developing monitoring and verifica...

Water is perhaps one of the most studied types of common-pool resource (CPR) goods. Its quality, however, has not been discussed as much in the CPR literature as its quantity. We examine the significance of studying water quality from a CPR perspective, and then analyze implications for the formulation of institutional arrangements to improve water...

The concept of common-pool resources (CPRs) has evolved from consideration of single-use to multiple-use resources, though the focus remains predominantly on single natural resources such as water. However, both ecological connections and human actions mean that one CPR can exist interdependently rather than in isolation from others. This article i...

Australian aid to Nepal and Australian foresters' assistance to Nepalese forestry have been very influential in the recent development of forestry in Nepal, a country widely acknowledged as being at the forefront of community forestry. This paper exam­ ines the experience of three Forest Users Groups participating in the Nepalese community forestry...

Collective action by local communities has been recognised as crucial for effective management of natural resources, particularly the management of forests in rural settings in developing countries. However, the processes and outcomes of collective action in forest management are often analysed through a narrow rational choice model, ignoring the i...

Collective action by local communities has increasingly been recognised as crucial for effective management of natural resources, particularly the management of forests in the rural settings. This recognition is principally based on the universal and often unquestioned assumption that the involvement of local communities in the management of forest...

The involvement of local communities has increasingly been recognised for the conservation and sustainable use of natural resources. The management of forests by communities has been at the forefront of a shift in focus from state and private management. There are, however, limited studies indicating that the involvement of local communities has im...