Dil Khatri
Biographic Data
| ID | 630396 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Dil Khatri |
| GIVEN NAMES | Dil |
| FAMILY NAME | Khatri |
| SIGNATURE | KHATRI D |
| AFFILIATIONS | Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-2192-0629 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 22 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 248 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 22 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2015 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Community-based forest management in changing contexts
The Community Forestry (CF) program in Nepal is often lauded as a successful global example of the participatory forest management model, particularly for restoring degraded forest in the midhills However, recent socio-economic, demographic, ecological, and governance change have transformed forest-people relationships, creating uncertainty about the program's long-term sustainability. In this context, this study aims to identify the socio-ecolog…
What matters for wellbeing outcomes of community-based forest restoration? Insights from Nepal’s community forestry
Nepal’s community forestry is a successful community-based forest management model for restoring degraded forests and for human wellbeing. While large-scale, top-down restoration projects that overlook local needs often run the risk of limited local benefits, locally led Community-Based Forest Restoration (CBFR) can lead to positive ecological and wellbeing outcomes. Taking the case of Nepal’s community forestry, this study explores the pathways …
Effects of forestry decentralization on rural inequality in Nepal
Decentralized approaches to natural resource governance can promote conservation while reducing poverty in the Global South. However, the local benefits under decentralized governance are often unequal, reflecting extant social inequalities. There is a lack of rigorous evidence from national-scale studies showing how decentralization programmes affect inequality compared with what is observed in decentralization’s absence, and extant theory leads…
Dropping out of environmental governance
Nepal’s community forestry program is widely regarded as successful. At its peak, the program enlisted a large share of the rural population as managers of the country’s communal forests. However, recent empirical evidence suggests that voluntary participation in the program is in decline. Analyzing the empirical literature, we describe this surprising pattern of decline and discuss potential negative impacts. We also use political-economic reaso…
Labour and landscape husbandry in the Nepali mid hills
Dancing with Uncertainty in the Himalayas in Times of Multiple Crises
Based on the life histories of 10 poor rural Nepalese, the article, drawing on the metaphor of dance, explores the structured improvisations of these individuals in response to the hazards and possibilities they have found in life. Key themes of repertoires and risk pools, time preference behaviour and disposition or hope are explored. While land remains central to risk pools, contributing to subsistence and security, it is insufficient. The impr…
Decentering climate in vulnerability analysis
Current discussions of vulnerability tend to focus on avoiding loss and harm, especially from climate-related stressors. • We reframe vulnerability as an experientially grounded, cross-cutting phenomenon, unfolding across a broader life trajectory. • Vulnerability is more than the risk of loss and harm but is experienced in relation to the lives people wish to build and what they value. • This understanding recognizes people’s sense of self, emot…
Rendering smallholders social
Drawing on 36 studies in 19 countries and three continents, conducted over forty years, this paper revisits the question of how and why smallholders – and smallholdings – persist in the Global South even under conditions of rapid social and economic transformation. The paper argues that a significant part of the answer to this question can be found by taking a social relational approach: by ‘rendering’ the smallholder social. We identify five soc…
Examining socio-ecological transitions and new human-wildlife relations in farming landscapes of the Nepal Himalaya
Wildlife invasion into farmlands is emerging as an acute problem in the Himalayas, threatening farm-based livelihood systems of smallholder rural communities. The problem is severe in the areas where successful forest restoration has been achieved by community forestry programmes alongside massive outmigration. Such evolving dynamics have created new conceptual and empirical discourses on conservation, nature-society relations and human-wildlife …
Why is farming important for rural livelihood security in the global south? Covid-19 and changing rural livelihoods in Nepal's mid-hills
Over the last three decades, Nepal has experienced a rapid transition in rural livelihoods, from largely subsistence farming to more diversified off-farm employment and remittances. Despite this, subsistence farming continues to be a central part of rural production. Why does farming persist in the face of other, more remunerative, off-farm employment options? In this article we argue that subsistence food production continues to be important for…
Examining forest transition and collective action in Nepal’s community forestry
Nepal is going through a major socio-economic transition in rural areas and hence in forest management practices, leading to changes in and evolution of new forest-people relationships. Community forests are experiencing an ecological transition resulting a new pattern of growth, regeneration and diversity in forest composition. The ecological transition of forest corresponds to the shifting local collective actions in community forestry which ar…
Transforming environmental governance
Over the past decade, widespread concern has emerged over how environmental governance can be transformed to avoid impending catastrophes such as climate change, biodiversity loss, and livelihood insecurity. A variety of approaches have emerged, focusing on either politics, technological breakthrough, social movements, or macro-economic processes as the main drivers of change. In contrast, this paper presents theoretical insights about how system…
Reterritorialization of Community Forestry
Nepal's community forestry is an example of a decentralized, participatory and autonomous development model. However, recent community forestry practices informed by the concept of scientific forestry in resource-rich and commercially lucrative Terai regions of Nepal have reversed community forestry gains. Scientific forestry, enforced through the Department of Forest has reproduced frontier power dynamics creating reterritorialization of communi…
Secondary Forests and Agrarian Transitions
We provide an analytical contrast of the dynamics of secondary forest regeneration in Nepal and Peru framed by a set of common themes: land access, boundaries, territories, and rights, seemingly more secure in Nepal than Peru; processes of agrarian change and their consequences for forest-agriculture interactions and the role of secondary forest in the landscape, more marked in Peru, where San Martín is experiencing apparent agricultural intensif…
Dark and bright spots in the shadow of the pandemic
The global COVID-19 pandemic has brought unprecedented disruption to lives and livelihoods around the world. These disruptions have brought into sharp focus experiences of vulnerability but also, at times, evidence of resilience as people and institutions gear up to respond to the crisis. Drawing on intensive qualitative enquiry in 16 villages of Himalayan India and Nepal, this paper documents both dark and bright spots from the early days of the…
Adaptation interventions and their effect on vulnerability in developing countries
This paper critically reviews the outcomes of internationally-funded interventions aimed at climate change adaptation and vulnerability reduction. It highlights how some interventions inadvertently reinforce, redistribute or create new sources of vulnerability. Four mechanisms drive these maladaptive outcomes: (i) shallow understanding of the vulnerability context; (ii) inequitable stakeholder participation in both design and implementation; (iii…
Rescuing forests from the carbon trap
Shifting regimes of management and uses of forests
At a time when many developing countries are preparing to implement REDD+, there is debate on the possible implications for existing community forestry (CF) governance. Drawing on a REDD+ pilot undertaken in Nepal, this paper seeks to investigate how REDD+ has been downscaled into the community forestry context and with what implications for CF governance. The analysis is guided by three research questions: how are the objectives and discourses u…
Policy without politics
As developing countries around the world formulate policies to address climate change, concerns remain as to whether the voices of those most exposed to climate risk are represented in those policies. Developing countries face significant challenges for contextualizing global-scale scientific research into national political dynamics and downscaling global frameworks to sub-national levels, where the most affected are presumed to live. This artic…
Redd+, forest transition, agrarian change and ecosystem services in the hills of Nepal
Can Evidence and Voice Influence Policy? A Critical Assessment of Nepal's Forestry Sector Strategy, 2014
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 development agencies dominated the process and content of the FSS. Although the FSS was developed throug…
Prospects and challenges of tenure and forest governance reform in the context of Redd+ initiatives in Nepal
Adaptation interventions and their effect on vulnerability in developing countries
This paper critically reviews the outcomes of internationally-funded interventions aimed at climate change adaptation and vulnerability reduction. It highlights how some interventions inadvertently reinforce, redistribute or create new sources of vulnerability. Four mechanisms drive these maladaptive outcomes: (i) shallow understanding of the vulnerability context; (ii) inequitable stakeholder participation in both design and implementation; (iii…
Rescuing forests from the carbon trap
Dark and bright spots in the shadow of the pandemic
The global COVID-19 pandemic has brought unprecedented disruption to lives and livelihoods around the world. These disruptions have brought into sharp focus experiences of vulnerability but also, at times, evidence of resilience as people and institutions gear up to respond to the crisis. Drawing on intensive qualitative enquiry in 16 villages of Himalayan India and Nepal, this paper documents both dark and bright spots from the early days of the…
Can Evidence and Voice Influence Policy? A Critical Assessment of Nepal's Forestry Sector Strategy, 2014
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 development agencies dominated the process and content of the FSS. Although the FSS was developed throug…
Shifting regimes of management and uses of forests
At a time when many developing countries are preparing to implement REDD+, there is debate on the possible implications for existing community forestry (CF) governance. Drawing on a REDD+ pilot undertaken in Nepal, this paper seeks to investigate how REDD+ has been downscaled into the community forestry context and with what implications for CF governance. The analysis is guided by three research questions: how are the objectives and discourses u…
Prospects and challenges of tenure and forest governance reform in the context of Redd+ initiatives in Nepal
Examining forest transition and collective action in Nepal’s community forestry
Nepal is going through a major socio-economic transition in rural areas and hence in forest management practices, leading to changes in and evolution of new forest-people relationships. Community forests are experiencing an ecological transition resulting a new pattern of growth, regeneration and diversity in forest composition. The ecological transition of forest corresponds to the shifting local collective actions in community forestry which ar…
Transforming environmental governance
Over the past decade, widespread concern has emerged over how environmental governance can be transformed to avoid impending catastrophes such as climate change, biodiversity loss, and livelihood insecurity. A variety of approaches have emerged, focusing on either politics, technological breakthrough, social movements, or macro-economic processes as the main drivers of change. In contrast, this paper presents theoretical insights about how system…
Rendering smallholders social
Drawing on 36 studies in 19 countries and three continents, conducted over forty years, this paper revisits the question of how and why smallholders – and smallholdings – persist in the Global South even under conditions of rapid social and economic transformation. The paper argues that a significant part of the answer to this question can be found by taking a social relational approach: by ‘rendering’ the smallholder social. We identify five soc…
Decentering climate in vulnerability analysis
Current discussions of vulnerability tend to focus on avoiding loss and harm, especially from climate-related stressors. • We reframe vulnerability as an experientially grounded, cross-cutting phenomenon, unfolding across a broader life trajectory. • Vulnerability is more than the risk of loss and harm but is experienced in relation to the lives people wish to build and what they value. • This understanding recognizes people’s sense of self, emot…
Examining socio-ecological transitions and new human-wildlife relations in farming landscapes of the Nepal Himalaya
Wildlife invasion into farmlands is emerging as an acute problem in the Himalayas, threatening farm-based livelihood systems of smallholder rural communities. The problem is severe in the areas where successful forest restoration has been achieved by community forestry programmes alongside massive outmigration. Such evolving dynamics have created new conceptual and empirical discourses on conservation, nature-society relations and human-wildlife …
Why is farming important for rural livelihood security in the global south? Covid-19 and changing rural livelihoods in Nepal's mid-hills
Over the last three decades, Nepal has experienced a rapid transition in rural livelihoods, from largely subsistence farming to more diversified off-farm employment and remittances. Despite this, subsistence farming continues to be a central part of rural production. Why does farming persist in the face of other, more remunerative, off-farm employment options? In this article we argue that subsistence food production continues to be important for…
Reterritorialization of Community Forestry
Nepal's community forestry is an example of a decentralized, participatory and autonomous development model. However, recent community forestry practices informed by the concept of scientific forestry in resource-rich and commercially lucrative Terai regions of Nepal have reversed community forestry gains. Scientific forestry, enforced through the Department of Forest has reproduced frontier power dynamics creating reterritorialization of communi…
Prospects and challenges of tenure and forest governance reform in the context of Redd+ initiatives in Nepal
Policy without politics
As developing countries around the world formulate policies to address climate change, concerns remain as to whether the voices of those most exposed to climate risk are represented in those policies. Developing countries face significant challenges for contextualizing global-scale scientific research into national political dynamics and downscaling global frameworks to sub-national levels, where the most affected are presumed to live. This artic…
Redd+, forest transition, agrarian change and ecosystem services in the hills of Nepal
Can Evidence and Voice Influence Policy? A Critical Assessment of Nepal's Forestry Sector Strategy, 2014
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 development agencies dominated the process and content of the FSS. Although the FSS was developed throug…
Shifting regimes of management and uses of forests
At a time when many developing countries are preparing to implement REDD+, there is debate on the possible implications for existing community forestry (CF) governance. Drawing on a REDD+ pilot undertaken in Nepal, this paper seeks to investigate how REDD+ has been downscaled into the community forestry context and with what implications for CF governance. The analysis is guided by three research questions: how are the objectives and discourses u…
Rescuing forests from the carbon trap
Secondary Forests and Agrarian Transitions
We provide an analytical contrast of the dynamics of secondary forest regeneration in Nepal and Peru framed by a set of common themes: land access, boundaries, territories, and rights, seemingly more secure in Nepal than Peru; processes of agrarian change and their consequences for forest-agriculture interactions and the role of secondary forest in the landscape, more marked in Peru, where San Martín is experiencing apparent agricultural intensif…
Dark and bright spots in the shadow of the pandemic
The global COVID-19 pandemic has brought unprecedented disruption to lives and livelihoods around the world. These disruptions have brought into sharp focus experiences of vulnerability but also, at times, evidence of resilience as people and institutions gear up to respond to the crisis. Drawing on intensive qualitative enquiry in 16 villages of Himalayan India and Nepal, this paper documents both dark and bright spots from the early days of the…
Adaptation interventions and their effect on vulnerability in developing countries
This paper critically reviews the outcomes of internationally-funded interventions aimed at climate change adaptation and vulnerability reduction. It highlights how some interventions inadvertently reinforce, redistribute or create new sources of vulnerability. Four mechanisms drive these maladaptive outcomes: (i) shallow understanding of the vulnerability context; (ii) inequitable stakeholder participation in both design and implementation; (iii…
Transforming environmental governance
Over the past decade, widespread concern has emerged over how environmental governance can be transformed to avoid impending catastrophes such as climate change, biodiversity loss, and livelihood insecurity. A variety of approaches have emerged, focusing on either politics, technological breakthrough, social movements, or macro-economic processes as the main drivers of change. In contrast, this paper presents theoretical insights about how system…
Reterritorialization of Community Forestry
Nepal's community forestry is an example of a decentralized, participatory and autonomous development model. However, recent community forestry practices informed by the concept of scientific forestry in resource-rich and commercially lucrative Terai regions of Nepal have reversed community forestry gains. Scientific forestry, enforced through the Department of Forest has reproduced frontier power dynamics creating reterritorialization of communi…
Why is farming important for rural livelihood security in the global south? Covid-19 and changing rural livelihoods in Nepal's mid-hills
Over the last three decades, Nepal has experienced a rapid transition in rural livelihoods, from largely subsistence farming to more diversified off-farm employment and remittances. Despite this, subsistence farming continues to be a central part of rural production. Why does farming persist in the face of other, more remunerative, off-farm employment options? In this article we argue that subsistence food production continues to be important for…
Examining forest transition and collective action in Nepal’s community forestry
Nepal is going through a major socio-economic transition in rural areas and hence in forest management practices, leading to changes in and evolution of new forest-people relationships. Community forests are experiencing an ecological transition resulting a new pattern of growth, regeneration and diversity in forest composition. The ecological transition of forest corresponds to the shifting local collective actions in community forestry which ar…
Rendering smallholders social
Drawing on 36 studies in 19 countries and three continents, conducted over forty years, this paper revisits the question of how and why smallholders – and smallholdings – persist in the Global South even under conditions of rapid social and economic transformation. The paper argues that a significant part of the answer to this question can be found by taking a social relational approach: by ‘rendering’ the smallholder social. We identify five soc…
Examining socio-ecological transitions and new human-wildlife relations in farming landscapes of the Nepal Himalaya
Wildlife invasion into farmlands is emerging as an acute problem in the Himalayas, threatening farm-based livelihood systems of smallholder rural communities. The problem is severe in the areas where successful forest restoration has been achieved by community forestry programmes alongside massive outmigration. Such evolving dynamics have created new conceptual and empirical discourses on conservation, nature-society relations and human-wildlife …
Dropping out of environmental governance
Nepal’s community forestry program is widely regarded as successful. At its peak, the program enlisted a large share of the rural population as managers of the country’s communal forests. However, recent empirical evidence suggests that voluntary participation in the program is in decline. Analyzing the empirical literature, we describe this surprising pattern of decline and discuss potential negative impacts. We also use political-economic reaso…
Labour and landscape husbandry in the Nepali mid hills
Dancing with Uncertainty in the Himalayas in Times of Multiple Crises
Based on the life histories of 10 poor rural Nepalese, the article, drawing on the metaphor of dance, explores the structured improvisations of these individuals in response to the hazards and possibilities they have found in life. Key themes of repertoires and risk pools, time preference behaviour and disposition or hope are explored. While land remains central to risk pools, contributing to subsistence and security, it is insufficient. The impr…
Decentering climate in vulnerability analysis
Current discussions of vulnerability tend to focus on avoiding loss and harm, especially from climate-related stressors. • We reframe vulnerability as an experientially grounded, cross-cutting phenomenon, unfolding across a broader life trajectory. • Vulnerability is more than the risk of loss and harm but is experienced in relation to the lives people wish to build and what they value. • This understanding recognizes people’s sense of self, emot…
Community-based forest management in changing contexts
The Community Forestry (CF) program in Nepal is often lauded as a successful global example of the participatory forest management model, particularly for restoring degraded forest in the midhills However, recent socio-economic, demographic, ecological, and governance change have transformed forest-people relationships, creating uncertainty about the program's long-term sustainability. In this context, this study aims to identify the socio-ecolog…
What matters for wellbeing outcomes of community-based forest restoration? Insights from Nepal’s community forestry
Nepal’s community forestry is a successful community-based forest management model for restoring degraded forests and for human wellbeing. While large-scale, top-down restoration projects that overlook local needs often run the risk of limited local benefits, locally led Community-Based Forest Restoration (CBFR) can lead to positive ecological and wellbeing outcomes. Taking the case of Nepal’s community forestry, this study explores the pathways …
Effects of forestry decentralization on rural inequality in Nepal
Decentralized approaches to natural resource governance can promote conservation while reducing poverty in the Global South. However, the local benefits under decentralized governance are often unequal, reflecting extant social inequalities. There is a lack of rigorous evidence from national-scale studies showing how decentralization programmes affect inequality compared with what is observed in decentralization’s absence, and extant theory leads…
Conservation, Biodiversity, and Resource Management (15 works) · Economics (13 works) · Geography (11 works) · Political science (10 works) · Agriculture (9 works) · Business (9 works) · Livelihood (8 works) · Community forestry (7 works) · Forest Management and Policy (7 works) · Corporate governance (6 works)