State-Mediated Green Accumulation and the Erasure of Indigenous Land Systems in Nepal

Dhirendra Nalbo, Open Institute for Social Science (Nepal)

Nepal’s community forestry (CF) program is widely regarded as a global model of participatory environmental governance, attracting delegations from around the world seeking to replicate its successes. Yet, beneath this celebratory narrative lies a deeper, under-studied dimension: the politics of land dispossession especially among indigenous communities in the eastern hills. Drawing on archival records and intensive qualitative fieldwork, this paper highlights two key findings. First, CF is part of a history of centralized land control and agrarian restructuring that ended customary land tenure among indigenous communities in Nepal’s eastern hills, especially the Limbus. In many ways, CF operates as green accumulation without reparation: environmental governance that facilitates resource accumulation while failing to restore or respect cultural sovereignty. Second, from a political ecology perspective, CF is not just sustainable resource management, but an environmental policy shaped by state-led land transformation and ongoing communal alienation.