An assessment of cost and benefits of two selected Community Forest

Community Forestry (CF) is instrumental in providing rural households and communities with various forest products and for sustaining of the rural livelihoods. Cost and benefit analysis of Community Forest (CF) is a means to reveals its actual contribution in user’s livelihood and their household income. This study was conducted with the objective of evaluation of cost and benefit of rural households in two selected CFs (Badikhel and Godawari VDCs) of Lalitpur district, Nepal. Benefit–cost ratios shows that rich people are getting more benefit by bearing low costs. The annual household income was more in medium class. Users of different socio-economic classes are involved in different forest management activities and getting benefits from CF in the form of different kinds of forest products. Given the unequal social structure in terms of class, caste, gender and regional disparity, there is unequal access to decision-making. In this context, it is necessary to have in-depth economic analysis of total forest benefit.assessing economic contribution of CF is examining the economic values of the forest products and their importance to the user’s livelihood.