Beschreibung:
Nepal is well known for its participatory forest management, especially community forestry, which has been reported to be successful not only in improving forest conditions over the past few decades but also in supporting the livelihoods of rural communities. Forestry sector stakeholders in Nepal have welcomed REDD+ (reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation and enhancing forest carbon stocks in developing countries) with the hope that it will strengthen Nepal's decentralised forest governance system and support the livelihoods of the rural poor. In this context, it is imperative to understand how the REDD+ policy processes are moving and who is influencing the process. To achieve this, media content analysis, consultations with experts and journalists, and in-depth interviews with selected journalists were conducted to examine REDD+-related actions, actors and interests. We analysed how diverse actors’ understandings and actions are reflected in the Nepali media. In other words, this study focused on investigating how the Nepali media has framed the REDD+ issue, what key concerns are being raised, and how these discourses are used by the actors representing different interests in the REDD+ policy process in Nepal. Results show that, overall, REDD+ has received limited attention in the Nepali media. Within the overall climate change discourse in Nepal, the melting of the Himalayan ice-caps and glaciers has dominated all other discourses, including that on REDD+. Nepali journalists have found the science behind REDD+ to be very complex, making it difficult to understand and report. Moreover, technical topics such as REDD+ tend to attract less media attention than political issues ...