(Vatican Radio)The inaugural Collaborative Partnership on Forests Wangari Maathai
Award was presented Thursday to one of the main architects of the community forestry
movement in Nepal. Dr Narayan Kaji Shrestha was given the Award at a ceremony at
the UN Food and Agriculture Headquarters in Rome, in recognition of his outstanding
contribution to forests.
The award was established this year to honour the
life and work of the late Kenyan environmentalist and Nobel Peace Prize winner, Maathai,
a campaigner on forest issues worldwide.
Lydia O’Kane went to FAO Headquarters
to meet Dr Shrestha and ask him what it means to receive this award.
“I feel
very happy and also feel that by getting this award I’m again under pressure to do
something on the community forestry movement. Wangari Maathai was a leader and she
was an inspiration for me also in the community forest process and movement, she was
doing in Kenya and I was doing in Nepal” What Dr Shrestha has succeeded in doing
in Nepal is to bring the community into the forestry management process. It is a initiative,
he says which has brought results. “It became obvious, it’s the women, cow herders,
these kind of people need to be given authority and power to make the decision and
they have to be made the managers”.
The Collaborative Partnership on Forests
is made up of 14 member organizations who work together to promote best practice in
forestry. Listen to Lydia O’Kane’s interview with Narayan Kaji Shrestha