Rural Outmigration and its Double-edged Effects on Community Forestry Ecology and Governance.

Community forestry (CF) is widely regMarquardt K,arded as an effective decentralized governance model that delivers both social and ecological benefits. Yet, accelerating rural outmigration, driven by economic pressures and shifting generational priorities, is reshaping community demographics and challenging CF governance, a dynamic that remains empirically underexplored. Addressing this gap, this study investigates how outmigration affects forest cover, community reliance on forest resources, and the level of community participation in forestry, using both primary and secondary data from Sindhupalchowk, Nepal. Community participation in forestry is assessed across multiple dimensions, including operational activities, decision-making, and meeting attendance. The findings indicate that population decline, primarily driven by limited local livelihood opportunities, is associated with forest regeneration, suggesting that outmigration may contribute to ecological recovery. Concurrently, increasing depopulation corresponds with reduced reliance on forest resources, reflecting a broader transformation in local livelihood practices. However, this depopulation also weakens community engagement in forest management. Higher migration rates reduce participation in operational activities, decision-making, and meetings, with unemployment-driven migration having the strongest negative impact on decision-making. Overall, while reduced population pressure may support forest recovery, it simultaneously undermines local community participation, particularly in critical decision-making processes influenced by unemployment-related migration. These findings reveal a double-edged dynamic: declining populations reduce resource pressures and enable forest recovery yet concurrently weaken participatory governance and undermine the long-term socio-ecological functioning of CF systems. These findings highlight the need for adaptive strategies that align forest recovery with institutional renewal to sustain inclusive and effective CF in the context of continued demographic change.