OUR PROJECTS

Smallholder forest and farm producers make up an estimated 1.5 billion people globally. The collective value of their production of food, timber, non-timber forest products (NTFPs), and biomass energy is valued at up to an estimated US$ 1.3 trillion annually. Additionally, their collective locally controlled forest and farm businesses are thought to create economic multiplier effects and non-market values that increase those overall values tenfold. These businesses are key to growing rural economies and generating rural income.

 

When managed sustainably, forest-related businesses also help people mitigate climate change. Against a backdrop of falling net global forest cover due mainly to deforestation in the tropics, several countries are bucking the trend. Where forest cover is increasing, such as in China or Sweden, it is cooperative locally controlled forest businesses, which are granted secure commercial rights, that are driving the change. They are making it profitable for their members to grow or manage trees for a wide range of products and services. Thus, locally controlled forest businesses are key to incentivising forest restoration and sustainable management at scale.

 

Globally there is a gap in support structures for locally controlled forest businesses that could drive forest restoration and conservation and also provide sustainable livelihood incomes for local people. Research carried out on the impact of business incubation on business outcomes finds that survival rates after four years of incubated firms (87 per cent) are double that of non-incubated firms (44 per cent) (Molnar et al., 1997; SBA, n.d.). Impacts on social and environmental outcomes are also likely to be higher, as many business incubators seek to install practices with their clients that go far beyond the single bottom line. Improving access to business incubation services for locally controlled forest business represents a significant opportunity for forest restoration and rural income generation.

 

Successful forest business incubators (FBIs) are shown to address two key challenges: how to support the scaling-up of sustainable business models, and how to institutionalise that support (beyond typical project cycles). Forest business incubators are better placed to address the challenge of scaling-up — both at the level of enabling individual businesses to grow, but also at a landscape level in the number of businesses they are likely to support. Secondly, they address the problem of how to institutionalise this kind of support (beyond the period of a project) by developing their own financing structures. Enabling sustainable and socially beneficial forest businesses to grow is their core mandate.

When we think of the entrepreneurial ecosystem, we look at the environment in which the entrepreneur operates. Mt. Everest Forest Botanicals Alliance (MEFBA) focuses on several pillars of an entrepreneurial ecosystem for its incubation programme, principle of which are:

 

■■ Accessible markets

 

■■ Infrastructure (physical)

 

■■ Human capital (the workforce)

 

■■ Funding options and financial services

 

■■ Innovations and technologies

 

■■ Support systems (such as mentors, professionals, incubators or networks of  entrepreneurs)

 

■■ Regulatory frameworks

 

■■ Education and training

 

■■ Cultural support

 

Ecosystem mapping of the MEFBA Business incubation process comprises five main modules:

 

■■ Clients – how to define and assess the needs of potential FFPO client businesses

 

■■ Design – how to structure, staff and finance a business incubator for forest landscapes

 

■■ Services – how to identify, and develop the capacity to deliver useful services

 

■■ Management – how to enrol, serve and graduate FFPO client businesses, and

 

■■ Impact – how to measure and communicate what you have achieved.

 

The modules within the process follow a logical order :-

 

Module 1 : ‘Clients’. We start with an assessment of demand (the needs of client businesses in forest landscapes)

 

Module 2 : ‘Design’. We then offer some thoughts on how to structure, staff and finance a forest business incubator (the design to meet that demand)

 

Module 3 : ‘Services’. From there we look in more detail at what a forest business incubator might offer to its clients (the training, networking and financial services)

 

Module 4 : ‘Management’. This leads us to some considerations of how to oversee those services (the management of incubator-client interactions)

 

Module 5 : ‘Impact’. Finally, we conclude with some thoughts on what might be measured to improve performance and demonstrate utility (the impact of the forest business incubator)

 

Each module features practical examples and tips to illustrate how the forest enterprise project might go about a particular step. The details are incorporated in the:

Business incubation is a complex process with multiple actors involved and it is often very context specific. The forest business context is peculiarly challenging. However, the unique nature of the forest sector and its business challenges paradigm in Nepal context suggest a need for a tailored incubator approach and institutional set-up, therefore the need for the MEFBA intervention.

Forest business incubation programmes must be adapted to the specific context and challenges faced in forest landscapes, which include:

 

■■ Remoteness: Nepal is a landlocked mountainous country, with sparsely scattered human habitat patterns; the remote location of forest businesses means that they often have high logistical costs with limited infrastructure in place to facilitate access to markets or stable energy supply, and limited access to technical and financial service providers,

 

■■ Collective ownership and decision making: in many regions of Nepal where natural/social forests and village lands are communally owned, one is more likely to see the establishment of group businesses that are based on collective contribution and democratic decision making over resources and the business.

 

■■ The need for aggregation and business organisation: in many regional contexts, aggregation of forestry products from natural and planted forests makes business sense because of the high transaction costs involved with collecting, harvesting and transporting products from the forest gate to the market.

 

■■ Natural resource conflicts: irrespective of any collective ownership and decision making, forest landscapes are often mired with overlapping land use and tenure systems, making natural resource conflict a common challenge that might require the involvement of both traditional and government institutions to solve.

 

■■ Long timeframes: mainly due to the nature of the sector in the case of bamboo, medicinal and herbal planting, the time it takes between the initial investment and for profits to materialise is years, during which time the business will need to manage the plantation and eventually harvest, process and transport the timber. But forest businesses also need considerable time to build capacity to manage what can be quite technical business operations with challenging logistics.

 

■■ Low education levels: social and economic marginalisation is often the highest in forest landscapes, meaning that education and skills to run basic accounting and business management might be missing or be at very low levels. The situation gets even worse in the case of socially excluded, so called low caste people in the hills of Nepal.

 

■■ Power and knowledge discrepancies: in such remote contexts there are frequent imbalances in power and knowledge at multiple levels, within the local community context (individual, family, ethnicity or caste and gender), but also in relationship to other institutions and partners in the value chain. These increase feelings of distrust and can make it difficult to establish well-functioning partnerships.

 

■■ Particularly marked gender differences: roles for men and women in forest businesses might differ a lot, as women tend to deal with forest-based businesses with shorter turnover such as NTFPs, woodfuel, and markets closer to the homestead, which has influence on profitability.

 

■■ High levels of informality: informality in all or part of the business operations represents a major challenge both on the business side and for the incubator itself. In the forest sector it can manifest itself at different stages of the business cycle (eg. production, processing and marketing phases) and can pose a barrier to accessing both formal credit lines and larger value chains. Although in many contexts the opportunity-cost for non-compliance with all regulations remains largely positive, making the transition to formality more challenging even if it can bring other benefits to balance out the costs.

Mt. Everest Forest Botanicals Alliance (MEFBA) has some significant advantages in providing business incubation services because of its:

 

■■ Connection with potential business clients: MEFBA local partners as a second-tier FFPOs are usually co-located with the local first tier Forest and Farm Producer Organisation (FFPO) who are their members and potential business clients in specific geographies. They therefore have a presence and reach that allows them to contact and support those clients.

 

■■ Financial sustainability: Second-tier FFPOs not only benefit from the sales of their members’ products (often raw materials), they are also often set up to provide value-added processing and marketing functions for their members that also generate income. Because of this, their sustainability as an incubator can be much higher than comparable incubators in that they do not have to be so reliant on client fees or project funding as other private sector, NGO or government agencies operating in client-scarce forest landscapes.

 

■■ Detailed contextual understanding: FFPO SMEs have a detailed understanding of the challenges facing their member organisations as they are often set up to support or represent them. This gives a strong advantage in business incubation.

 

■■ Potential to scale up: the more successful the businesses of first-tier FFPO members, the more resources are available to second-tier FFPO NTFP business, and the more likely those organisations will attract new members which creates a virtuous circle of upscaling.

 

MEFBA SME Incubation Project

 

For many rural and forest user communities in a developing country like Nepal and other Asian countries, developing viable businesses based on non-timber forest  and cultural products are challenging. They face difficulties such as distance from markets, or producing high-quality products in enough volume for both domestic and international consumers. But Mt. Everest Forest Botanicals Alliance (MEFBA) has shown how times are changing. From undervaluing the cultural or bio-economic value of their traditional products such as wildcrafting customary essential oils, medicinal and aromatic plants, plant butter, soapnut, hemp, forest/cliff honey, Himalayan nettle fibres and textiles and a host of non-timber forest products – community-based enterprises are collaborating with Mt. Everest Forest Botanicals Alliance (MEFBA) and its strategic partner Federation of Community Forestry Users Nepal (FECOFUN), associate partners (or ‘green intermediaries’) to leverage their traditional forest botanicals wealth into smart and sustainable livelihoods grassroots empowerment by repurposing the climate adaptation options into small business entities. Synergising the market dynamics into tackling the climate change challenges could be a game changer in achieving the SDG goals. 

 

It is encouraging to observe how these entrepreneurs living and working at the ‘bottom of the pyramid’ overcome acute resource constraints to create something from almost nothing, (except their astounding and intimate traditional knowledge about the forest habitat and its biodiversity of plants, animals, fungi and bacteria). In a fitting departure from most ‘cliche’ developmental interventions that consider those at the bottom either as potential consumers or as recipients of aid, we look at grassroots entrepreneurs. Despite extremely challenging conditions, with a little help from MEFBA & FECOFUN, they are able to learn fast and assemble resources and to combine and align principles of business strategy and social value creation to effect important economic and social change for the  community, ecology and for continuing their storytelling. Emboldened by our grassroots experiences, using a resource based view lens, we redirect the spotlight onto the individual entrepreneur in social entrepreneurship and extend the study of bricolage to that field. To make our social entrepreneurship projects see continued success, we are always reviewing and assessing our actions and the impacts that they create for the community and the environment.

The Non-Timber Forest Products SME programme in Nepal is a not for profit venture initiated jointly by MEFBA and FECOFUN. The Programme is managed by Mt. Everest Forest Botanicals Alliance. (MEFBA)). Mt. Everest Forest Botanicals Alliance (MEFBA) started as an informal grassroots socio-economic equity advocacy network in 2009. The emergence of this new found social network maturity amongst the voiceless people, contributed to the arising of social entrepreneurship by bridging all macro-level (socioeconomic drivers),  the meso-level (concepts such as opportunity), and the micro-level (motivations and intentions of social entrepreneurs) matrix. The interesting outcome of this new found confidence in social capital was that the communities finally affiliated their group interests to align with the climate change mitigation adaptation strategies. The formidable alliance network was formally registered as a social entrepreneurship alliance to work for environmental conservation and rural livelihoods whilst sustainably exploiting the NTFP sector and focussing on Medicinal and Aromatic Plants and other forest botanicals. Further, after entering into a strategic partnership with Federation of Community Forestry Users Nepal (FECOFUN) , MEFBA never had to look back. The flagship SME community projects run by the cooperative members of socially excluded, indigeneous, women, marginalised farmers and other smallholder subsistence agriculturists based on NTFP is a game changer in local context. MEFBA wants to replicate the success to unmet areas and communities. Its interlinked programmes include conservation and resource management, advocacy on land tenure and resource access, forest foods, and sustainable livelihoods including business incubation of forest community-based enterprises and green intermediaries. It has offices in Kathmandu and has plans for desks in different provinces of Nepal. In 2019, the organisation launched SCED (Sustainable Community Enterprise Development), Mt. Everest Forest Botanicals Alliance (MEFBA)’s training and advisory wing, to expand enterprise development support to other organisations and non-partner communities working within the same contexts.

 

Mt. Everest Forest Botanicals Alliance (MEFBA)’s enterprise development or business incubation support for producer groups started in mid-2019, when there was still little support of this type offered to forest-based and forest-dependent communities. Business incubation developed organically in response to the needs of partner groups of the organisation. The objective was to provide them with the skills to develop sustainable use of their resources, enhance their livelihoods and to access and engage the market without being exploited.

 

Financing of Mt. Everest Forest Botanicals Alliance (MEFBA) business incubation has mainly been project based and sourced from associate organisations. The organisation has also begun to create a general fund through business development support consultancies. There had been efforts to explore other types of financing like impact investment, but it has been difficult finding a match between offers and the needs of community enterprises and intermediaries.

Mt. Everest Forest Botanicals Alliance (MEFBA)’s business incubation takes place in two contexts: first, in community areas (usually in remote rural areas) and second, in provincial and national capitals. Mt. Everest Forest Botanicals Alliance (MEFBA) works with forest-dependent communities and women, excluded groups, indigenous peoples (IPs) living in or nearby state-owned forests, community-managed forests or ancestral domains. In certain parts of Nepal especially in the Terai areas, where there is a landscape-development approach, business incubation also extends to fishing communities. The communities’ livelihoods depend on common-pool resources, usually subject to degradation, security threats, and land-use or access conflict.

 

In many of these areas, livelihoods are not the only concern. There are also overlapping issues of the impacts of climate change, threats to food security, insecure land tenure, lack of awareness of gender issues, and a way of life that has become more and more cash dependent. For indigenous peoples, lack of markets for traditional crafts has led to the gradual abandonment and loss of certain traditional arts. For forest-dependent communities, limited livelihood choices have led, in some cases, to migration or unsustainable practices like working as labourers to illegal loggers, if not trading illegal logs themselves, charcoal making, wildlife poaching or overharvesting of NTFPs.

 

Due to their geographic location, there is limited access to government support as well as markets. Their only exposure or access to the market has been mainly through traders. Producers usually sell their products sporadically and on an individual basis. There is no concept or experience of a business or an enterprise, which limits income potential. There is also a lack of business skills and enterprise-development capacities. With limited experience and literacy, there is difficulty in finding community members who can readily fulfil business functions like management, bookkeeping or marketing.

 

When Mt. Everest Forest Botanicals Alliance (MEFBA)’s business incubation started, there was still little awareness of fair trade and sustainable lifestyles. Markets for such products were just in the early stages, which led Mt. Everest Forest Botanicals Alliance (MEFBA) to incubate green intermediaries first in national capitals, and later on in provincial capitals. These green intermediaries became instrumental in developing new products and competitive markets for community products.

 

Over the past years, markets have changed and there is now a growing demand for natural, sustainably produced and fairly traded products. The organisation has since expanded its support to communities and producer groups that can benefit from and supply these markets for growing sustainable and fair consumption. However, the same challenges still hamper smooth enterprise operations such as impacts of climate change on production, security threats in these remote areas, and the declining state of natural resources which affects the production volumes and accessibility of the products.

Mt. Everest Forest Botanicals Alliance (MEFBA) focuses on incubating community-based enterprises working with natural and cultural products and services that are guided by principles of fair trade and the promotion of sustainable lifestyles. Products range from NTFPs (soapnuts, chiuri butter, essential oils, hemp & himalayan nettle fibres, medicinal and aromatic plants, resin, mushroom, bamboo, etc.) and traditional crafts, handwoven textiles and baskets.

 

The Mt. Everest Forest Botanicals Alliance (MEFBA) network chose to concentrate on the development of community-based enterprises not just to promote inclusive development, but also to encourage collective responsibility and benefit-sharing from common-pool resources, whether natural or cultural. In this model, sustainable resource management and/or cultural respect and conservation are an integral part of the business. There are also other benefits from working as a collective enterprise: producers are able to standardise production and meet volume and quality requirements; they are able to negotiate better with the buyers; and they are also able to access different support services that individual producers are not able to do.

 

In the context of Nepal, amongst other weaker sections like women and marginalised subsistence farmers, target groups are mixed IPs and non-IPs. The non-IPs do not have a communal background which makes this business model quite challenging. This requires the local Mt. Everest Forest Botanicals Alliance (MEFBA) team to explore other models and mechanisms that are more applicable, while ensuring common responsibility for the sustainable management of shared resources and equitable sharing of benefits derived from them. A cottage industry approach seems to work and family/individual businesses appear to thrive better than collective businesses. This theory, however, still needs to be tested more broadly.

 

Sizes, level of development and types of enterprises vary. An enterprise can be an informal self-help group with five members or a federation, cooperative or producer company with hundreds of members. There are also community enterprises and profit and non-profit green intermediaries. The concept of an enterprise, whose goal is to keep growing and to maximise profit, sometimes is a challenge in the community context. Some communities are not interested in scaling up but rather in sustaining their enterprise through market access and financing. Net profit is not the only measure of success, but also the expanding number of producers that are benefiting from the enterprise.

 

The community-based enterprises are in the early stages of development, if not starting from scratch, and have to overcome many challenges before they become sustainable enterprises.

 

Organising, enterprise development, capacity building, and creating market linkages are the general services that the communities demand. However, in the context of the communities, auxiliary needs also surface, such as raising awareness about fair trade, sustainable resource management and harvesting protocols, and market development, and even awareness of gender issues as women take on both income-generation and household-management functions. Sensitising on caste discrimination is another unique social problem in Nepal, the age old traditions are deeply embedded into their social system. Educating the community about the human rights and equality of all human race is very gradual specially in the rural belts dominated by the hindu castes. These are also addressed by the organisation to promote the smooth and sustainable operation of the enterprises.

Incubation is embedded in the NGO’s structure as the enterprise development programmes of Nepal country office and in Sustainable Community Enterprise Development (SCED), Mt. Everest Forest Botanicals Alliance (MEFBA)’s training and advisory programme. The enterprise development programme is composed of an enterprise development coordinator, enterprise development officers (EDO), and depending on the size the coverage area, area enterprise development staff who are hired directly from the community. Besides the enterprise, the EDOs and coordinators have to support activities that address issues that have an impact on the enterprise, such as training on sustainable harvesting methods, applying for permits to harvest and advocacy for land tenure, among others.

 

Nepal Country office is also supported by Mt. Everest Forest Botanicals Alliance (MEFBA) through backstopping and advisory support for programme staff. There is also a continuous exchange of experiences, expertise and tools among the different MEFBA and its alliance members’ offices through regional meetings and learning visits. Mt. Everest Forest Botanicals Alliance (MEFBA) also taps external experts in the region or beyond to support enterprise development through trainings and advisory support on problematic areas.

 

The SCED programme caters to both community enterprise partners and non-partners who are interested and in need of capacity building. For enterprises supported by country programmes, the SCED programme provides complementary and specialised training to address specific problems that are shared by many enterprise partners across countries. The trainings are usually done at whichever province office has the best experience of that specific topic. Knowledge from the network also complements in-country experience. For non-partner organisations and communities, participation in an SCED training becomes a starting point for enterprise development partnership in the area. Participation of non-partners sometimes leads to in-country collaboration or consultancy. The programme also maintains a pool of trainers coming from the different countries and its external advisors who also become resource persons for country-based business incubation.

 

Green intermediaries operate as separate entities. However, they are included in the organogram as they are an important part of the services provided by Mt. Everest Forest Botanicals Alliance (MEFBA). Green intermediaries in Nepal are spin-offs from project-based and project-funded marketing support. They have answered the need for more sustained market-linking support. They were developed from a collaboration of various NGOs. As green intermediaries are run as businesses, it was the ultimate goal to separate them as their own entities and to be self-sustained. Mt. Everest Forest Botanicals Alliance (MEFBA) country representatives usually sit on the board of these green intermediaries to ensure that their operations remain aligned to the original mission of the intermediaries. They also receive advice and development support from country programmes when necessary.

Each green intermediary has its own board of trustees, which is mainly involved in policy making, but can also provide advisory support for the organisation as well as the enterprise development programme. There is usually a mix of professionals and experts covering business, legal support and IP issues as well as from funding organisations and NGO partners. For example, on the Mt. Everest Forest Botanicals Alliance (MEFBA) board is an entrepreneur who specialises in organic markets. He provides enterprise development and marketing advice and market links. Another board member is a lawyer specialising in intellectual property rights of indigenous communities. Naivedyam, another green intermediary, has an entrepreneur board member who provides advice on financial management, domestic markets and business laws. One board member provides marketing inputs, while another, an ex-enterprise development coordinator, provides inputs on community enterprise development and management. Provincial coordinators/ directors also sit on the boards of the green intermediaries to ensure that their operations are aligned with the vision and mission of Mt. Everest Forest Botanicals Alliance (MEFBA). Mt. Everest Forest Botanicals Alliance (MEFBA) governance and policy advocacy advisor provides legal support and advice.

For social enterprise, in its institutional life and ecology, it is bound to face prospects and problems of various nature. Networks are important to get suggestions and advice from cohorts groups’ and veterans operating in identical sectors. Also in order to access new business opportunities and contacts, finance, suppliers, markets and customers, technology, knowledge and credibility, networking is equally important.

 

The MEFBA incubator cultivates relationships with international and national funders, a regional pool of trainers, advisors, market partners and volunteers. Mt. Everest Forest Botanicals Alliance has its strategic partner, Federation of Community Forestry Users Nepal (FECOFUN), which is the largest civil society group in Nepal. The partnership allows MEFBA Incubation Projects to access its formidable national/international governmental, non-governmental, academia, federations and similar networks.  Over the years, FECOFUN as a sterling forest user’s advocacy coalition has developed deep relationships with different governmental, academia and other institutional bodies based in Nepal and abroad. Mt. Everest Forest Botanicals Alliance (MEFBA) is also linking up with market movement actors in areas such as social entrepreneurship, slow food, organic products, spa and wellness industry, green design, etc.

 

The Mt. Everest Forest Botanicals Alliance (MEFBA) regional network of NGO partners also provides a valuable contribution to business incubation. Tools and good practices learnt from direct experiences are exchanged through learning visits, exchange of tools and SCED trainings, which are then enriched by local experiences and adapted to local contexts. Mt. Everest Forest Botanicals Alliance (MEFBA) regional office also organises product-specific conferences (such as on essential oil or forest honey) so that producers and others in the value chain are able to meet and collaborate.

Each programme raises its own funds to support enterprise development or business incubation programmes. In some cases, Mt. Everest Forest Botanicals Alliance (MEFBA) also contributes to this effort. The main source of funds for business incubation is project funding from international partners. Many of the funders are supported by government funds. The changing political interests and country focus of these governments, and to some extent economic situations in their countries, have had an impact on funding availability. This has led the organisation to diversify its sources of income by establishing the SCED programme and doing in-country consultancies. SCED training programmes and consultancy projects offered to other organisations generate additional income for the organisation. Most business incubation costs are covered by the project funds of provincial/regional offices. The regional offices, in some cases, supplement that budget by supporting training activities or special events that contribute to the capacity building or market linking of the alliance member clients. For SCED trainings, the costs are covered mainly by participating clients. However, in three out of four SCED trainings, Mt. Everest Forest Botanicals Alliance (MEFBA) has also found funds to send its own participants. These are four to five participants out of an average of 20 participants per training.

 

The organisation has also begun exploring impact investment. However, there is an observed mismatch between offers and expectations of investors with the needs of clients, small enterprises and small-sized marketing intermediaries, who require less than what is being offered by investors. Profit margins are small and therefore do not attract traditional impact investors. However, the door is always open for a meaningful collaboration and partnership with future climate fund investors.

Mt. Everest Forest Botanicals Alliance (MEFBA) business incubation provides customised services that range from enterprise organising, capacity building, mentoring, advising and networking to marketing The process is described below.

 

Participatory Learning and Action (PLA): In areas without identified products, the process starts with a Participatory Learnings and Action workshop. In this process, the community assesses its livelihoods needs and identifies and selects their enterprise focus based on sustainability of resources, market opportunities and feasibility.

 

Community enterprise organising: In this next step, EDOs facilitate discussions and consultation to enable the community to come together and decide to work as one enterprise. This step includes identifying roles and responsibilities, and policy and systems development. Initial steps also include value chain analysis and strategy development. Sensitising and discussion on the Issues of social inclusion, women’s rights and empowerment and human rights are embedded into the SME action plan of the community. Pressing issues of climate change and its effect on the livelihoods of the community and the need for the mitigation and adaptation are seriously discussed and incorporated into the project DNA for achieving the Goal 13 of SDG.

 

Production technology upgrading: Starting from what the community producers already know, which is production, EDOs introduce new inputs to either improve product quality or develop new products to make them more acceptable to the market. Starting with something that they are familiar with helps ease the community producers into the complex process of enterprise development. This service also includes ‘greening’ enterprises. For enterprises working on Essential Oil Mefba promotes the principles of sustainability of wildcrafting the forest botanicals and encourages to go for kitchen garden nursery for eventual plantations of high value botanicals for therapeutic and lifestyle products in their land holdings. For textiles, Mt. Everest Forest Botanicals Alliance (MEFBA) promotes the use of natural vegetable dyes and natural fibres. Together with the community, Mt. Everest Forest Botanicals Alliance (MEFBA) develops protocols and standards not just for quality improvement, but also for sustainable or green production. The traditional community knowledge of handling soapnuts, chiuri tree, MAP, plant fibres are structured and protocols developed for posterity as the traditional collective communal memory heritage in the form of oral traditions are fast disappearing.

 

Assistance in sales of products: The organisation ensures that from the onset, the support team tries to find buyers for existing community products, as they develop the enterprise. This is part of the strategy to keep the producers interested in the business incubation process. They have income needs and this cannot stop while they establish their enterprise.

 

Capacity building for enterprise management is composed of training, mentoring and coaching. Training modules include operations management, financial management – bookkeeping, accounting, marketing – and production management. Trainings are usually adapted to community participants, who are mostly without business experience and have limited literacy. Trainings are very interactive and experiential. Methods include games, producer visits and film screenings. In Sustainable Community Enterprise Development (SCED), actual case studies from participants are used during the training for a more hands – on and practical approach. Activities are also usually done in local languages and dialects or are multilingual. The organisation makes an effort not to make language a barrier to learning. Mentoring and coaching are important to the actual implementation of the lessons learnt. Enterprise development officers work alongside community enterprises to carry out activities like bookkeeping, production management and sales. The presence of the MEFBA team member in the community during the development period encourages the community to continue as they know they are not alone in this activity.

 

Marketing is one of the most important services provided by the organisation. The geographical location of the clients is a big hindrance to them engaging with the market directly. Marketing includes product development, promotion, communication and sales. When the organisation started, there were limited markets for community products, and markets were monopolised by a few actors. Community producers also lacked any knowledge of marketing strategies, which also limited the market reach of products, hence restricting demand. This led the organisation to incubate marketing intermediaries to provide a fair opportunity but also to find new markets for community products. The marketing (green) intermediaries now lead in the research and development (R&D) of new products from the communities and cultivation of new markets. For example, handwoven hemp yarns are knitted to produce fashionable dresses for the tourist market in Kathmandu as souvenirs. Further, traditional chiuri butter is redeveloped as a substitute for shea butter in niche artisanal cosmetics production in Kathmandu by AGP Natural Exotics, the green intermediary of Mt. Everest Forest Botanicals Alliance (MEFBA). Moving beyond tourist markets, these traditional knitwears and natural skincare products have found a new exports market in fashion.

 

Services also go beyond actual market linking or sales to market and industry-development efforts. These aim to increase the value of NTFPs and cultural products and advocate for the development of these industries. Strategies include cooperative formation, branding, standard development, certification development and consumer engagement and education.

Capacity-building trainings are conducted in the community. Trainings are supplemented with exposure to production centres and to markets through trade fairs, and learning visits. These external trainings are very useful in influencing mindsets and behaviours resistant to change or new concepts. Seeing processes or talking to buyers first hand helps producers to see new possibilities whether in production or in markets. The SCED programme also set up a Facebook group for ex-participants of trainings to share news, tips and some post-training mentoring where needed.

 

The organisation also publishes tools and guides in local languages. The network strives to have a common process and tools that are then adapted to local contexts. Guides and quick references such as posters and comic books and a mix of low-cost, portable and accessible materials are developed to facilitate dissemination of new concepts, processes and protocols. These materials available on the alliance community facebook pages.

Making Mt. Everest Forest Botanicals Alliance (MEFBA)’s extensive network of contacts available to its clients is key to linking them with government authorities, buyers and investors. The first step in enabling this is by organising interested individuals into registered groups. Being organised and registered, they become eligible and ‘attractive’ to government agencies and NGOs that provide support to enterprise development, technology and financing. These support providers usually prefer to provide assistance to a group that is already organised, which gives them an assurance that their support will be put to use and not wasted. For example, cliff honey producers in Lamjung district were linked up with guaranteed funds so they could access loans. Representatives from community-based enterprises are usually invited to provincial, national and international trade fairs and learning visits, where they meet business development support providers and market actors and learn directly from other community producers like them. This is also a part of the training as they are able to experience first hand the demands of these sectors.

 

National meetings are also organised for different product groups. For example, every year there is the National Handicrafts Exhibition  and Conference , which brings together craft producers from all over Nepal and some partners in the region. Here, the producers learn of new concepts, and also get to interact with other producers and exchange experiences. Other examples of national meetings are for forest honey, medicinal plants and essential oils.

Clients initially come mainly from partner communities, where Mt. Everest Forest Botanicals Alliance (MEFBA) offices have long-term stakes. For some provincial offices, clients are selected from target areas identified in projects that they are involved in. The regional offices also identify groups nearby existing community enterprises that can supplement production. This is to address the problem of meeting volume requirements. Some of the clients come from partner organisations that have learnt of the organisation’s work or have participated in one of its public trainings.

 

Groups are selected based on their potential to contribute not just to livelihoods enhancement, but also to sustainable resource management, and of course their desire to participate and start a community enterprise. In most cases, there are already products being made and traded on a small scale. Development starts from existing skills and interests. The enterprise team of the country office organises a consultancy meeting with the community and from there establishes the needs and the desire of the members, usually using the CLAPS tool to assess livelihoods needs and enterprise potentials.

Enterprises supported are monitored for their development and performance during the project period. Quarterly and annual reports are made by enterprise officers who address any issue that comes up. Currently, there are different monitoring processes in the MEFBA headquarters office. However, the main business indicators that are monitored include:

 

Organisational development and management: The establishment of policies, execution of roles and functions by enterprise officers, implementation of business plans, including benefit sharing.

 

Production capacity: The ability to meet volume, quality, time requirement of orders and, for some countries, to meet clean production standards.

 

Marketing, sales and income: To increase sales and income of members.

 

Financial management and profitability: The ability to produce and understand financial reports and cover enterprise operating costs.

 

Sustainable harvesting: Implementation of sustainable harvesting protocols and resource management plan.

Based on the experience of the enterprise development teams, business incubation can last from three to five years. In the 2020–2021 MEFBA strategic plan despite the vicissitudes of Covid19 pandemic setbacks, regional programmes agreed on target outcomes and indicators to monitor the development of community enterprises, which is expected within four years of business incubation. Community enterprises no longer require support when they have members actively involved in enterprise management and can distribute benefits to members, can sustain operations and improve the income of members, and have sustainable and resilient enterprises. For indigenous communities, the additional indicator included is that they are able to contribute to cultural protection and promotion. However, the latter still needs to be systematised and implemented in the different ethnicity habitats.

 

There are some cases where longer engagement is required due to community organising issues. In another case, a new group had to be established when a group the organisation was already working with was monopolised by some officers and the weaver members decided to form another group.

Currently, there is no existing mechanism to systematically collect data post-project support. Due to resource limitations, it is difficult for the organisation to monitor community enterprises beyond the initial project period. However, continuing engagement with the marketing intermediaries informs Mt. Everest Forest Botanicals Alliance (MEFBA) of community enterprises’ continuing operations and their performance in terms of sales and ability to meet volume, quality and time requirements. Intermediaries usually provide feedback to the enterprise development team on any problem they encounter with the producer group. There are also plans to have post-training checks with SCED training participants, but due to the lack of human resources, this has not been implemented yet.

It is difficult to measure success according to the size and profits of the enterprises due to the different needs and aspirations of the community members. For some, as long as they meet their income needs, they are satisfied. The amount may be small from an external perspective, but it is the community’s or the producer’s decision to decide their target incomes.

 

The sustained and independent operation of the community-based enterprise is the main measure of success. The organisation is able to monitor this through the community enterprise’s continued engagement with their green intermediaries. Mt. Everest Forest Botanicals Alliance (MEFBA) estimates a 70 per cent success rate. As there are no post-project monitoring mechanisms, it is difficult for some regional offices to provide statistics.

 

Message for other incubators

 

• DO provide comprehensive business incubation support. Look at the whole value chain instead of just at the business itself to identify and address the challenges. This means securing inputs supply or developing the market if necessary by either providing support directly or by maintaining a network of partners to whom community enterprises can be linked to for complementary support. This also means a long-term commitment and engagement with the community. For clients without prior experience or exposure to businesses, the development time may be longer.

 

• DO customise business incubation approaches and business models according to the capacity of the target groups. This requires a thorough understanding of the target community, including cultures, beliefs and social structures. This is something that is gained over time and through actual immersion. Enterprise development personnel should be embedded in the community. For clients coming from remote areas, with limited exposure to markets and businesses, first-hand experience is key. Exposure to trade fairs and to other successful producer groups helps them to learn and adopt new concepts and methodologies. They become champions of change in their communities.

 

• DO strengthen the link of sustainable resource management (SRM) to the business. Develop a vision of which includes sustainability from the outset. Increase awareness of producer groups by showing links between natural resources and livelihoods. Incorporate SRM into business policies, in terms of raw material procurement, waste management or even profit allocation.

 

• DO think of the market. What has been helpful is developing market linkages for budding enterprises even at an early stage. This gives them a glimpse of the potential of their business. The marketing intermediaries established in the different countries provide a ready and relatively steady market for community enterprises. This is one of the strengths of Mt. Everest Forest Botanicals Alliance (MEFBA)’s business incubation.

 

• DO select good target clients for incubation support. This might be difficult as project funds constrict the choice of target clients. However, within that project group, the selection process can be improved to select clients that have enough entrepreneurial interest and acumen to increase the likelihood of the community enterprise continuing beyond the initial project stage.

 

• DO strengthen financial management capacity and establish checks and balances in the enterprise. Money is a delicate matter when working with groups and community enterprises. Besides putting in place necessary checks and balances, it is also important to create a company culture of trust and transparency. Do think about including and developing social cohesion and values in your work.

 

• DO invest also in strengthening the capacity and commitment of your team. The enterprise development officers are assets to the business incubation programme. Their capacities and their commitment have an impact on the dynamics of the community enterprise and the capacity of their clients. So, they too should be included in the investment of the business incubation programme.

 

• DO NOT isolate yourself. Network with and learn from other business development support providers to enrich your own services. Engage the market in order to raise awareness among consumers.

 

• DO NOT just focus on the community. Engage with the other actors of the value chain. There are many players in the chain: influence all actors to be more collaborative and a more effective part of the chain. This will also benefit the community, the main client.

Mt. Everest Forest Botanicals Alliance (MEFBA) business incubation in NTFP-based and cultural community enterprises contributes to inclusive development, sustainable resource management, forest conservation and the promotion of sustainable production and consumption.

 

For Mt. Everest Forest Botanicals Alliance (MEFBA), enhancing community livelihoods and providing opportunities to develop a thriving local economy is essential for conservation and the sustainable management of forested landscapes. By building the capacity and enterprises of forest-based communities and by developing quality products from sustainable sources, Mt. Everest Forest Botanicals Alliance (MEFBA) aims to increase choices for sustainable livelihoods and lifestyles. By focusing on local resources, especially traditional knowledge-based industries, communities can also restore faith in their cultures and have the certainty that traditions can be the basis of growing economies as well.

 

The choice to work with remote communities addresses a gap in business incubation support. It is necessary to reach remote villages to decentralise economic development and create a more inclusive business sector. However, there is limited support for incubation in the early stages of community enterprises. There are high risks. Also, it requires more resources in terms of time and finance. Therefore, current trends of financing such as government funding or impact investment may not find this sector appealing yet. But through Mt. Everest Forest Botanicals Alliance (MEFBA)’s interventions, when organised into groups, individual producers have more opportunities to access scaling-up support (technology acquisition, financing). However, not many organisations have the capacity to do this. Mt. Everest Forest Botanicals Alliance (MEFBA), over the years, has been building its core competence in this area.

 

 

Mt. Everest Forest Botanicals Alliance (MEFBA) is one of the few business development service (BDS) providers offering comprehensive and adapted business incubation support in the region. Mt. Everest Forest Botanicals Alliance (MEFBA) business incubation tries to provide comprehensive support, covering the whole value chain from raw materials and inputs to consumer education and market development. The organisation knows that it is not able to do everything alone; for this reason, it cultivates a network of partners from different sectors and actors. Community enterprises are linked up with other agencies and markets once they are ready to do so independently. The approach of Mt. Everest Forest Botanicals Alliance (MEFBA) is adapted to the realities of communities living in remote areas. The long-term engagement of Mt. Everest Forest Botanicals Alliance (MEFBA) during the incubation period provides community enterprises with the support they need for know-how to take root and for the enterprise to become stable. Mt. Everest Forest Botanicals Alliance (MEFBA) is also one of the few BDS providers to use multiple languages in any capacity-building activity. Mt. Everest Forest Botanicals Alliance (MEFBA) believes that language should not be a barrier to learning.

 

Mt. Everest Forest Botanicals Alliance (MEFBA) business incubation contributes to a more diversified and sustainable forestry industry. First, it provides alternative livelihoods options to extractive, pollutive or unempowering industries. Secondly, this sector does not receive much support, politi-cally or market-wise. There are many barriers and challenges. There is also much criticism of the potential of NTFPs, in terms of their ability to contribute to poverty alleviation or to provide enough benefits to encourage conservation. However, increased or improved benefits can be achieved from the processing of NTFPs or creating finished products.

 

By incubating NTFP-based enterprises, the organisation creates more examples or proof of concept that sustainable businesses work, and for this reason, we continue our work. By creating more products and business cases from forests beyond timber-based indus-tries, Mt. Everest Forest Botanicals Alliance (MEFBA) diversifies the forestry industry and increases its potential to contribute to national economic development. From Mt. Everest Forest Botanicals Alliance (MEFBA)’s experience, new markets have to develop, which happens over time. When the organisation began community enterprise development, the fairtrade and eco-chic markets had just taken hold. Now, there is a wider variety of potential markets like these for community enterprises to engage with.

Mt. Everest Forest Botanicals Alliance (MEFBA) still needs to improve its services. There is a lot to do, but at the same time, there is still a growing need for its support. Specifically, the organisation aims to develop its incubation process further in the following ways.

 

Reinforce competence and build capacity in business incubation. This means continuously learning from experiences and building capacity of the team, including developing standards of competency and expertise across countries and a strong peer group. There is also a need to scale up capacity to support advanced-level enterprises, and to bring the incubation programme up to date with current issues like climate change. This is where SCED plays an important role. At the regional level, Mt. Everest Forest Botanicals Alliance (MEFBA) is conceptualising a regional business incubation support service for country programmes and looking for new countries to expand to, which includes support in financing, enterprise up-scaling, assessment and monitoring, and tools development.

 

Develop a regional minimum standard for effective business incubation for NTFP-based and cultural   community enterprises. The organisation’s work is anchored ‘on the ground’, and it has a far-reaching network. This provides Mt. Everest Forest Botanicals Alliance (MEFBA) with the opportunities to learn directly from and exchange experiences, and to continue to develop and adapt its business incubation methodologies and tools. While each habitat has its own contexts and specificities, through continuous exchange and sharing, Mt. Everest Forest Botanicals Alliance (MEFBA) aims to standardise a minimum of capacities across each region and to explore new business models.

 

Continue to expand networks. Community enterprises have various needs that the organisation is not able to address alone. Therefore, the organisation is working to expand its networks in order to link clients to other support providers. Mt. Everest Forest Botanicals Alliance (MEFBA) aims to extend its networks to include more product-based networks, where individual enterprises can go for product-specific support; to universities, both for research and development; and to reach young people who are interested in social enterprises. Mt. Everest Forest Botanicals Alliance (MEFBA) also plans to engage and collaborate with other business development support experts in order to bolster its capacities and internal expertise. Through SCED, the organisation aims to reach and support more communities and organisations.

 

Diversify and build capacity for financing business incubation. There is a need to build Mt. Everest Forest Botanicals Alliance (MEFBA)’s capacity to address financing needs among partners. The organisation is exploring the possibility of developing a diversified source of financing. This can include projects, consultancies and other mechanisms. However, the organisation still needs to increase awareness and understanding of available financing options and assess internal capacity.

 

Strengthen knowledge management capacity. This means that Mt. Everest Forest Botanicals Alliance (MEFBA) needs to improve its monitoring and evaluation processes, especially in the post-incubation period. It also aims to maintain a database of good practice on areas such as community economy and livelihood development that will be available through the network. The organisation needs to proactively generate and contribute knowledge in the field of community-based NTFP and cultural enterprises in order to increase awareness of and engender support for the sector.

Business incubation in NTFPs, cultural products and community-based enterprises is a challenging field. However, the opportunities and potential that they offer to sustainable development in rural and forest communities are immense and therefore cannot be ignored. Mt. Everest Forest Botanicals Alliance (MEFBA) presents the following policy endorsements to improve business incubation in this sector.

 

Incorporate SRM-anchored business incubation services in government community-forest tenure programmes. Provide community-forest tenure programmes with complementary support services on business incubation in order to address the livelihoods needs of communities alongside operationalising their responsibility to manage their resources. Build the capacity and necessary resources of government personnel to understand, provide and support these needs. Collaborate with existing business incubators like Mt. Everest Forest Botanicals Alliance (MEFBA), which already has over a decade of grassroots experience.

 

Support micro and small-scale producers to access the growing green market. Provide complementary support to business incubators, by creating venues for small-scale producers to benefit from the green market, either through R&D support, technology dissemination and acquisition, financing and/or market linking.

 

Support the development of a diversified forestry industry. The sustainable and green market is growing. Governments should recognise the opportunities that are provided by forests, NTFPs and biodiversity products. Forest industries need to go beyond the focus on timber products and explore non-timber forest products. Support industry and market-development initiatives for NTFP products – through research, capacity, technology and trade links development.

 

Develop a national strategy for the promotion of NTFP-based industries. Nepal has been an important source of MAP raw materials, many NTFPs, for different industries India. The regional community needs to take stock of these resources and explore how these raw materials can be developed to increase value-added product creation within the region, instead of exporting raw materials. Public procurement policies that support local products can also be vital in the creation of markets for forest and cultural products.

 

Create an enabling business environment for green and social enterprises. There are many social and green entrepreneurs that are willing to partner with community-based enterprises. Provide these green social entrepreneurs with an enabling environment, such as – but not limited to – tax breaks, incentives, capacity-building support, access to finance, community-enterprise matching platforms, and international market trade links to allow them to grow their businesses.

Since the majority of the MEFBA NTFP members relies on micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs) for their livelihoods, it is imperative that this segment of the economy becomes more resilient to future climate impacts. At the same time, these businesses need to be positioned to develop and sell products and services that strengthen the resilience of vulnerable communities. MEFBA through its strategic partnership with FECOFUN has developed Sustainable Community Enterprise Development (SCED) Projects and has supported more than 40 groups around the country in enabling small businesses to adapt to climate change whilst (embracing Green Growth fundamentals) fostering economic growth and development ensuring that natural assets continue to provide the resources and environmental services on which our well-being relies. To do this it must catalyse investment and innovation which will underpin sustained growth and give rise to new economic opportunities to the underprivileged.

 

MEFBA flagship project promotes small business resilience by engaging with stakeholders to design green growth and its accompanying enterprise programs that address the underlying barriers to resilience. These barriers may be technical, financial, socio-cultural, and/or institutional. We use participatory approaches to identify these barriers and develop sustainable solutions bringing in tactical expertises wherever necessary.

 

The new paradigm of Green Growth and the new proposition of intermediation is Public-Private Partnership (PPP). MEFBA posits that the desired green intermediary social enterprise AGP Natural Exotics with its botanicals products brand names as ‘ Naturyl’ and ‘NaiVedyam’ will be the facilitator, collaborator, network manager and service provider to all of SCED business projects as a conduit to the market matrix. The strategic partnership will include all the NTFP including MAP goods and services that the MEFBA and FECOFUN members’ business enterprise produce. Currently, the following sectors are covered: 

Non-Timber Forest Products (NTFP) Project Themes:

• Bamboo

 

• Essential Oils

 

• Soapnuts

 

• Chiuri Butter

 

• Mango Butter

 

• Forest Honey

 

• Hemp Fibre

 

• Himalayan Nettle Fibre

 

• Sea buckthorn

 

• Asafoetida

 

• Goji Berry

 

• Morel mushroom