Conservation, management and utilization of forest resources primarily depend upon policy provisions and legislations. However, participation and contribution of stakeholders in the whole processes, including public policy debates, is more crucial to shape forestry sector governance. This paper attempts to discuss and analyze the undercurrent discourses in Nepal’s forestry sector. In doing so, this paper has attempted to discuss presence and contribution of indigenous peoples (now onwards adivasi/janajati) in overall forestry sector public discourses in Nepal. The analysis is based on seven multiple dimensions: (a) constitutional provisions; (b) provisions in policies and legislations; (c) presence in the forestry sector governing institutions; (d) number of publications; (e) number of authors appeared in the publications; (f) presence in the civil society forums and networks; and (g) presence and voices in the public forestry debates. The information and analysis are based on the participation and observation of the national interactions and dialogues on forestry issues, personal experiences and reflection of being organizer of some events, institutional memory on the relevant issues, and review of relevant policy and legislations on forestry sector. The analysis is also supplemented by some relevant qualitative information. The analysis of this paper is based on the theoretical perspective of “Social Space” by Henri Lefebvre, supplemented by conceptual debates on ‘indigeneity’, and theoretical arguments of political ecology. The analysis shows that social space of adivasi/janajati is very poor in the Nepal’s forestry sectors discourses, which gives rise not only a serious question of how and why they are marginalized, but also produced a theoretical challenge to an established anthropological knowledge about relation between “nature and culture” (forest and indigenous peoples). Given the nature of highly exclusive forestry sector discourses in Nepal, an academic debates from theoretical perspectives of “indigeneity” and “environmentalism” as “nature-culture relation” would be a needful desire for the democratization of Nepal’s forestry sector; however prevailing social inequalities, political instabilities, globalization, and extremely polarized identity based recent politics obviously obstruct for the timely innovation of this academic gaps as well as policy desire at the end.
