(NTFPs), including medicinal herbs and aromatic plants, accounts for 5% of the total national revenue collected from the forestry sector, in certain areas NTFPs alone provide up to 50% of family income. Forests are within PAs which have technical as well as armed manpower with guard posts at strategic locations and relatively strict instructions to enforce compliance with the law. Buffer zone management frameworks are geared towards creating natural capital and economic opportunities for communities that have lost traditional forest use rights inside PAs, but the issues and concerns of indigenous peoples and local communities have not been resolved properly, including their land rights, compensation for lost sources of income, needs and aspirations. For example, in the past, all parks and protected areas were under the control of indigenous peoples and local communities. Since the establishment of national parks and PAs, people living within and adjacent to them have been deprived by the management of the collection of medicinal herbs, food materials, fuel wood, timber, fodder and grazing for their animals, which are an integral part of the IPs’ lives. Many places have been developed as urban centers, and parks are controlled by the military. Outside the PA system, GMFs in general suffer from a lack of the capacity and resources of District Forest Offices (DFO) that would be necessary for a reasonable level of management (except in cases where donor assistance has been available, such as in eight districts in central Nepal and four districts in the western region). The majority of GMFs, especially in the mid and high mountains, have never been subject to any “Many places have been developed as urban centers, and parks are controlled by the military. management and protection initiatives since forests were nationalized in Nepal, and therefore face an “open access” situation unless they are handed over as CF or are managed and regulated by local communities traditionally dependent on them. A widely recognized result of such an open access situation has been the rapid loss of various highly valuable medicinal and aromatic plants (MAPs) from forests. Indigenous communities in the past had practiced traditional methods of regulating the collection and harvesting of such MAPs, but because of the known markets and high prices, these MAPs are now subjected to indiscriminate over collection, which is threatening the resource base. Consequently, there has been a rapid loss of traditional knowledge and practices related to these MAPs. Enforcement of National Laws, Policies, Structures, and Mechanisms Some significant progress has been made at the national level in Nepal with regard to customary rights of IPs. This holds particularly true regarding legislative reforms and respecting people’s collective rights to land. In many cases, these legislative reforms are a direct consequence of court decisions in favor of indigenous peoples and their demand for the recognition of their ancestral lands. While in other cases, these reforms correspond with changing international Lok Niti 81