Rejuvenating India's Forests through Action Against Poverty

Menka Bihari
Intern at Architecture and Engineering Department, UN Headquarters, New York


Forests were estimated to cover 3,454 million hectares i.e. 26.6% of the total land area of the world in 1995. People throughout the world are increasingly recognizing the importance of forests and trees in improving social welfare. Both natural and man-made forests have economic, social and environmental benefits. Furthermore, forests play an important role in economic development by providing employment, income and foreign exchange. Forests also provide land for food production and contribute to the economy by providing commercial wood products as well as non-wood products, and they are an important source of food, fiber and energy for indigenous populations. Nearly half of the world’s inhabitants, mainly in developing countries, depend to some extent on forests for consumption goods.

In India, Joint Forest Management (JFM) resolutions have been passed to promote partnerships between state Forest Departments and Forest Protection Committees (FPCs) and associated NGOs. By early 2000, almost 33,000 FPCs had been established across India on 10.2 million hectares of degraded natural forestland. As a result of the protection of forests by villagers, the forest ecology has improved and the biodiversity increased, and income from non-timber forest products (NTFPs) and wages from forest work constitutes almost 43% of the average family income. At the same time these community-based forest management schemes encourage equitable benefit sharing and women's empowerment. The value of JFM forests was found to be three times higher than forests of neighbouring villages that did not have JFM. Currently, it is estimated that 10.24 million ha. of forestlands are being managed under the JFM program through 36,075 committees in 22 states. As a follow-up, the Indian Government issued guidelines on 21 February 2000 for the strengthening of the JFM program.

The Forestry Department is responsible for organizing and providing technical and administrative support to the VSS. Villages on the fringe of the degraded forests are carefully selected. To the extent possible, socially homogeneous groups are brought into one VSS fold. People from all households are eligible to become members, but those from the most deprived section of society, the scheduled castes and tribes are automatically eligible to be members. Generally, two people from each household become members, and one of them must be a woman. Most VSS range in size from 75 to 150 members. This general body elects a managing committee of 10 to 15 members, 30% of whom must be women, who in turn elect a chairperson to oversee and manage the affairs of the VSS. The Forestry Department participates on this committee through its field officer, who acts as a secretary. It is proposed to transfer this task to the committee over time. The primary purpose of the VSS is to protect the forest from encroachment, grazing, theft, and fire, and to improve the forest in accordance with an approved joint forest management plan. This local plan, known as a microplan, is formulated in stages. The discussion about what to do with the forest is initiated through a participatory rural appraisal. The works and funds of the VSS are handled in a transparent manner jointly by the chairperson of the VSS and the forester who acts as the secretary. This transparency helps to ensure the quality and cost-effectiveness of all activities.

As suggested, forestry incorporating the traditional knowledge of the locals has mostly been a missing element in forest planning and application on a global scale. It is argued that environmental security now lies in integration of local knowledge and modern learning. The following reasons sum up why foresters and forest agencies should learn and integrate the indigenous knowledge on forest management with formal forestry:

• Inadequacies and unsuitability of classical forest management strategies.
• Erosion and extinction of cultural diversity and indigenous knowledge.
• Philosophy of sustainability in traditional ecological knowledge.
• International ethics and legal obligations.
• Voices of the indigenous peoples.
• Equal access to knowledge


WEB REFERENCES:
FAO: http://www.fao.org/waicent/faoinfo/forestry/ftpp/default.htm
TERI: http://static.teriin.org/jfm/jfm.htm