WorkPlan

The forests of the northeastern India are rich in biodiversity and timber. The watersheds of the region are critical catchments that regulate hydrological flows to some of the world's most densely populated agricultural lands and cities. In past decades, deforestation and watershed deterioration has progressed rapidly due to heavy timber demand from Bangladesh and urban centers in India, while land clearing by migrant peoples also threaten these upland forests. Illegal logging and land clearing is made easier where tenurial rights to forests are weak or unclear. This lack of clarity is often based on a policy framework that is ambiguous and being challenged by private sector interests and even by government agencies.

While the Government of India has attempted to establish an integrated set of national environment and development policies, especially relating to the administration of public forestlands, the states of the Northeast present unique needs and problems. Perhaps nowhere is this exemplified as much as in the realm of community-based forest management. As one Indian analyst writes of national government misunderstanding of the unique historical experience and cultural realities of Mizoram: "This lack of understanding is… visible in national policies and programmes that ignore exceptional circumstances, resulting in a waste of resources to the disadvantage of the very people they are intended to benefit."

Unlike much of the Indian sub-continent, where forest departments have functioned as state landlords for over a century and forest communities have been alienated and denied forest access for decades, in the northeast the most state forest departments have emerged since the 1970s. Much of the forest area has remained under community control up to the present. Soon after Independence, with populations growing, communities in Meghalaya, Mizoram, and other northeastern states began forming community forest management groups to strengthen their control in the face of outside migrants and new government representatives. Forestlands were classed as "safety" and "supply" reserves and placed under the authority of the village council. Village councils have generally done a good job of protecting their forest resources, based on small, homogenous village society that supports collective needs and interests. Unfortunately, this experience has been little documented and has received very little outside support from state or national governments, as well as from the international community.

Nonetheless, unlike peninsular India where state forest departments have dominant legal authority over most forest lands, in northeastern India communities still retain control over much of the regions natural forest ecosystems:

While the forest dependent communities of the northeast may have considerable legal authority over the natural resources of the region, based on legislation occurring during the British Colonial era and during the 1950s in particular, at present, indigenous community-based systems of forest conservation are threatened by the reluctance of state governments to formally reserve and title them, and as a result of growing government and commercial pressures to exploit them. As one analyst notes:

"The intrusion of commercial forces can only be averted by strengthening the village councils and by introducing administrative and financial incentives and disincentives to deter the exploitation of natural forests."

India has received worldwide attention for its successful national Joint Forest Management strategy that was enacted in June 1990, and which has allowed communities to gain new rights and responsibilities for state forest lands. The JFM approach provides communities with a share of timber and non-timber forest products from public lands in return for forest protection. While the JFM policies and programs have provided new incentives for marginalized rural people in central India to participate in public forestlands restoration activities, these policies have not been widely adopted in northeastern India. The primary reason has been that the fundamental JFM strategy for benefit sharing does not respond well to existing forest tenure and management practices in northeastern India. For example, in central India community access to public forestland had been extremely limited for a century or more, and the opportunity JFM presented to gain partial rights to the resources was an important step forward. In the Northeast, many communities have historically controlled their forest resources and continue to do so. Entering into sharing agreements with their state forest departments would only decrease their authority and resources, rather than enlarge them.

In the Northeastern states of India, special community forest management policies will need to be designed that reflect the historic rights and current pressures faced by rural villages. From a conservation standpoint, policies need to be developed that support communities and create incentives for them to better withstand pressures for forest privatization and commercial exploitation. At present, market pressures from large urban centers in Bangladesh and eastern India are a major force driving deforestation. State governments are also eager to generate timber revenues to fund their operations, even though short term exploitation would carry heavy environmental and social costs.

Northeastern India has been politically isolated for decades, in part due to the presence of insurgency movements in a number of states across the region. Researchers have had difficulty gaining access to the area, while most field activities have been conducted by small NGOs with few resources. As a consequence, there has been little momentum developed to raise community resource management concerns to a policy level. Without state and national policy support, as well as greater international understanding and financing, fragile community forest management institutions are likely to collapse under outside pressures, leading to an accelerated depletion of the region's rich forests and biodiversity. There is a need for a mechanism and process that can bring government officials, forest officers, scientists, and NGOs together to explore formulating an enabling policy environment that will support local communities to act effectively as custodians of the regions forests.

Community Forestry International and its partners have been actively involved in guiding the development of community forest management policies and programs in India for over a decade.
This project would create an institutional framework and catalyze a process that will allow state policy makers in the Northeast to discuss new policy mechanisms that respond to the unique historical and socio-cultural conditions existing in this region of India. CFI is well-positioned to undertake this project because its staff and partner institutions have fifteen years of experience in documenting and assessing community forest conservation situations throughout South and Southeast Asia, can efficiently connect government planners in the northeast with relevant field and policy experiences beyond their region, and have the political support required to implement such a program in Northeast India.

The proposed strategy involves a three-year effort to guide the formation and operation of a regional policy working group to formulate recommendations for enabling legal frameworks and strategies to facilitate community-based forest conservation. The project would also arrange cross-visits with government planners and project staff developing parallel strategies in Southeast Asia, to encourage cross-regional learning. This project proposes to establish and facilitate a policy dialogue regarding the legal position and operational role of resident communities in conserving and managing the forests of northeastern India. Community Forestry International (CFI) would support its Indian partners by creating and facilitating the operations of a Working Group on Community Forest Management (CFM) Policy in the Northeastern Himalaya. Working Group members would be drawn from government administration, forest departments, NGOs and academic institutions in the states of Arunachal, Assam, Meghalaya, Mizoram, and Nagaland. Over the three year project, based on a series of workshops and field visits, the Working Group would prepare recommendations for an enabling CFM policy for Northeastern Indian states. The policy framework would build on indigenous management traditions, past and present laws that support community forest stewardship, and emerging national policies supporting democratization and decentralization.

Figure 1: Project Logframe

PROJECT COMPONENT	OBJECTIVES	ACTIVITIES	OUTPUTS
CFM Policy Working Group for the NortheastHimalaya	- Establish a regional framework for CFM policy exchange and development for the 7 northeastern Indian states - Facilitate communication between among government officials, foresters, researchers, and NGOs	- Semi-annual meetings of the CFM Policy Working - Exchange visits between Working Group member states - Communicate learning on CFM in the northeast through website and publications	- Functioning mechanism to monitor and guide the development of state policy for community-based ecosystem conservation -Stronger communication channels between policy makers in the northeast.
Northeast Himalaya Regional Dialogue	- Document and disseminate information concerning the dejure and defacto role of communities in forest conservation in the northeast - Draft recommendations for a community forest management policy framework for India's northeastern states. - Strengthen communication between northeastern Indian states regarding CFM policy and program development	- Assessment of forest policy history of the northeast - Review of current government policies and practices - Analysis of policy implications of current field experiences with CFM based on case studies and field visits - Design of new CFM policy framework- Workshop with Senior State Policy Makers	-Working papers on: 1) CFM policy history of the northeast, 2) Current state policy framework for CFM, 3) Relation of Forest Departments in northeastern India to communities. - Three CFM case studies - Report on CFM policy & program recommendations for the consideration of the State Government in the northeast.
Trans-Regional Exchange with Lower Mekong	- Facilitate sharing between CFM policy analysis groups in the northeast India and Southeast Asia.	-Participate in Southeast Asia CFM policy group meetings - Hold visit of senior foresters & planners for policy discussion & field visits	-Identify common forest management problems and effective CFM policy & program strategies

Working Group discussions would be based on a series of diagnostic studies that explore the historic legal framework for existing community forest rights, the current policy position of state governments and political parties, and the operational policies of state forest agencies towards forest-dependent communities. Semi-annual Working Group meetings would draw on these case studies and field visits, to channel field experience into the policy review process an effort to design a CFM policy framework that supports community-based forest conservation systems. The project partners would propose cases that reflect the range of community-based biodiversity conservation strategies found in the region. Three case studies, selected from the participating states, would be prepared to document the following characteristics: 1) situated in areas with high biodiversity, 2) functioning community forest management systems, 3) presence of supportive forest department staff, NGO, or development activity, and 4) threats to biodiversity and forest cover present.

The goal of case study will be to analyze and document the current natural resource management situation in each site to understand the cultural and ecological setting, inventory biodiversity, assess socio-institutional capacities for conserving biodiversity, and identify existing or potential threats to the environment. Using Participatory Rapid Appraisal (PRA) methods, team members will work with local forest department staff, NGOs and community members to document and analyze current resource use practices, conservation strategies, as well as management threats and opportunities. The project staff to assist community members and leaders to identify the types of policies and programs that would improve and strengthen current forest management and biodiversity conservation activities.

Working Group efforts to develop innovative CFM policy strategies to support community-based biodiversity conservation would be further informed through exchanges with CFI's policy project in mainland Southeast Asia. The results of the policy dialogue and the recommendations of the Working Group would be prepared as a formal document and presented at a workshop for senior policy makers from the northeastern states for consideration at the conclusion of the project.

The Working Group's secretariat would be based at the Northeast Regional Centre of the National Afforestation and Ecodevelopment Board (NAEB) located at the Northeast Hill University in Shillong, Meghalaya. Working Group members would be drawn from the seven northeastern states. In Arunachal Pradesh the project would work with the state forest department. In Meghalaya, the project seeks to partner with the Meghalaya Forest Department and the North Eastern Region Community Resource Management Project for Upland Areas financed by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). In Manipur, the project would work with the state forest department and IFAD project staff. Preliminary site analysis suggests appropriate biodiversity hot spots and communities may be found in the Ukhrul area in the East Manipur Hills.

PROJECT EVALUATION
This project assumes that through the formation and functioning of the Regional Working Group on Community Forest Management in Northeastern India, state planners and senior forest administrators will be able to discuss and develop policy recommendations to support existing and emerging systems of community-based forest conservation. The regional working group will meet on a semi-annual basis, rotating between the participating states and holding project site visits.

The project would be evaluated on the basis of three sets of criteria. These include the effectiveness of the project in establishing a policy dialogue process, the success in facilitating communications and exchanges between actors involved in CFM policy development in the northeastern Himalaya, and finally, the effectiveness of the project in informing and catalyzing the emergence of a new generation of CFM policies in the region.

The first set of criteria would include: 1) the effectiveness of the projecting in forming the Regional CFM Policy Working Group, 2) implementing working group activities including semi-annual meetings, 3) the preparation and quality of policy reviews and background studies commissioned by the group for their deliberations.

The second set of criteria would involve: 1) the extent to which the project brought different policy stakeholders (government, NGOs, foresters, academics) together to review CFM, and 2) created new avenues for exchange between CFM policy analysts from different northeastern states.

The third set of criteria for evaluation would be: 1) the quality and relevance of the policy recommendations prepared by the Regional CFM Policy Working Group, 2) the effectiveness of the project in presenting these recommendations to senior state level policy makers, and 3) the acceptance and integration of the new policy directions by state government.

COMMUNITY FOREST MANAGEMENT IN NORTHEASTERN INDIA:
FACILITATING REGIONAL POLICY DEVELOPMENT

PROJECT PROPOSAL

COMMUNITY FOREST MANAGEMENT IN NORTHEASTERN INDIA: FACILITATING REGIONAL POLICY DEVELOPMENT

PROJECT PROPOSAL

COMMUNITY FOREST MANAGEMENT IN NORTHEASTERN INDIA:
FACILITATING REGIONAL POLICY DEVELOPMENT