India offers excellent opportunities to learn about past and future methods of forest management. Under British colonial rule, the nation was one of the world's first countries to establish a national forest service in the mid-nineteenth century. The United States did not do so until nearly fifty years later. With more than 150,000 foresters, India has one of the largest professional forest services in the world.
The history of India's forest and its management reflects the experiences of many developing nations. Eighty percent of the Indian subcontinent was estimated to possess healthy forest cover as recently as 1,000 years ago. The nationalization and demarcation of India's forestlands began in the 1860s. Dietrich Brandeis, the first Inspector General of Forests, wanted to establish sustainable management systems for local use and commercial exploitation. He was convinced that community resource use systems should be fundamental elements of national forestry policy and operations; however, his position was overruled by Baden Powell. Over the next century forest nationalization continued, with frequent conflicts erupting over forest access among rural communities, private sector interests, and the state. Commercial use increasingly dominated forestry objectives and practices. Expanding timber felling and growing pressures from an increasing rural easing rural population, from the 1870s to the 1970s, degraded India's once-rich forests. By 1980, one-half of the nation's land area was declared unproductive.
Today, while nearly one-quarter of India's land area is designated public forest, only 8 percent sustains good forest vegetation. With the nation's population nearing 1 billion and projected to grow to 1.5 billion before stabilizing in 2050, both economic and demographic pressures on forest resources are intense. Fifty-four million tribal people mainly live in forest areas, and an additional 250 to 300 million rural inhabitants have significant biomass dependencies on forest resources. The continued degradation of forest environments is accelerating the displacement of upstream communities, as well as exacerbating water and hydroelectric supplies to downstream urban and industrial centers. The stability of India's forests is critically important for ensuring environmental services including forest products flows, hydrological functions, biodiversity conservation, and microclimatic stability.
In India, as in most nations, there is a compelling need to intensify resource management with stronger use controls and incentives for sustainable and productive use of the resource. In recent years Indians have taken a proactive role in exploring strategies to stabilize natural forests through empowering communities as "keepers" of these valuable ecosystems. The past decades have seen the emergence of a broad-based grassroots movement to restore denuded forests. An estimated 12,000 to 15,000 villages, primarily in eastern India, have mobilized to protect one to two million hectares of regenerating forest (see Figure 1). The evolution of this approach to resource management draws on both ancient traditions and emerging strategies. It is rooted in the economic and environmental concerns, and initiatives of India's villagers. While foresters, NGOs, and researchers have assisted in supporting and illuminating this grassroots environmental movement, the restoration of degraded natural forests in central India must be primarily credited to the efforts of the country's forest protection committees (FPCs). In thousands of villages, men and women are guarding their newly regenerating forests, often without government objects or the advice of outside experts. Villagers have done so to ensure that they and their descendants will have the forest, water, and soil resources critical for their survival.
Figure 1. Estimated distribution of India's forest protection committees
Community forest protection is fundamentally a decentralized, grassroots movement initiated largely by small villages to protect local natural forests from further degradation. Protection activities are usually coordinated through traditional or informal cultural institutions (see Box 1). Most community forest protection groups are comprised of one or two hamlets. Since many of the groups are informal and scattered throughout some of the nation's more remote forest tracts, reliable survey data are still limited regarding precise numbers and distribution. Most of India's FPCs are located in India's central tribal belt where forest areas, poverty, and tribal populations dominate. The core area of the community forest protection movement extends from south Bihar through West Bengal, Orissa, and northern Andra Pradesh where an estimated 10,000 groups are operating. Recent surveys in Madhya Pradesh, however, indicate that several thousand informal groups may be functioning. Another 600 groups are now operating in south Rajasthan and east Gujarat. Over 300 FPCs are reported to be operating in the hill and forest tracts of Andra Pradesh.
Box 1. Characteristics of Indigenous Forest Protection GroupsThe following point suggest conditions that have catalyzed India's informal forest protection grassroots movement: Forest/poverty/tribal interfaceForest protection activities appear most common in areas that areas that are characterized by significant concentrations of forest, poverty, and high tribal populations. Cultural and economic ties to the forest often lead tribals to play a leadership role in establishing controls over degrading forests, although low-caste and low-income groups are also active. Forest degradationIn central India, forests that reach a critical stage of degradation are often targeted for protection by communities. There may be a degradation or scarcity threshold at which management actions are likely to occur. There is also recognition that devegetation and topsoil loss will undermine the forest's capacity for recovery. Local environmental concernsForest protection groups are frequently formed with little or no outside intervention, but originate from local concerns over resource depletion and environmental changes. Changing microclimate, falling groundwater levels, and disappearing biodiversity are frequently cited by villagers as critical problems. Deteriorating linkages between agriculture and forest ecosystems are also widely acknowledge. Perceived threats from outside forest users are also catalysts for social action. Growing values placed on sustaining or reestablishing forests drive communities to invest labor voluntarily to protect forests. Local leadershipLocal leaders, including traditional elders, teachers, village intellectuals, as well as youth club members, provide guidance to villagers in reaching decisions, formulating strategies, and coordinating forest protection with other communities and the forest department. Local leaders often have greater credibility with the community than political representatives from neighboring hamlets that fall within the same administrative unit, likely due to their greater immediate social accountability. Cohesive communitiesForest protection is often located in small residential clusters frequently comprised of a single caste or tribe of twenty to fifty households. These groups, because they exist below the lowest level of local governance (pacchayat), have less difficulties with divivise political factions and appear better able to reach agreements regarding management. Multihamlet forest organizations appear less stable and tend to divide into single hamlet management units over time. Internal processCommunity forest protection emerges as a process of social change and adaptation to growing environmental problems. The management transition responds to local resources, needs, and capacities for implementation. It may be influenced, and the process accelerated, by external policies and projects. Presence of supportive actorsIn may cases, villagers have been encouraged by small NGOs and forestry field staff in their decision to begin forest protection activities. Such actors can be instrumental as an initial catalyst, as well as accelerating the emergence of new groups and their consolidation. Ecological resilienceBoth community and joint forest management appear to work well where natural forests have retained their ecological resilience, allowing a rapid and visible biological regeneration and a corresponding increase in the flow of non-timer forest products. |
In northeast India, much of the forestland was never taken over by state forest departments but was retained under community management. Tripura has been the only northeastern state to pass a joint forest management resolution. Since passage in 1992, the Tripura Forest Department has recognized nearly 2,500 communities as forest managers, formally acknowledging the control of local villages over 30 percent of the state's total forest area. (
FN 1)
Joint forest management (JFM) policies and programs are designed by state forest departments to encourage communities to protect and manage the public forest domain. JFM programs were established in the early 1990s, after the central government and eighteen Indian states passed enabling legislation, which endorsed the protection responsibilities and usufruct rights of villages over small tracts of public forestlands. The programs attempt to bring government support to these small, informal community organizations by providing them with greater legitimacy. Forest department strategies include supportive actions such as formulating new policies, inventorying and registering FPCs, demarcating boundaries, assisting village groups to frame micromanagement plans, and running extension programs. The shift from custodial and commercial timber management systems to a participatory community orientation presents challenges for Indian forest departments. Some multiple needs requiring attention in developing supportive strategies are described in Box 2.
Box 2 Needs of JFM Support ProgramsPolicyRigid policies intended to support JFM may lack the flexibility to respond to diverse, localized efforts of rural Indian communities. There is a need to review and revise state JFM resolutions to better respond to local strategies of forest protection. Forest department capacity buildingForestry field staff require training and incentives to conduct specific tasks related to JFM. While some training programs are under way, there has been no assessment regarding "best practices" for training staff at different levels. Guidelines for effective training strategies need to be developed and communicated to state forest departments and NGO training centers. Inventories and mapping of FPCsThousands of FPCs are already operating in many parts of India without legal sanction. Mapping and inventorying FPCs, especially in regions where they are known to operate, are essential for long-term planning and to incorporate them within the formal management framework. Education and extension programsThe spread of community forest protection has been accelerated by environmental education campaigns conducted by some forest department staff and NGOs. More systematic approaches to informing rural communities of new participatory forest management policies need to be developed and implemented, especially in high priority forest areas with large residential populations. Registration and boundary demarcationFPCs, which have functioned for a year or more, often request they be registered and their boundaries demarcated. State forest departments need to emphasize systematic registration programs. Procedures for boundary demarcation need to be defined and field staff trained in their use. MicroplanningWhile microplanning has received considerable attention in JFM programs and World Bank loans, field reports indicate that many forest department staff do not have the capacity to involve communities effectively in planning exercises. New approaches to microplanning need to be considered, especially in extending technical and capital support. Small block grants to FPCs need to be explored. Applied researchAs FPCs mature, their interest begins to shift from protection to productive management for multiple forest products. Existing working plans focus largely on timber production systems, often incompatible with community management objectives. New forest manipulation techniques are required to enable communities to obtain important products on a sustainable basis. |
While community forest protection groups exist in many forms, some are taking on new organizational features to better perform forest management functions or in response to government guidelines. Under government JFM support programs, community management organizations are referred to as forest protection committees (FPCs). In this report, both informal indigenous forest protection groups, as well as those organized or registered by forestry agencies, will be generally referred to as FPCs.
It is important to distinguish the government's recent JFM support programs from the social forestry projects of the 1970s and 1980s. Earlier social forestry projects focused on establishing monoculture plantations of exotic, fast-growing species on agricultural and community land or farmlands. By the late 1980s, $400 million was invested in village and farm forestry activities. This effort did little to address problems in India's natural forests, which represent 23 percent of the nation's land area. Under the Bihar Social Forestry Program, for example, the forest department was establishing 5,000 hectares of woodlots per year
(FN 2). By contrast, by 1994, 1,242 forest protection groups were inventoried protecting more than 600,000 hectares of state forests (FN 3). Since many more village groups remain unregistered, the total number of FPCs is likely to range from two to three thousand. In one survey in Hazaribagh district alone, thirty-two communities were involved in forest protection, representing 15 percent of all villages in the area (FN 4)It is instructive to analyze why government social forestry programs experienced problems interfacing effectively with spontaneous community initiatives. For one, the externally funded social forestry program was primarily based on models developed during the 1970s for the delivery of financial and technical assistance. This required forest departments to unilaterally determine what would be spent, where, how, and when, with a focus on common and private lands. While communities in some cases may have some influence in selecting species planted, the authority for the projects largely rests with the agency. By contrast, local communities were attempting to gain the authority to facilitate the regeneration of forests by building the institutional and management capacity to establish access controls.
Since community forest management groups form around local environmental concerns and are largely based in informal institutions, they cannot be directed through conventional development modalities characterized by earlier social forestry projects. As a social change process, however, it may be facilitated, supported, and guided. Indeed, because it has broad implications regarding the future of India's public domain, it must be understood, incorporated, and supported within national resource management plans and policies.
Since community forest protection has grown primarily through the highly decentralized actions of small communities, and has only been recently recognized and supported as a national program, systematic studies of the ecological and economic effects of forest protection are limited. Nonetheless, available data from a variety of Indian forest ecosystems indicate that the movement has had considerable impact on both local environments and income flows.
Ecological restoration offers opportunities to restore the productivity and environmental functions of millions of hectares of degraded forestlands throughout India. In ecosystems where topsoils and root structures have not been severely degraded, natural regeneration can be both rapid and cost effective. The opportunity to reestablish a healthy forest environment is increasingly attractive to communities experiencing microclimatic changes and resource scarcities. In the past, natural regeneration was not emphasized in national afforestation strategies. Given the vast areas of degraded forest, policies and programs should emphasize facilitating ecological restoration through community-imposed access controls. Greater scientific inquiry regarding manipulation techniques to accelerate regeneration is also urgently required. The following case studies dramatically demonstrate how India's forests can heal themselves, when communities release their powers of ecological resilience.