Collectively, the preceding case histories illustrate a pattern of grassroots environmentalism emerging in India's villages. While struggle, conflict, and inequities are part of the social process redefining authority and control of the nation's natural forests, an increasing stabilization and restoration of natural forest ecosystems have been a fundamental outcome. Given worldwide concern over deforestation and resource depletion on our increasingly overcrowded planet, forest conservation efforts in some of India's poorest villages are encouraging. Concluding remarks attempt to draw lessons from their experiences.
The evolution of forest management institutions within Indian communities is, by definition, a sequential process (see Figure 9). In these cases, the process typically begins with growing concerns among village leaders and members over deteriorating forest conditions. This is followed by a series of interactions among local leaders and members where forest protection needs and options are discussed. As a consensus for action emerges, forest protection activities appear, characterized by volunteer patrols and watchers, with systematic development of rules and fines. Once forest protection activities are firmly established in one area, they often begin to be adopted by neighboring villages that share the same or nearby forest patches. Many JFM study areas in India are witnessing the spread of protection systems to neighboring areas. In some situations, like Kudada, community groups begin forming informal or even formal apex bodies to resolve conflicts and facilitate communication and coordination with government agencies, especially the forest department. Older, more established forest protection committees like Kaimati, Shimli, and Kudada are moving beyond simple resource protection to explore how forest production might be increased through ecological manipulation, as well as improved processing and marketing.
Figure 9
Joint forest management transition processes
In the cases considered here, forest protection group operations are determined by independent communities based in one or two hamlets. Their only administrative identity is as component settlements within a multihamlet village panchayat. Currently, only the forest department can recognize a hamlet's rights and responsibilities as protectors of public forests. In interviews, representatives from FPCs often stress the importance of gaining legitimacy from the forest department. Without recognition, their authority to control previously open access forests can be constantly questioned by neighboring communities, migratory graziers, commercial interests, as well as forest department staff. In some areas, like Kudada, communities are distrustful of the forest department. Yet, increasingly communities are requesting that their FPCs be recognized through registration documents, demarcated maps of their protected areas, and other more immediate symbols of authority such as uniforms, badges, whistles, and staves. Further, some communities are requesting the authority to collect fines from offenders, a right exclusively held by the forest department.
This need for formal authority over public forestlands is a fundamental motivation driving community collaboration with forest departments. Currently, the forest department's capacity to formalize relationships is limited. While enabling policies allow legitimization, and a growing number of divisional forest officers and field staff are effectively interacting with community forest management groups, the departments still lack the broader capacity to map, register, and otherwise involve and delegate management responsibilities to forest communities. In most parts of India, even the location of forest protection groups has yet to be identified. The process to bring traditional and emerging systems of forest management into the governance domain has just begun.
Some communities, like Shimli and Kudada, are also expressing needs for technical assistance from forest departments to enhance forest productivity. While FPCs now have the right to protect forests, they generally lack the authority to manipulate them through enrichment planting, cleaning, and thinning, and have limited technical knowledge regarding methods to generate higher product flows.
The emergence of apex organizations, like Kudada's, which strengthens FPC interactions with the outside world, mediates conflict, and facilitates forest production and marketing systems, is already occurring in some parts of India. While apex organizations offer the valuable functions previously noted, they also provide opportunities for politicians or local elites to gain control over these fledgling resource management groups. Studies of FPC apex organizations may reveal how their positive features may be enhanced, while reducing the likelihood of manipulation by outside interests.
The relationship of FPCs to local government also needs clarification. Many FPC leaders stress the need to keep politics out of forest management. They note that community unity is a key element in reaching a consensus regarding forest management. Panchayats are often highly politicized, and many FPCs find the party factionalism can undermine their efforts at community organizing, as demonstrated in the cases of Rupabalia and Kaimati. Maintaining FPC autonomy appears the most popular position among members, yet pressures remain to bring FPCs under panchayat control. Ultimately, issues of how to relate small community resource management groups to local governance structures will need to be addressed.
Gender equity in FPC decision making remains a issue in many states. Many rural Indian communities limit women's participation in hamlet councils, including emerging FPCs. Yet, women are often primary forest users and rely heavily on forest products. Male and female priorities for forest production also differ. JFM resolutions and guidelines that simply mandate women's participation, however, may not be effective. New ways need to be found to create opportunities for women to play greater roles in FPC leadership and decision making, especially as protection activities take on greater management functions.
Supportive, enabling actions, both at the policy and field levels, that empower local communities as resource managers appear to encourage the spread of forest protection. "Enabling" actions refer to policies and programs that permit, authorize, and encourage communities to manage public forests. Enabling actions should possess flexibility, extending decision-making authority to communities regarding ways to organize, control, and utilize the resource. Enabling actions can be differentiated from "directive" actions, which are characterized by a retention of control by forest departments or government agencies, and where permissible activities are highly specified and rigid.
At both the national and state policy levels, enabling orders authorize forest officers to encourage communities to initiate protection activities. While existing JFM policies are generally regarded as imperfect instruments that are overly specific and rigid, their very existence allows the state forest departments to proceed with the devolution of rights and responsibilities for public lands. Prior to the existence of these policies, progressive foresters who attempted to involve communities in management were open to criticism by their colleagues.
Rigid JFM policies and project activities that empower government agencies to direct and control community management efforts generally fail to either enhance or encourage the spread of grassroots resource stabilization efforts. Policies and guidelines that dictate specific organizational structures and management prescriptions for FPCs have been poorly received by village communities. Since community groups are informal and reflect local traditions and leadership patterns, organizational structures vary significantly among participating villages. Imposing rigid standards undermines community authority to establish functioning management systems. Uniform sharing agreements may also not reflect variations in the productivity of the forest resource.
Quantitative targets for the formation or registration of FPCs have generally failed to accelerate the emergence of viable groups. In Orissa, many of the FPCs formed after politicians set targets were later found to be nonfunctional. Targets may send the wrong message to forest field staff who often feel under pressure to meet numeric goals, rather than help set a management transition process in motion.
In India, development strategies often assume that material incentives have to be provided to encourage communities to participate in programs. Community forest protection actions indicate that this is not necessarily the case. Emphasizing material incentives to "motivate" communities to manage forest resources may erode indigenous efforts to stabilize resources and establish resource control systems.
There is a need to adjust existing government JFM policies to encompass local social, cultural, and ecological variability. Feedback from community groups to the government regarding ways to improve policies is badly needed. Through the establishment of better communication channels and discussion platforms, better policies and more supportive programs could be developed.
Most large government bureaucracies tend to be conservative and resistant to change. It can be argued that due to the long growth periods required for trees, forestry institutions need to maintain stable policies and programs. The rapidly changing demographic, political, and economic conditions in developing countries, however, are demanding dramatic transformations within forest departments. How then do forestry agencies adjust to these new needs? In India, throughout the 1970s and 1980s, forest departments were under heavy attack by academics, NGOs, and rural communities for their perceived lack of responsiveness to needs for conservation and rural priorities. Criticism tended to unite foresters in a defensive posture, forcing them to find arguments to support past and existing practices, while rejecting even constructive critiques.
In the three states studied, political changes in recent decades raised expectations among rural communities regarding their forest rights, while eroding the authority of the forest department. Elected officials have encouraged the forest department to place greater priority on community needs. Forest depletion and conservation policies resulted in the weakening of commercial interests. New resources for forest departments increasingly came from large social forestry loans. While social forestry plantation schemes yielded mixed results, they encouraged forest departments to give greater emphasis to community oriented programs.
Forest departments are not well organized to implement participatory programs. India faces the challenge of retraining more than 150,000 foresters to respond to this broad-based shift in forest management. Just as the evolution of community forest protection systems is a sequential process, so too will be the development of forest department support programs. This analysis suggests that forest departments initiating JFM strategies may want to phase in activities and build new institutional mechanisms gradually (see Figure 9). Donor assistance in this sector will need to reflect a sequential strategy of institutional development. Investments in staff reorientation and research and development programs to create new planning and service delivery systems require priority attention.
Initial experiences with JFM support activities, including microplanning and registration, indicate that the process is complicated and slow. Forest departments are still struggling to develop new information systems, educational programs, and methods for boundary demarcation. There is also a need to establish participatory research programs that explore new ways to meet community requirements for a sustainable flow of forest products. In India, most forests under JFM are simply protected rather than managed intensively. Given the need for forest products, job creation, and income generation, intensive forest management will be desirable.
The transition from protection to intensive management implies the development of new institutional capacities as well as technical skills. At present, knowledge at the community level, and even with the forest departments, remains limited regarding the range of management objectives that should be considered and the types of pollarding, pruning, thinning, enrichment planting, and harvesting procedures to achieve them. While it is desirable that communities should attempt to optimize the productivity of their forests in a sustainable way, much applied research, both by communities and outside groups, will be needed to identify procedures to achieve this objective. It may be necessary for hamlet-based FPCs to cooperate with one another, as well as with outside institutions, especially the forest departments, in developing applied research programs. Most important, there is a need to recognize that communities need both support and authority to develop management capabilities.
In recent years NGOs have played a number of roles in the growth of JFM. At the field level, some grassroots NGOs conduct environmental education camps, hold meetings with villagers, and are involved in efforts to raise awareness regarding the need for forest conservation. Some NGOs also conduct technical extension work to support non-timber forest product processing and marketing. Finally, some local NGOs act as advocates for forest-product collectors in their dealings with forest departments and commercial firms, as well as mediating conflicts.
Several Indian NGOs are also developing specializations as trainers for forest department staff. Separate programs are developed for senior officers and for field staff. NGOs involved in forest department training need to interact and share experiences with approaches to staff reorientation and curricula.
At the state and national levels, larger NGOs conduct applied studies regarding social, economic, and ecological issues emerging as a result of transitions to decentralized forest management. One NGO currently acts as the facilitator of the national support group (NSG) for JIM. This agency acts as a clearinghouse and analysis body for field-level studies. The NSG holds periodic meetings of NGOs in the research network, allowing members to discuss methods and findings, as well as their implications for program strategy. The NSG is currently attempting to establish a national working group on JFM within the Ministry of Environment and Forests. This group would review findings and recommendations forwarded by the NSG, allowing the office of the Inspector General of Forest to provide new implementation guidelines to state forest departments based on emerging field learning.
During this early stage of JFM program development, effective feedback is important to guide new policies and programs. The NGO community has the flexibility to assist with establishment of learning mechanisms, relying on collaborative networks that link field experience with planning and policy centers. To carry out these tasks, however, NGOs may require support conceptualizing the components and functions of the learning mechanisms, as well as guidance in research design and data analysis, and in preparing reports outlining recommendations. Network facilitators are required to help synthesize information and communicate findings among participating groups. Donor agencies provide legitimacy to the effort, as well as financial assistance.
In India, the World Bank has played a leadership role in supporting projects with JFM components, totaling several hundred million dollars since the 1991 resolution was passed. The Overseas Development Agency and the Swedish International Development Authority have also provided substantial loans to several Indian states for JFM. The availability of donor funding has given JFM further credibility within the national government and with state forest departments. Task managers have attempted to use the loans to leverage changes in forest department program priorities and staff patterns supportive of transitions to JFM.
While multilateral and bilateral project support has drawn greater attention and support to JFM, it has also raised new problems. First, supporting JFM through conventional project modalities risks the possibility of emphasizing capital and technical inputs rather than underlining the important social change processes at the center of this grassroots environmental movement. One divisional forest officer reported that some of his colleagues view JFM as a World Bank project, rather than as a long-term transition to decentralizing forest management. Such perceptions generate attitudes that it is a transitory effort, only lasting as long as the project cycle. Projects also bring with them rigid implementation guidelines, targets, and expenditure deadlines that focus staff attention to achieving quantitative goals and processing paper, rather than changing attitudes and building capacity within both the department and the community. Finally, large loans to Indian state forest departments may further empower the bureaucracy, reinforcing the status quo, rather than providing incentives for change and decentralization.
During the early phase of management transition, donor agencies need to explore ways to place greater emphasis on training, research, and development components in their loans, while deemphasizing capital investments and technological inputs. Where such inputs are required, they might be deferred until communities and forest departments demonstrate growing organizational capacity to protect and manage further investments in the resource. Indicators of progress, including social and vegetation conditions, need to be established. Better communication linkages with forest communities and a commitment to in-service training and applied research need to be stressed. Donors may benefit by maintaining small, flexible budgets to engage NGOs, university researchers, and local consultants for diagnostic studies, preparing regional and sectoral background assessments, and generally sensitizing project design teams to shifting policy environments, and field conditions and opportunities.
Donor project officers are often under pressure to move loans on schedule and maintain certain levels of capital transfer. Division heads and developing country counterparts may not understand the need for a different approach in packaging loans to support social change strategies. In many cases, however, time spent with counterparts in developing JFM initiatives as part of the loan process may be one of the most critically important steps in the activity. If donors attempt to leverage change with loans to accelerate their approval, rather than discussing them and reaching a consensus on the wisdom of the action, decisions may be accelerated but implementation will remain in doubt. Many JFM programs, especially in their early years, may benefit substantially from smaller budgets that emphasize training and research. Experience indicates that forest departments with JFM loans that carry large capital investment components tend to ignore smaller funding for crucial training and research activities. Experience with JFM is only beginning to emerge. There are no JFM "experts," and there is limited knowledge regarding "best practices."
Learning from JFM in West Bengal and Orissa has important implications for Asia, other Indian states, countries, and nations. India appears to be pioneering a new transitional approach to public lands management that promises both to stabilize the resource and lead to more sustainably productive use. Since forest degradation processes are pervasive throughout the developing world, any initiatives that significantly reverse these trends at very low costs deserve careful attention.
In India, joint forest management appears to have the greatest potential in areas with substantial tracts of public forests and forest- dependent communities. Central India, the Himalayas, the northeast, and the Western Ghats fit this description. Since JFM strategies were designed to support and build on local forest management interests and initiatives, forest departments and NGOs need to be sensitive to existing or emerging community efforts oriented toward environmental stabilization. Researchers, NGO staff, and donor consulting teams that are looking for this type of phenomenon often uncover local management activities in Indian forest districts. Locating forest protection groups on existing topographic maps is a first step toward providing them with some legitimacy. A diagnostic inventory program is being planned in India that would identify high potential areas for JFM and document where community forest protection efforts are already under way.
Foresters and scientists working with the Asia Forest Network find participatory management is relevant throughout Asia. In upland Southeast Asia, including the Burmese hills, northern Thailand, southern Yunnan, Laos, and highland Vietnam, ethnic minority hill tribes remain dominant. Migratory patterns and swidden farming are more and more restricted by growing population densities. Communities are becoming increasingly settled and, in response to growing economic and demographic pressures, are seeking ways to protect a shrinking natural resource base. In some areas in northern Thailand, different ethnic minorities are initiating dialogues with one another on their own, seeking forest and watershed management agreements to avoid conflicts. In many areas, traditional leaders and resource use institutions remain sufficiently resilient to provide a framework for management agreements with government agencies.
The Philippines has drafted clear policies and programs for ancestral domain designation and community forest management. Yet, implementation progress has been slowed by the inability of agencies to interface with local contexts and initiatives. In other Asian countries where forest policy reforms are not yet in place, strategies need to be developed to promote decentralization. In Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand, and China, interagency working groups are being established as mechanisms for discussion and planning. Donor support need further mobilization to encourage these developments. In socialist countries like Vietnam and China, privatization policies for public lands receive growing support; however, initial experience indicates they are likely not appropriate for much of the upper watershed forest. India's experience with community management, building on local institutions, has particular relevance in these contexts.
In most nations where forests were nationalized during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the management role of user communities and other indigenous controls has eroded. Forest management agencies have generally been unable to unilaterally impose effective access controls, resulting in unsustainable use practices and biological degradation patterns. Given growing demands, intensified management systems for forests, pastures, agricultural lands, and water will be essential in the twenty-first century. Many communities are well-positioned to impose access controls; however, most governments lack policies or programs that provide authority to local groups to participate in public lands management. This is true not only in developing nations, but also in the United States and certain other developed countries.
India's experience indicates that community forest protection can be highly effective in regenerating degraded natural forests. Where conditions are suitable, grassroots movements can spread local initiatives, rapidly stabilizing forest resources over large areas. Government planners in many developing nations increasingly recognize the need to devolve management downward from forestry agencies to local communities. Creating opportunities for interaction among planners, forest administrators, and rural communities will provide for a more systematic method of learning and for implementation of policies and actions that would accelerate changes.
1. Personal communication from D. Nag, Principal Chief Conservator of Forests, Tripura, July 1995.
2. Mike Arnold, Ruth Alsop, and Axel Bergman, Evaluation of the SIDA-supported Bihar Social Forestry, Project for Chotanagpur and Santhal Parganas, India (New Delhi: Swedish International Development Authority, March 1990), p. II.
3. Shiunath communication from Madhu Sarin, February 1994.
4. Personal Mehrotra and Chandra Kishore, "A study of voluntary forest protection in Chotanagpur, Bihae, (Bhopal: Indian Institute of Management, 1990), pp. 1-2.
5. Mitali Chattedee, "Gener roles in joint forest management," Wasteland News (New Delhi: Society for the Promotion of Wastelands Development, 1:4, July 1994), pp. 23-25.
6. N.H. Ravindranath, M. Gadgil, and J. Campbell. "Reversing ecological degradation," in Village Voices - Forest Choices: Indian experiences in joint forest management, ed. Mark Poffenberger and Betsy McGean (Oxford and New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 351-52.
7. Findings from a study by the Remote Sensing Center of the Indian Institute for Technology and the West Bengal Forest Department, Kharagpur, 1994.
8. K.C. Malhotra, "People, biodiversity, and regenerating tropical sal forest in West Bengal," International Symposium on Food and Nutrition in the Tropical Forests (Paris: UNESCO, 1991).
9. K.C. Malhotra and Mark Poffenberger, "Forest regeneration through community protection: The West Bengal experience" (Calcutta and New Delhi: West Bengal Forest Department and the Ford Foundation, 1989, pp. 39-40.
10. A. Panda et al., "Impact of participatory forest management on the ecology of the Shivalik hills in Haryana state" (New Delhi: Haryana Forest Department and Tata Energy Research Institute, 1992, pp. 8-12.
11. A. Panda et al., "Grass yields under community participation in Haryana Shivaliks" (New Delhi: Haryana Forest Department and Tata Energy Research Institute, 1992, p. 9.
12. Mark Poffenberger, "Enhancing biodiversity through community protection of degraded natural forests," in Forest patches in tropical landscapes, ed. John Schelhas and Russ Greenberg (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 1995).
Mark Poffenberger, "The resurgence of community forest management in eastern India," in Natural connections: Perspectives in community-based conservation, ed. David Western, Michale Wright, and Shirley Strum (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 1994).
Mark Poffenberger and Chhatrapati Singh, "The legal framework for joint management of forest lands in India," in Legal frameworks for forest management in Asia: Case studies of community/state relations, ed. Jefferson Fox, Occasional Paper No. 16 (Honolulu: East-West Center, 1993), pp. 3-18.
Mark Poffenberger and Samar Singh, "Community management for India's forests" UNASYLVA (Rome: FAO, 1992), Summer.
13. PersonalcommunicationfromMadhuSarin,Februaryl994.
16. Society for the Promotion of Wastelands Development. "Joint forest management regulations update: 1992: New Delhi, p. 12.
17. Shivnath Mehrotra and Chandra Kishore, "A study of voluntary forest protection in Chotanagpur, Bihar" (Bhopal: Indian Institute of Forest Management, 1990), pp. 31-32.
18. B.K. Bardan Roy, "Wastelands to wealth: The West Bengal way" (Calcutta: West Bengal Forest Department. 1993).
19. Forest Survey of India. The state of the forest report: 1993 (Dehra Dun: Ministry of Environment and Forests, 1994), p. 75.
20. K.C. Malhotra and Mark Poffenberger. eds. "Forest regeneration through community protection: The West Bengal experience" (Calcutta: West Bengal Forest Department, 1989), p. 6, and B.K. Bardan Roy, "Wastelands to wealth: The West Bengal way" (Calcutta: West Bengal Forest Department, 1993).
21. Personal communication from Kundan Singh, Bhubaneswar, August 1992.
22. Project Corporate Consultants (PCC). Bhubaneswar "Report on the study of enumeration of forest patches protected by villagers in Orissa, and mechanism and motivation behind such protection" (unpublished, 1990).
24. This excerpt is taken from the area's current Orissa Forest Department Working Plan 1978-98 and is cited in a study by Shashi Kant, Neera Singh, and Kundan Singh, "Community-based forest management systems" (New Delhi: Indian Institute of Management/SIDA. 1991).
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No. |
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1. |
Sustaining Southeast Asia's Forests, June 1992. |
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2. |
Community Allies: Forest Co-Management in Thailand, August 1993. |
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3. |
Communities and Forest Management in East Kalimantan: Pathway to Environmental Stability, August 1993. |
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4. |
Upland Philippine Communities: Guardians of the Final Forest Frontier, August 1993. |
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5. |
Proceedings of the Policy Dialogue on Natural Forest Regeneration and Community Management, April 1994. |
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6 |
Transitions in Forest Management: Shifting Community Forestry from Project to Process, August 1995 |
Hawaiian Mediation: Balancing People, Pigs, and Plants, forthcoming 1996
Ethnic Minorities and Upland Resources: Experiences form the Da River in Northwest Vietnam, forthcoming 1996
Field Methods Manual, Vol. I. Diagnostic Tools for Supporting Joint Forest Management Systems, 1992.
Field Methods Manual, Vol. II. Community Forest Economy and Use Patterns: Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) Methods in South Gujarat, India, 1992.
Field Methods Manual, Vol III: Manual Geographic Information Systems for Joint Forest Management Inventory, Planning and Monitoring, Forthcoming 1996
Case Study Training Modules Series, 1995
Village Voices, Forest Choices: Indian Experiences in joint Forest Management, 1996.
