The Saga of Participatory Forest Management in India
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Cover Page.qxd 6/7/98 11:58 PM Page 1 The Saga of Participatory Forest Management in India N.C. Saxena CIFOR CENTER FOR INTERNATIONAL FORESTRY RESEARCH CIFOR Special Publication Front pages 6/7/98 10:04 PM Page i The Saga of Participatory Forest Management in India N.C. Saxena CIFOR CENTER FOR INTERNATIONAL FORESTRY RESEARCH CIFOR Special Publication Front pages 6/7/98 10:04 PM Page ii © 1997 Center for International Forestry Research Published by Center for International Forestry Research mailing address: P.O. Box 6596 JKPWB, Jakarta 10065, Indonesia tel.: +62-251-622622 fax: +62-251-622100 e-mail: [email protected] WWW: http://www.cgiar.org/cifor ISBN 979-8674-15-3 Front pages 6/7/98 10:04 PM Page iii Contents Preface vii Abbreviations xi One: Forest Policy in India before 1988 Colonial forest policy in India 1 Forest policy in independent India 3 The first post-Independence declaration 4 The National Commission on Agriculture 1976 and the Social Forestry Phase 6 Consequences of forest policy on other categories of lands 8 Trees on farm lands 8 Village lands 10 People dependent on forests 12 Productivity of forests 14 Evaluation of past policies on forest lands up to 1988 14 Deforestation 15 Industrial plantations 19 Rights and privileges 21 Evaluation of Social Forestry 22 The faulty design of SF Projects 23 Problems in implementation 28 Summing up 33 Two: The 1988 Forest Policy and Joint Forest Management The 1988 Forest Policy 35 The June 1990 guidelines and Joint Forest Management 37 Political feasibility of reforms 38 Political salience of forest-based industries 41 Front pages 6/7/98 10:04 PM Page iv iv Contents Signs of change before 1988 44 Involvement of donor agencies in forestry 46 Physical progress under JFM 52 Impact of the new forest policy and JFM on deforestation 55 Price changes 56 Three: Locally Inspired Collective Action Community action and cohesiveness of Indian villages 59 Tragedy of the open access 61 Van Panchayats in the Uttar Pradesh hills 63 The problem of migrant groups in the hills 65 Indigenous forest protection committees in Orissa 67 Reasons for forest protection 67 Institutional arrangements evolved 73 Fuelwood pressures 74 Equity issues 76 Gender issues 78 Reasons behind success 79 Summing up 82 Four: State Sponsored PeopleÕs Participation Need for peopleÕs participation 85 PeopleÕs participation Ð four models 86 People as individuals Ð limited rights 88 People as individuals Ð full rights 89 Full use rights to people as a collective unit: Sukhomajri (Haryana) 91 Problems of implementation in Haryana model 93 Inter-group conflict in Haryana 95 Restricted rights on forests to people as groups: Arabari (West Bengal) and Gujarat 97 Front pages 6/7/98 10:04 PM Page v Contents v The Arabari experiment 97 Functioning of the FPCs 99 Outcomes of protection 101 WomenÕs involvement in forestry in West Bengal 104 Replicability of West Bengal model 106 JFM in Gujarat 107 Value of products collected in Gujarat Ð a case study 109 Inter-state differences 110 Five: Constraints of Government Policies Defining group and resource boundaries 113 Customary rights 113 Inter-village disputes 115 FPCs and panchayats 116 Changes in silviculture 118 Marketing of NTFPs 120 Marketing of NTFPs in Orissa 121 Analysis of marketing issues 124 Possible solutions 126 Women in JFM 128 Gender sensitisation through micro-planning 132 Balance of power between Forest Department and communities 133 Confusion over JFM in Orissa 137 Problems of indigenous committees with government in Gujarat 139 Existing commitments 141 Administrative ethos 142 Need for training 144 Monitoring and evaluation 144 Co-ordinating JFM with other Departments 146 Front pages 6/7/98 10:04 PM Page vi vi Contents Role of NGOs 146 NGOs and the Forest Department Ð examples of conflict 148 Summing up 149 Six: Programmes Complementary to Joint Forest Management Losers from JFM 153 Farm forestry in backward regions 156 Farm forestry in West Bengal and its linkages with JFM 160 Policy measures for subsistence regions 161 Social forestry on degraded village lands 164 Recommendations for future action on community lands 165 Fringe area development 167 Management of forests remote from villages 171 Regeneration vs planting on degraded lands 173 Summing up 178 Seven: Property Regimes and JFM in India Sustainable extraction and government control 181 Creation of private tenure Ð should leasing be encouraged? 183 Limitations of community control 186 Empowerment and long-term gains to the people 189 Technology, commercialisation and tenure 190 Agrarian structure and commercialisation 192 Promotion vs consolidation 194 Glossary 196 References 201 Front pages 6/7/98 10:04 PM Page vii vii Preface For over a hundred years in India forests were under government control with very little peoplesÕ participation. It was only in the late 1980s when the policy makers realised that the strategy of bringing uncultivated lands under government management and using them to produce industrial raw material had neither checked deforestation nor improved the economic condition of millions of people whose liveli- hoods were dependent on these forests. This led to a fundamental change in the Indian Forest Policy in 1988. Now forests are not to be commercially exploited, but have to conserve soil and environment, and meet the subsistence requirements of the local people. The imple- mentation of the Policy was facilitated by the Government of India issuing a resolution in 1990 making it possible for the Forest Departments to involve people in the management of forests. Almost all major states have passed enabling resolutions to implement what is now popularly called the Joint Forest Management (JFM) programme. This is likely to be the focus of future forest development projects funded by governments and donor agencies. However, the implementation of participatory programmes has so far been uneven and halting. It is also not very well known under what conditions JFM does well, and whether these conditions are internal to the group or more influenced by governmental policies. Although experience from a diverse range of ecological and social contexts from many states is now available, where Forest Departments and communities are effectively working together to restore the produc- tivity of forest lands, there has been a dearth of literature which attempts to synthesise such experiments, and link theories of collec- tive action with empirical evidence. There is as yet no identification of the key factors that must be evaluated in order to explain, predict or improve the outcome of Joint Forest Management in different socio-economic conditions. Based on the authorÕs repeated visits to JFM villages in several Indian states, this book seeks to review the existing literature and case studies on Joint Forest Management with a view to formulate the key hypotheses and to provide tentative findings on these hypotheses. It Front pages 6/7/98 10:04 PM Page viii viii Preface is designed to be a source book on Joint Forest Management, which would be of value to donor agencies, state governments, policy mak- ers, and researchers on participatory development programmes. The book is organised into seven chapters, of which the first two deal with the evolution of participatory forest policies in India. Forest policy in India has passed through three phases since Independence. Before 1975, government neglected village lands, and encouraged industrial plantations on forest lands. The second phase started in 1976 with the National Commission on Agriculture (NCA), which recommended establishing fuelwood and fodder plantations on vil- lage and private degraded lands to relieve human and cattle pressures on industrial forestry on forest lands. This policy did not work either, as both farmers and communities showed more eagerness to plant trees for the market rather than for subsistence. The latest policy issued in 1988 legitimises the income orientation of farmers, and transfers welfare objectives of ecology and con- sumption of the poor to forest lands. This, combined with the JFM resolution of 1990, completely reverses the recommendations of the NCA. The resolution breaks new ground as, for the first time, it spec- ifies the rights of the protecting communities over forest lands. The beneficiaries are to be given usufructs like grasses, lops and tops of branches, and non-timber forest produce. On successful protection of forests, they are to receive a portion of the proceeds from the sale of mature trees. This radical change in policy has taken place partly because in the last decade, as the forestry debate has intensified, and the State has increasingly responded to the claims of forest dwellers voiced by the activists and NGOs. Their call for a decentralised and democratic system of forest management has finally been accepted, at least in theory, through the programme of JFM. Chapters Three, Four and Five explore the conditions for suc- cessful local action in forest management. Internal factors behind the success of collective action in managing community resources are discussed in Chapters Three and Four, where the implementation of participatory forest management in five Indian states is analysed. In Uttar Pradesh (UP) and Orissa the protecting groups are self-initiated or set up by the Revenue Department, while in the states of Haryana, West Bengal and Gujarat, the Forest Department took the lead in establishing these societies. Front pages 6/7/98 10:04 PM Page ix Preface ix The constraints of government policies and how these hamper participatory practices are considered in Chapter Five. While socio- logical variables such as community cohesiveness and size are undoubtedly important, often these are the ÒgivensÓ of a situation, not open to outside intervention, at least in the short term. On the other hand, external factors of government policies and the way government personnel interact with the local communities may better explain why communal action is sustained over time.