12dec03dch

Deccan Herald, Friday, December 12, 200
Is community forestry a viable option?

INDU K MURTHY examines the viability of initiatives that involve local communities in managing forests

As part of the Joint Forest Management (JFM) programme, the Ministry of Environment and Forests, Government of India, issued policy guidelines, way back in 1990, for the involvement of village communities and voluntary agencies in the regeneration of degraded forestlands. This was in response to the realisation that efforts to conserve the forest could not be undertaken by isolating the locals.

JFM, in simple words, is a concept of developing partnerships between fringe forest user-groups and the Forest Depart-ment (FD) on the basis of mutual trust and jointly-defined roles and responsibilities for forest protection and development. In response to the adoption of the JFM at the national level, the Government of Karnataka also issued an order in 1993 for comprehensive implementation of the scheme in the State.

Besides the JFM programme promoted by the FD, another movement to conserve forests has gained ground at the grassroots level. There are several villages which have been protecting forest patches adjoining their territories, on their own, without any outside assistance. They are commonly referred to as Self Initiated Forest Protection Groups (SIFPGs) or Community Forest Management (CFM) groups.

Over the last 50 years, thousands of SIFPGs have emerged locally, primarily as a response to scarcity of biomass, land degradation and depletion of water resources. In the Sagara taluk of Shimoga district itself, there are as many as 29 SIFPGs protecting forest patches.

The primary objective of these SIFPGs or user-groups has been protection of forests and conservation of biodiversity. These groups have, in fact, adopted well-developed institutional arrangements for forest protection, which involve sharing of costs and benefits with all members.

There has always been a tendency to view SIFPGs with skepticism. A commonly-held view is that community involvement in forest management is dependent on subsidies and incentives provided by the government and other external donor agencies, while there are some who believe that community forestry is dependent on static traditions practiced by the locals. However, initiatives across the country have demonstrated that communities have often been the driving force behind such initiatives and not outside players. Although the strategies and norms formulated by the communities draw upon traditional leadership patterns and systems, they are believed to be highly innovative and dynamic.

Community institutions have also shown that the success rate is high when transparent and participatory decision-making processes are adopted. These self-initiated institutions have evolved their own effective, location-specific, institutional arran-gements for making decisions, though not participatory in the conventional sense of the term.

A "win-win" situation
Despite community forestry efforts being successful at various places, the fear of displacement of biomass extraction pressure has raised doubts about the effectiveness of protection measures adopted by the communities at the landscape level. It is important to take note that such institutions have come into existence primarily in response to resource degradation and non-availability of biomass. Ther-efore, community forestry is, in any case, a ?win-win? situation as its absence would only lead to further degradation.

Further, it has been proved in many villages that local communities are highly sensitive to rules for resource extraction, especially when they are motivated to protect and benefit from the resources. In one such instance in Gujarat, a community refrained from firewood extraction for two years, to ensure recovery of biomass. In fact, in Karnataka, the village communities have enforced strict extraction regulations and banned the extraction of greenwood, felling of twigs and branches, and collection of green leaves. This indicates that local communities have adopted what could be termed as "Adaptive Forest Management", which is in strict contrast with JFM that lacks flexibility to change and adopt protection and extraction regulations according to the status of the resources.

Issues in community forestry
Despite differences in factors promoting community forestry, there are certain issues common to all that could potentially weaken these institutions.

For community forestry to be a ?win-win? situation, there is a need for general acceptance of rules of access that allows the poor to benefit the most. This is possible only by ensuring the participation of all stakeholders in the decision-making process. Although the forest-protection institution should ensure that users? needs are adequately addressed, it should also make sure that due care is exercised while adopting harvest practices. Government efforts often concentrate only on conservation. However, it is important to note that conservation of forest resources and livelihood of local communities dependent on these resources are like two sides of the same coin.

Steps forward...
Sustainability of a community institution requires increasing the long-term stake of the community in the forests that are being protected. Assured rights and control over a protected patch plays a critical role in initiation and sustenance of protection efforts. For community institutions to succeed, policy changes accompanied with pro-people initiatives are a must.

CFMs have contributed significantly towards regeneration of forests, conservation and promotion of biodiversity and moderate to high biomass productivity.

Therefore, these village-level institutions need to be formalised to give them legal endorsement. The transition from informal to formal institutions should be brought about smoothly with dedicated and concerted efforts to retain the existing strengths of the institution such as flexibility and acceptability by the community.

The management system adopted to protect forests having taken a full circle in the last few years, initiatives to manage forests with the involvement of the local communities is being re-emphasised. The move has come at the right time when traditional forest management systems are becoming extinct. The State should, therefore, initiate a drive to recognise the traditional forest-protection institutions and support their cause. Further, the government may also adopt the principles and practices of the community forest management systems to State-supported JFM programmes through training sessions, mass media etc. On the other hand, the government could also seek the help of community forest institutions for JFM programmes.

Organisational change being a continuous process, viable control to stabilise forest use at the village level and being able to strike a balance between ecological, economic and institutional sustainability could go a long way in bringing success to community forestry efforts.

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Source: http://www.deccanherald.com/deccanherald/dec12/spt4.asp