0528-C1
Shubhayu Saha[1]
Systems for co-management of forests have evolved as a pragmatic alternative to state control, buoyed by the insights gained into the potential of community-based management approaches. Co-management is thought to have equity and efficiency advantages over centralized forest management regimes. Through empowerment of local communities, co-management attempts to build partnerships between the communities and the state to create synergies and develop more effective forest management systems.
Joint Forest Management (JFM) in India has been an important experiment with co-management of forests. Successful regeneration of degraded forests has been achieved with JFM over the last decade. But the future of JFM is increasingly threatened by the emergence of unforeseen conflicts among the participant groups. This paper argues that these conflicts are unintended consequences arising from the shortcomings in the institutional configuration in which the state-community participatory model of JFM is embedded. The unintended consequences of JFM have been twofold: first, a reconfiguration of past conflicts between the state and the community through inadequate redistribution of authority and inequitable sharing of responsibilities; secondly, rekindling conflicts between and within communities arising from differences in access rights and inequalities that were latent in the pre-JFM scenario. The paper undertakes an in depth analysis of reasons behind the creation and persistence of some of the most widespread conflicts. Most conflicts are attributed to institutional deficiencies in addressing the two fundamental principles of co-management - participation and redistribution of rights over resources. Though the conflicts are analysed in a particular geographical and cultural context, they are believed to be generic to co-management efforts and will be relevant to scenarios across the globe.
Determination of the critical elements intrinsic to centralized, state governed as well as decentralized, community controlled systems of forest resource management has been a fertile field of research over the past decade. The theoretical developments that help understand patterns of collective behavior, the research on features of long-enduring institutions regulating natural resources and the rich repository of field observations that allow segregation of case studies in terms of success and failure have provided vital insights to this endeavor (Somanathan 1996; Ostrom 1990). Evolution of Co-management systems can be traced to an underlying objective of blending elements from these two extreme approaches that were instrumental for success to create synergies and design better forest management systems. States have acknowledged the involvement of communities living in the forest fringes in forest management and co-management has gained global recognition as a panacea to alarming loss of forests.
The experiment with co-management of forests in India was launched with ‘Joint Forest Management’ (JFM)[2] around 1990. Most of the Forest Protection Committees (FPC)[3] had a violent birth, being conceptualized as a reconciliatory effort to moderate historical conflicts between the state and village communities over rights to forest resources. The Forest Department (FD), facing escalating monitoring and enforcement costs, was becoming increasingly ineffective in protecting the dwindling forests (Ligon 1999). Establishing partnerships with the communities residing in the forest fringes by including them in the management process and creating a social fence around the forests appeared to be a feasible solution to protect the forests from relentless destruction. It was assumed that villagers could successfully organize into cohesive units and assist the state in managing the forest resources sustainably. The strategy was further justified on the grounds of social equity and economic efficiency by promising participant villagers (hitherto contested) usufruct rights and share of timber harvests. The global concern favoring decentralization and local empowerment that existed at the time was a stimuli to this shift in paradigm of management of forest resources.
But the initial euphoria surrounding the introduction of JFM seems to be on the wane. Why is the enthusiasm with community participation in forest management withering? Why is there an air of pessimism over the future of JFM in India?
This paper tries to explain the misgiving regarding the future of JFM by contending that JFM is ill equipped to redress the set of conflicts that is created through the state-community institutional configuration it is embedded in. As unintended consequences, JFM has not only reconfigured old conflicts between the state and the communities, but have rekindled new ones between communities that were latent in the pre-JFM scenario. This new matrix of conflicts threatens the viability of JFM in the future by eroding the cohesiveness within the FPC and the mutual trust between the FPC and the FD.
This is an effort to systematically examine the possible reasons behind the emergence and persistence of these conflicts. This will help identify and ameliorate some of the shortcomings in systems of co-management of forests. As Castro (2001) puts it, "conflict should not be viewed only as a dysfunctional relationship between agents that should be avoided at all costs, but also, as an opportunity for constructive change and growth".
The paper analyzes the following questions in succession. Why is an analysis of conflicts important? What are the kinds of conflicts that are of critical importance? What are the underlying causes behind these conflicts? The analysis is based on the intensive research done in 65 Forest Protection Committees (FPC) spread over two districts in the southwest region of the state of West Bengal in India through 1999-2001 (Roy et al. 2001). Though the conflicts analyzed emerge in the context of a specific case study, I believe they are generic to co-management initiatives around the world, crippling the potential of co-managed regimes in forest management.
Co-management institutions are developed on the dual foundations of participation and redistribution of authority. However, both these factors are extremely sensitive to deal with and are at the heart of the creation and persistence of conflicts. The concept of participation in forest management has an ingrained element of exclusion in it (Skutsch 2000). When operationalized, participatory management regimes grant rights of access to resources to some and preclude others from the benefits of participation giving rise to discontent among the latter. Similarly, redistribution of authority would entail reorganization of costs and benefits through a reshuffle of responsibilities and rights among the state and the community. Negotiations will take place based on conflicting self-interest, and the interests of the state with greater bargaining power would prevail. It would be improbable to arrive at the hypothetical win-win situation at early stages of this experimentation and the initial conflicts will remain alive at differing intensities and varying manifestations. Because of these inherent drawbacks, any co-management institution should have proper mechanisms of conflict resolution (Ostrom, 1990). The institutional design of JFM has been surprisingly blind to this reality, and as is shown in this paper, much of the conflicts that threaten to jeopardize the future of JFM stem from these two fundamental issues.
From oral accounts of villagers (personal observations from fieldwork through 1999-2001) and Forest Department reports, it is evident that a decade of JFM in India in general (West Bengal in particular) has witnessed considerable regeneration of degraded forests. But the more important issue is the sustainability of this improvement in forest condition. The active participation of the FPC members in forest protection has been the primary reason behind successful regeneration. But due to persistent conflicts that erode the FPC members’ level of involvement and diminish their degree of certainty over the future of JFM, could they be expected to maintain similar investments of time and resources to protect forests? In the presence of growing diffidence, will the FD maintain the same level of commitment to devolution of responsibility and authority through JFM that they started off with? The research on evaluation of JFM (Roy et al. 2001) revealed the detrimental impact that existence of conflict[4] has on the management of forests. There are sufficient reasons to be apprehensive of the future of JFM, which encompasses no less than 10.2 million hectares of forestland (13.3% of national forests) and 36,000 community groups who rely heavily on the forest resources for livelihood (Bahuguna 2000).
The following section examines in detail the reasons for emergence and the consequences of some of the most widespread conflicts. Though there are other forms of conflicts specific to regions and FPC, the list discussed here reflects the biggest challenges facing the sustainability of JFM.
In the course of fieldwork (Roy et al. 2001), detailed interviews were conducted with forest officials, village groups and individual villagers. The following list of conflicts is derived from those interactions. The categorization of conflicts is intended to identify the set of actors associated with each kind of conflict situation. This would help unearth the reasons behind the emergence of the conflicts and can be useful in the search for effective resolution mechanisms in the future.
Equity against stability: The incidence of conflicts within the FPC reflects the obstacles to achieving collective action. The underlying assumption in the creation of FPC was that villagers were a homogeneous unit who were assigned similar rights and responsibilities. But in reality, there exists considerable inequality between the socio-economic statuses of FPC members. This inequality has a socio-historical determinant in varying ownership of land and is indicative of greater dependence of poorer groups on forest resources for both survival and livelihood. The poorer villagers are more motivated to participate in-group patrolling of forests[5], which is the most important assigned responsibility to FPC. The forest stock increases with greater effort expended in guarding which increases the long run payoff to the FPC from the return on rotational harvesting. On grounds of equity, JFM requires that the share of timber harvests is equally divided among all members of the FPC. However, the more economically advantaged face a higher opportunity cost and is reluctant to spend time in guarding. Such disproportion in effort expended and benefit obtained is becoming a major disincentive to guarding for the poorer sections of the FPC. There have been instances where arrangements have been made in which a member unable to meet his guarding responsibilities pays a day’s wage (~0.6$) to whoever substitutes for him. But such arrangements are conspicuous by their absence. The Olsonian hypothesis of collective action fails to apply as the richer sections have a smaller stake in the resource and thus are reluctant to make the investments for the provision of the public good, which in this case is patrolling of forests. The issue of equity between FPC members is inadequately addressed by JFM, focusing solely on benefits without the costs involved, and is having a destabilizing effect on the internal cohesion of the FPC.
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Conflicts within the FPC:
Conflicts between FPC:
Conflicts between FPC and FD:
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Lack of representation: Another issue of concern is the skewed representation of various groups in the executive committee of the FPC and thus, unequal representation in the decision-making process. The FD makes its’ preference clear for having literate members of the FPC in the executive under the pretext that official paraphernalia would suffer otherwise. In most of the villages, education is a privilege enjoyed by the elite. As noted by Bardhan (1999), in situations of "high social and economic inequality, the problem of ‘capture’ of the local agencies by the local elite can be severe, and the poor and weaker section of the population may be left grievously exposed to their mercies and their malfeasance". This leads to sub optimal representation of demands of the marginalized sections before the FD and insufficient dissemination of information provided by the FD to the executive among the FPC members. Thus the inequities in power structure that characterized the state-community relation prior to the introduction of JFM are recreated on a local scale driving a schism through the community. JFM transpires to be an ill-conceived implementation of devolution, which causes dissension instead of empowering the entire community.
Political capture: Another emerging threat to cohesion among members of the FPC is the insidious capture of the FPC by local political interests. According to conventional belief, existence of decentralized local governance agencies has a mutually reinforcing effect on each other. The local government system (Panchayat[6]), because of the control it yields at the local level, was envisioned to support the activities of JFM and foster cooperation among the participant members. Subsequently, the Panchayat Pradhan (chief) was mandated by the JFM resolution to be a member of each FPC executive. However, contests in elections to Panchayats are increasingly becoming cutthroat, and political parties view the FPC as an important avenue to garner support. Panchayat representatives across the study area were found to have negligible involvement with the daily operation of the FPC, often not even being present during the annual meetings that are held at each FPC. With increasing polarization of the villages according to the allegiance to political parties, involvement of the panchayats in the activities of JFM appear to be becoming increasingly detrimental to building consensus, sine qua non to success in JFM.
Failure to enforce rules: The introduction of JFM through involvement of the community living in the forest fringe in protection and management simultaneously introduced an element of exclusion as well (Castro 2001). While conferring rights to use forest resources on some, it de-legitimized the de facto rights of access to these resources that others had for years. This discrimination between people, hitherto fighting the same battle for rights to forest resources against the state, has brought to fore an entirely new set of dilemmas and conflicts that the FD is insufficiently equipped to deal with. Without concomitant arrangements of alternatives, people who have been shorn of their rights still visit the forests to collect firewood and fodder. Conflicts over resource extraction with the FPC members are thus increasing. Offenders are reported to the FD but there exists no formal mechanism to punish these violators. Often the distraught economic conditions of the miscreants leave no other option but to rebuke and pardon them. Though the constraints of the FD are understandable, this has a de-motivating effect on the FPC members to maintain vigil and a loss of confidence on the commitment and competence of the FD to safeguard the interests of the FPC members.
Incompleteness in devolution: The introduction of JFM was motivated primarily "to achieve the goals of forestry, rather than an issue of rights and political empowerment" (Skutsch, 2000). Formation of FPC has been more a matter of management convenience rather than trying to improve the lives of these people. Benefits from the timber harvests that were the primary incentive to participation in JFM for FPC have been illusive[7]. There have been instances where FPC members have complained of irregularities on behalf of the FD in dealing with sale proceeds. Accountability is a lop-sided feature in JFM, as only the FPC is culpable for its (in)action. With lack of communication and exchange of views between the FD and FPC, the FPC functions rather as an imposed formation than being voluntary, truly ‘participatory’ (Sarin, 1996). There has not been any formal agreement signed between the FD and FPC. This fact has led the FPC members to cast serious aspersions regarding the benefits of co-operation in the future of JFM and has undermined mutual trust between them and the FD (Seabright, 1993).
The introduction of JFM was meant to resolve past conflicts between the state and the communities. But this paper highlights how it has reconfigured the old conflicts and has given rise to entirely new ones. The redistribution of rights through JFM has been inadequate and thus, it has been unsuccessful in truly empowering local communities and strengthening their authority. The paper is not aimed at undermining the potential of co-management approaches to forest management like JFM. Given the failure of centralized, state governance in managing national forests, co-management promises to be the first step in building capacity among grassroots resource users. What it tries to achieve is to illuminate certain shortcomings inherent in the concept of participatory natural resource management and make the practitioners aware of those so that policies are designed in cognizance of them. The conflicts highlighted in this paper have been found to be ubiquitous and are considered as big challenges to be overcome in the future. This is in no way an exhaustive list and there would be many other manifestations of conflicts that are specific to cases and regions. The nature of these conflicts does not appear to be endemic, but is believed to be common in other situations where experiments with co-management of natural resource are being carried out. Identification of these and the search for suitable mechanisms to resolve them should benefit natural resource management worldwide.
1. Bahuguna, V.K., 2000. Joint Forest Management: An instrument for sustainable forest management. Paper presented at a conference on India’s forests beyond 2000, Commonwealth Forestry Association (India), India Habitat Center, Delhi, April 19-21
2. Bardhan, P., 2001. Distributive Conflicts, Collective Action, and Institutional Economics. In Frontiers of Development Economics. Meier, G.M. and Stiglitz, J.E. (eds). World Bank and Oxford University Press
3. Castro, P.A. and Nielsen, E., 2001. Indigenous people and co-management: Implications for conflict management. Environmental Science and Policy. 4 229-239
4. Ligon, E. and Narain, U., 1999. Government management of village commons: Comparing two forest policies. Journal of Environmental Economics and Management. 37, 272-289
5. Ostrom, E., 1999. Self-governance and forest resources. CIFOR Occasional Paper No. 20
6. Roy, S., Dutta, M., Saha, S. and Maity, D. 2001. Joint Forest Management and its impact on the forest fringe economy: A case study of a dry & arid region of West Bengal. To be published in Common Property Resources and Forests, Thematic Volume 5, Indira Gandhi Institute For Development Research, Mumbai.
7. Saigal, S. 2002. Beyond Experimentation: Emerging issues in the institutionalization of Joint Forest Management in India. Environmental Management. Vol 26, No 3, 269-281
8. Sarin, M., 1996. From conflict to collaboration: Institutional issues in community management. In Village Voices, Forest Choices, Poffenberger, M. and Mcgean, B. (eds) Oxford University Press. 165-210
9. Seabright, P., 1993. Managing local commons: Theoretical issues in incentive design. Journal of Economic Perspectives, Volume 7, Number 2, 113-134
10. Skutsch, M. M., 2000. Conflict management and participation in community forestry. Agroforestry Systems. 48, 189-206
11. Somanathan, E. and Sethi, R., 1996. The evolution of social norms in common property resource use. American Economic Review, Volume, 86, Number 4
| [1] North Carolina State University,
Department of Forestry, Box Number 8002, Raleigh 27695, USA. Tel: 919 515-2891 (O); Email: [email protected] [2] The National Forest Policy adopted by the Government of India in 1990 required the Forest Department to establish local partnerships with villagers living in the forest fringes to protect forests. Villagers were apportioned portions of the forests that they had to protect from uncontrolled extraction. In lieu of their effort, they were entitled to a share or timber revenue and rights to commercial use of non-timber forest resources. [3] These are the functional units of JFM and every household in a village has representation in the FPC. It has a hierarchical structure, with an executive committee comprised of 5-9 elected villagers, forest officials and local government representatives and a general body of villagers. [4] In the regression analysis, the conflict indices have significantly (a=0.1) negatively impact on the condition of the forests. The qualitative data on types and intensity of conflict were converted to two indices that were used in the regression. The satisfaction index ranged from 1 to 5 and is the average rank that villagers, in different groups, awarded their own performance. It represented the degree of unity and the collective action capacity in the FPC. The mutual trust index ranged from 1 to 5 and indicated the level of cooperation and coordination existing between the FPC and FD. The indices reveal the extent to which each FPC has been affected by conflicts since inception. It incorporates the successful attempts by the FPC and/or FD at resolving conflicts through ‘Conflict years’, a summation of years that conflicts have existed in the FPC.
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