0774-A1

Improving Forest Governance: Experience of Joint Forest Management in India

Sushil Saigal^[1]

Abstract

There is an increasing interest in community-based forest management as a potential approach for improving forest governance. India is among the few countries in the world where such an approach - called Joint Forest Management (JFM) - has not only been successfully introduced but also achieved large-scale implementation, covering 18% of all state forests.

Forests cover 23% of India's geographical area and almost all are under state ownership. However, over half the forests are in a degraded condition. Forests also provide livelihood support to a large proportion of the population, especially the poor. Around 147 million people live in and around forests. However, until the 1980s, the focus was on commercial forestry and people were excluded from forest management. This led to forest degradation on the one hand, and conflict between the Forest Department and local communities on the other.

A new policy in 1988 stressed forest management for ecosystem services and meeting local communities' needs. JFM promoted agreements between the Forest Department and a village community to jointly protect and manage adjacent forest land and to share responsibilities and benefits.

JFM has had several positive impacts on forest governance in the form of improved forest condition, increased income and livelihood opportunities for participating communities and, most importantly, a dramatic change in the attitude of communities and the Forest Department towards each other and forests.

Although challenges still remain, if implemented in its true spirit, JFM can be a viable long-term strategy for contributing towards the goals of sustainable livelihoods and forest management.

Introduction

There is increasing world-wide interest in community-based forest management as a potential approach for improving forest governance. India is among the few countries in the world where such an approach - called Joint Forest Management (JFM) - has not only been successfully introduced but also implemented at a large scale, now covering over 18% of all state forests. This paper traces the evolution of JFM in India and analyses the experience with this approach.

India's forests in brief

The Resource

Forestry is the second major land use in India after agriculture. Around 23% of the country's area (76.53 million hectares) is officially classified as forest land. Almost the entire forest area is owned and managed by the government. Not all legally classified forest lands, however, carry forests. At least 17% of forest lands are virtually devoid of tree cover (crown cover below 10%) and another 33% have degraded open forest (crown cover 10-40%). Less than half the forest lands carry reasonably dense forest (crown cover above 40%) (see Table 1) (FSI 1999).

Table 1: Status of forests in India

Source: FSI 1999

^a Forest having at least 10% crown cover

Forests and Livelihoods

Forests provide livelihood support to a significant proportion of the population, especially marginalized and vulnerable groups. India has perhaps the largest population of poor (c. 260 million) and indigenous peoples (c. 80 million) in the world. There are an estimated 147 million people living close to forests (FSI 1999), and there is a clear overlap between the forest, poverty and indigenous peoples maps of the country (Poffenberger and McGean 1996).

Many of these people depend on forests for meeting basic needs of fuelwood, fodder, small construction timber and even food and medicines in the form of non-timber forest products (NTFPs). Sales of fuelwood and NTFP also generate vital cash income for many households. The dependence is greatest among the poor such as marginal farmers and landless workers. It is estimated that 600 million tonnes of forest produce valued at Rs. 300 billion is collected annually from India's forests (GoI 1999).^[2]

Forest Policies: Past and Present

Although forests play a key role in the life of forest-fringe communities, it is only in the past few years that communities have been involved in forest management. Until the 1980s, the focus was on commercial forestry and people were excluded from forest management. This section briefly reviews the evolution of India's forest policy.

Colonial Period

Systematic forest exploitation was started by the colonial government in the 19^th century to obtain timber for ship building, local construction, railways and export. The colonial administration declared proprietary rights of the government over forests, and it was to be subsequently determined as to what extent these were limited by legally existing rights of private persons or communities (Ribbentrop 1900, cited in Vira 1995). However, the onus of reporting and proving infringement of rights was on the village people, who were ignorant of western concepts of property (Vira 1995) and often illiterate. Many users did not register their claims and thus failed to secure their rights legally (Singh 1986). Consequently, in most places, the local communities' rights over forests were either extinguished or transformed into privileges, which were to be enjoyed by the people until the land was required for any purpose by the government. In many places people resisted the government's take-over of their forests and even burnt some reserved forests in protest (Guha 1983; Guha 1989).

Post-Independence Period

In the years after India's independence, forests were viewed as raw material and revenue sources for the country's economic development (Vira 1995). The government issued a forest policy statement in 1952 that focussed on 'national needs' but was quite unsympathetic to the needs of the forest-fringe communities. It noted: "The accident of a village being situated close to the forest doesn't prejudice the right of the country as a whole to receive the benefits of a national asset" (GoI 1952). Between 1951 and 1974, commercial forestry accounted for over 65% of the physical area coverage and over 80% of the total financial outlay for afforestation (Vira 1995). However, the forests continued to degrade during this period.

National Commission on Agriculture

In 1970, the National Commission on Agriculture (NCA) was constituted inter alia to look into the problems of the forestry sector. The NCA suggested replacement of mixed 'low value' forests with monocultures of fast growing commercial crops. It suggested creation of forest corporations to manage forests on business principles. The NCA viewed local communities' dependence on the forests as a major cause of forest destruction and a major obstacle in the way of commercial forestry. To free forest lands for commercial forestry, it suggested that local communities' needs should be met by a social forestry program on non-forest lands such as village commons, government wastelands, and farmlands (GoI 1976). It noted:

"Free supply of forest produce to the rural population and their rights and privileges have brought destruction to the forest and so it is necessary to reverse the process. The rural people have not contributed much towards the maintenance or regeneration of the forests. Having over-exploited the resources, they cannot in all fairness expect that somebody else will take the trouble of providing them with forest produce free of charge... One of the principal objectives of social forestry is to make it possible to meet these needs in full from readily accessible areas and thereby lighten the burden on production forestry (emphasis added). Such needs should be met by farm forestry, extension forestry and by rehabilitating scrub forests and degraded forests" (GoI 1976).

When the newly created forest corporations started clearing mixed natural forests to establish commercial plantations, rural people, especially tribal communities who were dependent on mixed natural forests for subsistence and had customary access to these forests, protested against their destruction. In the Bastar District of Madhya Pradesh, a World Bank supported project to replace 20,000 hectares of native mixed sal forest with tropical pines in 1975 had to be dropped after protests by local tribal communities (Pathak 1994; Dogra 1985; Anderson and Huber 1988). In Bihar, there were protests against replacement of natural forests with teak plantations (CSE 1982).

Along with commercial plantations on state forest lands, a massive social forestry program on non-forest lands was also launched with assistance from international funding agencies. Between 1980 and 1997, 24.59 million hectares of plantations were established in the country, indicating the magnitude of the program (FSI 1999).

However, by the mid-1980s, it was apparent that the NCA strategy was not working. While on the one hand forests continued to get degraded, on the other, conflicts between local communities and the Forest Department increased. The link between environmental degradation and poverty began to become obvious to policy makers.

Forest Policy, 1988

A new forest policy was issued in 1988 that completely reversed earlier objectives. The new policy stressed management of forests for forest services and meeting local communities' needs. It made commercial exploitation and revenue generation subsidiary to these new objectives. It noted:

"The life of tribals and other poor living within and near forests revolves around forests. The rights and concessions enjoyed by them should be fully protected. Their domestic requirements of fuelwood, fodder, minor forest produce and construction timber should be the first charge on forest produce" (GoI 1988).

Joint Forest Management

In 1990, based on the new forest policy and encouraging results from some pioneering experiments in community-based forest management^[3], the government started the JFM program. A Central Government circular (No. 6.21/89-FP dated June 1st 1990) directed all states to involve local communities and voluntary agencies in the protection and management of degraded forest lands.

Under JFM, the Forest Department and the village community enter into an agreement to jointly protect and manage forest land adjoining villages and to share responsibilities and benefits. The village community is represented through a body specifically formed for the purpose. These are known by different names in different states ( e.g. Vana Samaraksha Samitis in Andhra Pradesh and Hill Resource Management Societies in Haryana) but are most commonly referred to as Forest Protection Committees (FPCs).

The community gets greater access to a number of NTFPs and a share in timber revenue in return for increased responsibility for the protection of forest from fire, grazing and illicit harvesting. The details vary from state to state as each state has issued its own JFM resolution. In all states, the ownership of the land remains with the government - only management responsibility is shared with the community.

The JFM program spread throughout the country during the 1990s and community groups emerged as important managers of state forests. By March 2002, there were 63,618 FPCs protecting and managing over 14 million hectares (18%) of state forest lands (Table 2).

Table 2: Progress of Joint Forest Management (as on March 1, 2002)

Source: GoI 2002

Impact of JFM on Forest Governance

Improvement in the Condition of Forests

There is evidence that JFM has improved the condition of the country's forests. In the past few years the overall forest cover of the country has increased by 3,896 sq. km. and dense forest cover by 10,098 sq. km, much of it attributed to the success of JFM (FSI 1999). In areas under JFM, incidents of illicit felling have sharply declined. It has been reported that in Rajasthan, unlike in the past, people did not resort to tree felling in JFM areas even during droughts (Ghose 2001). The prolific growth of understorey vegetation in many JFM areas has led to increased biodiversity including rapid increase in wild herbivore populations (GoI 2002).

JFM has also helped reduce the area under illegal encroachment as well as the rate of fresh encroachments. For instance, in Andhra Pradesh, nearly 12% of the encroached forest land (38,158 ha) has reportedly been vacated since the JFM program was initiated (Mukherjee 2001).

Increased Income and Livelihood Opportunities for Participating Communities

JFM has increased the income and livelihood opportunities for many participating communities. They have benefited from employment generated under JFM projects, through microplanning, sale of NTFPs, share in the final harvest, etc. For instance, 21.58 million person days of employment were generated in just six states in 2000-01 (GoI 2002). Irrigation facilities developed under JFM in Harda (Madhya Pradesh) increased crop yields by two to five times (Dubey 2001) and increased fodder availability due to JFM raised milk production from 40,000 litres to 200,000 litres per year in Nisana village, Vyara, Gujarat (Khanna and Prasad 2001). In just four states, FPCs received around Rs. 62.59 million through benefit-sharing mechanisms during 2000-01 (GoI 2002). In West Bengal, though the sharing percentage is the lowest in the country (25%), each FPC is estimated to have received around Rs. 70,000 as its share of timber revenue (Palit 2001). Further, JFM has helped many FPCs to build up substantial levels of community funds, which are used for local development activities. At the end of 2000-01, total community funds under JFM were Rs. 557.09 million in seven states (GoI 2002).

Greater Involvement of Other Stakeholders

While the JFM program has created greater space for community participation in forest management, it has also led to greater involvement of other stakeholders (such as NGOs and panchayats) and helped to bring greater transparency to the sector. Information from six states reveals that 1,061 NGOs are actively participating in JFM. In some states such as Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh, Forest Department officials and NGOs are working together at the field level in the form of Spearhead Teams (GoI 2002).

Leadership and Awareness

The discussions with the Forest Department and NGO staff members, exposure visits and training programs have catalyzed the development of leadership in the villages. Better information flow has made people more aware about various government policies as well as their rights. This has had a positive impact beyond the forestry sector.

Change in Attitude and Relationship

One of the most significant impacts of the JFM program has been the change in the attitude of local communities and forest officials, both towards each other and the forests. For instance, members of Botha FPC in Buldhana, Maharashtra, even postponed a wedding in their village to fight a forest fire. This would have been unthinkable in pre-JFM days (Jha 2001). In several FPCs, traditional forest protection practices have been revived, for example kesar chhanta (sacred groves) in Rajasthan (Ghose 2001). There is also greater acceptance of participatory approaches among Forest Department officials. The large number of training and orientation exercises carried out in different states have also contributed to a positive change in attitude. The magnitude of the effort can be gauged from just one state, Andhra Pradesh, where 20,987 JFM-related training programs have been conducted in recent years (Mukherjee 2001).

Key Challenges

While the JFM program has had a positive impact on forest governance, many challenges still remain. For instance, FPCs have no tenurial security since in most states JFM program has been established on the basis of administrative orders (not laws) that can be changed or withdrawn by the Forest Department at any time. Further, in most states, FPCs have no independent legal identity and are simply registered with the Forest Department. In several states, JFM is still dependent on donor-funded projects and its long-term viability remains to be established. The communities' share in forest revenue is still low in many states, and there are restrictions on collection and sale of several commercially valuable NTFPs. Marketing of produce from JFM forests is emerging as a critical area with problems in both the pioneering states, West Bengal and Haryana, on this front (Saigal et al. 2002).

There are also equity problems in several communities (e.g. elite domination), and many intra- and inter-community conflicts have emerged. Although the situation is better than before, there is still a significant power imbalance between Forest Department staff and communities.

A key challenge is the right link between panchayats (local government) and FPCs. While panchayats are democratically elected bodies with a constitutional mandate over several forest-related matters, they are often highly politicized and cover a large area, which makes them ill-suited for JFM.

Some attempts are being made to address these challenges. In a few states, JFM has been given legal sanction under the forest law and a formal agreement is signed between the Forest Department and the community. In certain states, the communities' share in the forest produce has been increased significantly and community funds are being created to sustain the program beyond the project period. To overcome intra-community equity problems (caste, class, gender, etc.), many states have introduced special provisions to protect the interests of marginalized sections (e.g. reserved places on FPC executive committees). In some states, FPCs have organized themselves into federations to increase their bargaining power and address the power imbalance with the Forest Department. Different models for panchayat involvement and marketing are being attempted though these issues are as yet unresolved.

Conclusion

India's JFM experience has shown that it is possible to improve forest governance through community-based forest management regimes. Communities in many parts of the country have proved the sceptics wrong by successfully protecting and regenerating large patches of forests. The forest condition has improved, communities have benefited, and the relations between the Forest Department and communities have improved. Within a decade, JFM has grown from a small experiment to one of the most important forest management programs in the country, its area almost equalling that under national parks and sanctuaries.

However, significant challenges remain. If communities are given secure rights of access and control over forests, genuine decision-making powers and an adequate share in the benefits, JFM can be a viable long-term strategy for contributing towards the goals of sustainable livelihoods and forest management.

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