0312-C1
Milindo Chakrabarti, Rajdeep Mukherjee and Atanu Sarkar 2
Rapid destruction of forests - mainly in the tropical region - has become a cause for global concern. Joint Forest Management (JFM) - a participatory management regime involving collective action from the primary stakeholders - introduced in the states of India by the Forest Department complemented by moral and financial support from the global community is an attempt to halt the process of degradation of forests, even though the forests are mostly owned by the State. The present paper looks into the process of creating social capital through collective action under the JFM regime, keeping in mind that such actions are never self-governed, rather conditioned by the dictates of the Forest Department. Using data collected from 15 communities of forest users located in the sub-Himalayan districts of West Bengal - most of whom are participants in the JFM programme - the paper attempts to develop indices of collective action across the communities. Data were collected using the protocols developed by the International Forestry Resources and Institution (IFRI) Research Programme. On the basis of the findings, we propose some necessary changes to be incorporated in the design of JFM to make the institutional structure sustainable. To conclude, the paper argues that sustainability of JFM hinges upon an agreement among the powers that be in acceding to the long-standing demand of the forest-dependent people to be given legal backing to harvest and sell forest products. Accession to such demands will ensure a higher level of collective action from the communities in `jointly managing' the forest resources in the real sense of the term.
Rapid destruction of the world's forest has become a cause for global concern. The present paper is an attempt to look into the initiatives at institutionalizing Joint Forest Management (JFM) introduced to halt the degradation of forests in India and identifies the factors that contribute to the success or otherwise of such collective action.
The paper unfolds itself in four sections. The next section presents the study area. Analytical insights on the extent of `collective action' vis-à-vis JFM has been presented in section three. Section four looks into the issue of the sustainability of JFM in its present format, suggests some necessary changes and provides the concluding remarks.
Forests and their users in two sub-Himalayan districts in West Bengal, namely, Darjeeling and Jalpaiguri have been covered in the present paper. Incidentally, this region is considered to be one of the biological hotspots in the world. 12 sites were studied during the period 2000-2001. Five of the sites are located in the hills and the rest are in the plains. We identified fifteen (15) user groups dependent on forests in these sites. More than half - eight (53%) - of the user groups are actively involved in JFM with their involvement being recognized by the FD (registered functional); on the other hand four (27%) groups have registered JFM committees, but they are non-functional now. The rest are not a part of JFM yet.
What is the nature of collective action among the primary stakeholders vis-à-vis JFM in the northern districts of West Bengal? We derive a "collective action index" relevant for each of the groups with the help of data collected using International Forestry Resources and Institutions (IFRI) research protocol.
IFRI protocol collects information about the nature and extent of participation of the primary stakeholders in 18 selected activities at the collective level (IFRI, 1999).
The activities listed above may be categorized under two distinct groups- beneficial activities [R] (rewards) and sacrificial activities [S] (costs/sacrifices). This categorization, however, becomes a bit too complicated if we distinguish between the de facto and de jure situations prevailing prior to the introduction of JFM in this region. Thus two different sets of R and S will emerge. The typology of the activities is given in Table 3.1.
As the table suggests, some activities are to be treated as rewards under both de facto and de jure conditions. Some activities are sacrificial irrespective of the situation . It is interesting to note that a good number of de jure rewards are considered to be de facto sacrifices by the users since the introduction of the institutional mechanism of collective action. It is worth noting that prior to the introduction of JFM, activities from 9-14 and 18 were carried out by the interested individual without any constraint as neither the community was concerned about nor the FD was in a position to control such activities. Thus even, though they appear to be rewards offered by the FD as a quid pro quo to the community in the name of JFM, in actuality, they appear to have constrained the space of activities of the users. Using the typology of activities mentioned above we have renamed the activities. Whereas activities 1-8 are marked as R1 - R8, those numbered 9-18 are denoted as S1-S10. However, we have distinguished across the activities in terms of their de facto positions only.
Table 3.1 Typology of activities:
DE FACTO |
DE JURE | ||
REWARD |
SACRIFICE | ||
REWARD |
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 |
||
SACRIFICE |
9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 18 |
15, 16, 17 |
Information was collected from the sites on the nature and extent of people's participation across these activities at the collective level over two points of time - present and 5 years before. From the emerging participation structure, it is interesting to note that:
Compared with the extent and nature of collective action across these communities five years ago, it appears that:
For both the periods, interaction with higher authorities has been observed to be the most common form of collective action across the sites.
As a next step, we utilized the information gathered to develop some indices to quantify the extent of collective action the user groups are engaged in. We used Principal Component Analysis (PCA) to identify the relevant factors and their weights in developing the relevant indices. All the activities mentioned above are considered. The variables are all binary - being equal to 1 to indicate participation and 0 otherwise. SPSS programme was used to identify the components and their loadings.
The results obtained are very interesting. The rotation component matrix for the present situation reveals:
Incidentally, the activities detailed under component 1 may be characterized as "collective actions in sale". Similarly, those under component 2 relate to "collective actions in monitoring" and variables under component 3 may be classified as those implying "collective actions in harvesting". We have utilized the relevant estimated coefficients obtained from the rotated component matrix for each variable as weights to develop the relevant indices of collective action in sale, monitoring and harvesting respectively, across the communities.
On the other hand, the results obtained for the period five year hence do not throw up such components where the association across the relevant variables can be clearly comprehended. This phenomenon probably points towards the prevailing sense of confusions within the communities five years ago in taking up collective activities.
The estimated indices of collective action (for the present period) reveals the following features:
Due to difficulty in comprehending the association across the variables in the components obtained for situation pertaining to the period five years ago, we have estimated the collective action indices across the sites using the same weighting diagram obtained for the present situation. The values of the activity variables (0, 1) have been changed as were obtained for the previous situation. They may comparable under the assumption that we have estimated the extent of their collective action if they were to go back five years from now with the same mindset.
In order to get a feeling about the changes that took place over the last five years in respect of the collective activities in these communities, we estimated intertemporal differences in collective action indices across the communities. The estimates reveal the improvement or otherwise in the extent of collective action in each community.
The findings are worth noting.
The main objective of JFM has been to conserve the forest with the help of local peoples in synchronization with addressing the needs of the people. It provides the local people some benefits that are conditional to their participation in activities to conserve the forest. Our analysis suggests that collective action procedure starts in JFM through monitoring the forest use, which acts as a `social glue' to involve the people in a group to generate desirable outcomes.
The empirical findings help us comprehend two basic characteristics of the functioning of JFM in the sub-Himalayan districts of West Bengal. They are:
Thus to conclude, we may argue that sustainability of JFM hinges upon an agreement among the powers that be in acceding to the long standing demand of the forest dependent people to be armed with legal backing to harvest and sell forest products. Accession to such demands will ensure a higher level of collective action from the communities in `jointly managing' the forest resources in the real sense of the term.
Asia Forest Network. (1997): Linking government with community resource management: What's working and what's not. Research Network Report Number 9, May 1997. University of California, Berkeley: Center for Southeast Asia Studies.
IFRI (1999): "International Forestry Resources and Institutions (IFRI) Research Program: Field Manual, Version 9.5": CIPEC, Indiana University, Bloomington.
1 This paper presents some results from a broader study being carried out under International Forestry Resources and Institutions (IFRI) Research Programme. The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support provided by MacArthur Foundation for the study. The help rendered by Mr. Sudhangshu Ranjan Ghosh, Ms. Sarala Khaling, Mr. Joydeep Bhattacharya, Mr. Prakash Ranjan Pal, Ms. Sita Routh, Mr. Nilay Mukherjee, Mr. Krishna Gupta and Mr. Animesh Sarkar in collecting the data from the field is also gratefully acknowledged. Prof. Elinor Ostrom and Prof. Clark C. Gibson gave their comments on an earlier version of this paper. We are grateful to them. However, the usual disclaimers apply.
2 Director, CREATE, St. Joseph's College, Darjeeling, India, PIN: 7345104. [email protected]