0403-B2

Forests for the Future of Humankind

H. Channakeshavachar Anusuya^[1]

ABSTRACT

The list of services offered by forests to human kind is never-ending. Anthropogenic disturbances have crossed the limits of natural tolerance and now nature’s response appears to be terrifying. Human activities have led to the destruction of plant and animal habitats and the never renewable biodiversity. Mankind now has its last chance to rectify the mistakes by protecting and promoting bioreserves, the forests.

Laws may control illegal interference in forests, policies can provide training to stakeholders and incentives to people. People living in forests and dependent on forests for their livelihoods should be motivated to safeguard their homeland for the sake of themselves and their children. Once people have that motive then we have innumerable ways and means to achieve our task: community forestry, wasteland development, joint forest management, farm forestry and so on. Organizations with a variety of aims -controlling desertification, conserving biodiversity, controlling salinity, promoting fertility, improving the living conditions of the poor, maintaining environmental stability and so on - should pool their resources and sincere efforts in the name of forest conservation.

Voluntary Paper

Fuel-wood famine the alarming factor

Forestry plays a significant role in socio-economic development in the region, providing employment to millions of people. Asia-Pacific countries lead the world in forest plantation development. Many nations in the region rely on efficient technologies and effective policies for sustainable use of their forests. However, deforestation, degradation, wasteful use and sharp inequalities in the distribution of forest benefits, remain serious problems that require novel solutions and joint action by all those with an interest in forests.

There are many underlying causes of forests loss, and land degradation further leading to desertification. The Poverty, population, land tenure, gender relations, pressure for trade and environment.

Recent trends have indicated a widening gap between rich and poor in many countries as highlighted at the world summit on social development in 1995. This increasing distance between “haves” and “have-nots” has further disadvantaged the poorer sections of society. A substantial proportion of the worlds. Population remains in absolute poverty. Unemployment encourages Forest loss through illegal timber felling and smuggling of forest products.

Deforestation caused by the felling of trees for firewood is a major cause of environmental degradation. This is of particular concern in the headwaters of major catchments such as the Black River where increased runoff, erosion, and sediment yield impact on the Hoa Binh Dam and those living down stream, While the links between forest clearance, lost biodiversity and the ability of farmers to sustain production are understood, the pressures on farmers to survive from year to year are less well appreciated. The real challenge for these communities is to recognize their situation and work out their own solution rather than suffer the imposition of well meaning, but too often in appropriate, top-down intervention. It is essential therefore that the changes which have taken place are documented and their future impact illustrated. This information must be portrayed in a manner that makes it accessible and comprehensible to all, including preliterate farmers. For this reason, the use of graphics offers considerable merit over textual and numerical analyzers. Forest resources are small relative to its area and Population growth in traditional forest regions, and rising demand for forest products and services continue to put tremendous pressure on both biodiversity and forest resources. While plantation forestry has increased total forest area and stock to meet this growing demand, significant areas of mature and often natural forest have been destroyed. Therefore although forest areas may have expanded, forest quality has declined. Provinces in the southwest and northeast, traditionally natural forest regions, suffer the most serious deforestation. They consequently face increasingly severe soil erosion loss of biodiversity, and increased flooding. During the last two decades, there has been a wide acceptance by members of the academe and policy-makers that public involvement is a critical component of effective environmental decision-making. It has been advocated that if local people are engaged in the process of knowledge production, then development projects are more likely to be sustainable over the long term. It has been further argued that this involvement is both desirable and necessary for attaining of development and resource management. In techniques had been developed that attempt to elucidate, assess, and integrate the views of stakeholders in environmental planning situations.

Participatory Research Methods (PRM) and Geographic information system (GIS) have been recognized independently over the past 20 years for their contributions to planning more sustainable forms of development. In spite of the increasing popularity of PRM and GIS, it has only been within the last decade that researchers have considered integrating the two as way of enhancing public participation in environmental planning. However, while the capability of GIS for gathering and disseminating information has been hailed as democratizing and empowering it has simultaneously been criticized as inherently authoritarian, complex, and even dangerous. In the context of participatory development, the power of maps can be utilized to the potential benefit of marginalized peoples. As McKinnon etal.(2000) argue, it would be a mistake to underestimate the visual impact of community-based maps. This is true in situations where regional authorities under rate and under value the capacity of local people to make their own priorities. Often getting “onto the map” is the first step in groups gaining public acknowledgement of their condition. GIS provides an especially powerful mechanism for community groups “To mechanism for community power structure and to inspire others to appreciate their situation and proposed solution.”

The immense growth of the population has accelerated the process of exploitation of natural wealth and has strained the environment, the result of which is that, the benevolent action of nature towards mankind is turning into sabotaging moad which is reflected by recurrent wide spread, soil erosion and repeated drought, due to siltation of Tanks and insufficient Rains.

A report from the Asian Development Bank concludes “Poverty as such cannot be said to cause environmental Degradation, however often the two are associated with each other. As change occurs it leaves behind winners and losers, typically the losers have few choices available and are forced to adopt short term survival strategies, under which longer term resource management considerations appear to an unaffordable luxury”. People without any hope for future have little incentive to manage forest resources as well, and often have little option but to exploit them unsustainably for short term survival.

Social forestry and its implementation

Integration of forestry with agriculture is agro-forestry. Agro-forestry means mixed and diversified production from agricultural lands, which provides a feasible and lasting solution for fuel-wood. Agro-forestry is not a new practice. It is an age old practice of growing woody plants, i.e. trees or shrubs with agricultural crops and/for animal husbandry on the same unit of land for maximized optimum production. Agro-forestry is an inter disciplinary approach to system of land use, and is based on disciplines which include agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry, aquaculture and fisheries and land use management.

Agro-forestry is based on the principles of self-maintenance. It aims to fulfill daily needs of farming community like fuel-wood, fodder and small timber from their own land itself, provide an extra source of revenue and ultimately lead farmers towards balanced economy and self-sufficiency. India is largely a tropical country with immense ecological diversity, which makes it technically feasible for agriculture and silviculture to co-exist. The beneficial effect of an appropriate mix of trees and/or shrubs with almost any crop have been proved beyond doubt in the recent past through national and international research studies, may that be in form of wind breaks, shelter belts, live hedge or trees on bunds. Over the years many agro-forestry systems have evolved like agro-horti-silviculture, silvipastural, agri-silvipastural system and others. These systems are particularly commendable for marginal lands in hills, desert prone areas and other degraded lands, which, through not suitable for agriculture are still cultivated because of absence of alternate employment. Trees and shrubs are particularly good at stabilizing soil, preserving soil moisture and preventing wind and water erosion. Besides providing precious fuel-wood and fodder, leguminous tree say leucaena leucocephala can fix as much as 400 K.g of atmospheric nitrogen in soil per hectare per year thus enhancing agricultural production. Moreover unlike trees and shrubs, it returns most of the nutrients taken up back to the soil in the form of litter. Besides farmer has a second line of defence to fall back upon in case monsoons, unpredictable as they are, fail altogether.

Sharma and McGregor (1998) reported that the net socio-economic benefits from agro-forestry are larger than the net financial benefits ad socio-economic optimal free rotation is larger than the financial optimal free rotation. Presently, agro-forestry seems to provide one of the quickest means if increasing the country’s forest areas. Due to smallholdings of the farmers, tree planting by individual farmer seems feasible and perhaps the only solution to the widespread scarcities of firewood and fodder.

Agro-forestry, through whips up rural economy without effecting the agricultural yields, yet the choice of trees species and a general layout of trees and agricultural crops are of vital importance to the ultimate success of this combination. The layout needs to be different and specific for different locations and is influenced by soil type, rainfall, temperature, soil moisture etc. The fact is that a satisfactory knowledge of the attributes of agro-forestry as a land use system is very limited. The quantitative information on the feasibility and potentialities, based on field observations is extremely limited and appropriate methods for assessing the suggested social, economic biological and ecological benefits of agro-forestry in comparison with other forms of land use are not available.

Rural forestry also known as extension forestry aims at bringing community lands under tree cover. It aims to bring community lands. Panchayat lands, road and railway sides, canal banks and degraded areas under vegetative cover of suitable tree species to meet the basic needs of the rural people. Besides rural forestry also leads to cottage industries.

Urban forestry branch of social forestry aims at aesthetic improvement of rural and urban areas besides maintaining environmental balance. It is practiced on road and railway tracksides, parks, school and colleges and house yards.

Wasteland Development:

The term wasteland is now being used as a synonym for degraded lands. It is a general term, which includes any type of land, irrespective of its ownership, which produces less than 20 percent of its optional biological productivity. India has a whopping 130 Mt ha of wastelands, which include degraded forest lands, village common lands, saline/alkaline soils, water logged lands, marine lands, road, rail and canal sides, abandoned mining sites, sand dunes, snow covered peaks, alpine zone, etc., Traditionally, the wastelands are highly degraded due to overgrazing and consequent soil compaction and it’s erosion. This lowers the site quality and reduces percolation of rain in soils quantitatively.

Any strategy to acclaim these must be economically viable, socially acceptable and environmentally sound. Through the wastelands available with India provide the opportunity and hope for making them productive one again, they pose a formidable challenge at the same time most of these areas are unsuitable for agricultural purposes but can be developed through afforestation which gradually stabilizes and improves the soil conditions and improves their productivity. Besides they serve numerous other needs of rural people like fuel-wood and fodder. Productive use of these lands can be made if vegetative cover of trees/shrubs or grasses and legume fodder or a combination of both is developed. This calls for proper planning from selection of site to the distribution of the produce. In 1985, Government of India launched the wasteland development programme with a view to bring 5 Mt ha of wasteland under forest tree plantations annually. This programme was launched because of (a) Ecological crisis caused by deforestation and land degradation and (b) Socio-economic crisis caused by acute shortage of fuel-wood and fodder. Wasteland available for afforestation are in different climatic namely, tropical, sub-tropical, temperate and alpine and thus have very diverse soil and climatic conditions. Suitable tree/shrub species, their combinations and appropriate technologies for different regions have to be selected very carefully, keeping in mind all the limiting factors and demands of the local population. The afforestation of wastelands will bring immediate benefit in terms of rural employment besides meeting the basic fuel needs of rural population and will also encourage wood based cottage industries. The tremendous pressure on existing forests would also case down substantially.

Joint Forest Management Approach:

The concept of Joint Forest Management (JFM), where the Government and the villagers will be the partners in forest development, protection and management. The Basic idea is to afforestation by people’s participation and help and make it a people’s movement. The approach is to work through local bodies like general body. Forest protection committee/Van Samrakshana samiti (VSS) and a management committee. The Officials of the forest departments will be involved with a view to give technical guidance and development support. The JFM scheme has clearly laid out constitution and well-defined roles and responsibilities of the officials and the various constituted local bodies. The work plans are prepared jointly and are implemented in accordance with set rules/norms.

The VSS will have their usufructuary rights, provided it discharges its duties and responsibilities cast upon them under the rules. It shall be within the competence of VSS acting through its managing Committee to assign the shares of the usufruct, equitably among its members. For the purpose of usufructuary rights, each household is treated as one member. The members of VSS only will be allowed to have access to collect from the forest his/her share of usufruct.

Role of Extension:

Wasteland development and social forestry movements call for willing participation of people and their very nature demands tremendous amount of extension work. Gestation period for forest crops is generally difficult to convince an unwilling farmers practicing subsistence farming to try even a short rotation species. Institutionalized extension activities by right professionals and with right appeal to the common man are limited in the social forestry progrmames. There has not been any major breakthrough in technology of tree planting nor has there been imaginative extension activities to catch people’s attention and to enthus them to take it up in a large scale (Muthuraman, 1994). Small scale region based research works in this respect have been conducted by various universities, state forest departments and other organizations. There is a need to assemble and process these relevant results and technologies so evolved, into handy forms, region-wise to be used by trained extension personnel to make social forestry a people’s movement in its true spirit. Significant advances have been made in the field of genetics and biotechnology of trees, but it has not reached in farmers fields due to lack of extension back up. Thus it would appear that one of the imminent needs in social forestry is to build up a good research backed extension system by drawing upon the best available extension expertise in the country and abroad.

The mass media have been playing an useful role in educating people about the needs for the fuel wood energy, but a lot more of required of them. With the advent of television, besides radio and newspaper, a lot can be achieved by developing video cassettes on important themes to be used by the extension agencies.

In most developing countries women gather fuel, wood fodder and often clear farm land. Thus having most direct relationship with forests participation of women in decision making regarding forest management has been negligible in most societies which is a crucial factor to be considered.

Fuel efficient devices and Alternate sources of Energy:

Fuel saving and efficiency increasing technologies like smokeless’ chulhas’ pressure cookers, solar cookers, biogas and fuel efficient cremation structures, etc., need further impetus and vigorous campaigning to reach the remotest corners of the country. Extension of basic rural infrastructural facilities like electricity, water, hospitals, roads, etc., should also be promoted. It has been the general experience that access to electricity reduces dependence on biomass energy even in rural areas. Whenever possible, wind energy, tidal energy and thermal energy should be promoted and harnessed.

Conclusion: The NGO’s and Voluntary Organizations are also contributing significantly at places towards realization of this objective. But still there are several constraints including financial resources and trained manpower. We need manifold efforts if the demand for fuel-wood, including industrial wood and other forest produce is to be met fully on a sustained basis. Technical help should be sought from pioneer countries in wasteland development.

To sustain our environment and also cater to the basic needs of poor people, social forestry and wasteland development offer a feasible long term solution. Barriers between agriculture and forestry need to be removed for integrated land use, leading to joint production of basic inputs for human survival. Various alternate land use systems of agro-forestry are particularly suitable for degraded marginal lands and small farmers. A correct mixture of trees/shrubs (Shelter belts, wind breaks, live hedge or trees on bunds) and crops is know to increase the yield of crops besides meeting fuel and fodder requirements, improvement of soil, conservation of soil moisture, prevention of erosion and moderation of climate. Vast stretches of wasteland available In our the country can be rehabilitated by planting trees/shrubs/grasses or their combination. For the success of the social forestry and wasteland development programme, it has to be made a people’s movement, backed by efficient extension training network based both on time tested and novel technologies which are economically viable, socially acceptable and environmentally sound.

Biblography:

1. Mcconchie J.A. Mckinnon J.M. (2000) Biodiversity (Natural Resource Management) 27-28

2. Khan I. (1987) Wasteland afforestation. Techniques & Systems. Oxford & IBM Pun. Co. Pvt. Ltd., P.165

3. Mahendra A.K. Rai M.P. and Rawat, J.K. (1992) Forest for energy in rural economy Indian forester 118 (4):256-259

4. Muthuraman, P. (1994) Social Forestry programme: Extension Approach, Employment News, New Delhi 11^th Feb., 1-2.

5. Sharma, R.A. and McGregor, M.K. (1984). The Socio economicevaluation of agro-forestry in Orissa (India). Paper presented in the International conference on Agro-forestry. Principals and Practices, Edinburgh.