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Does community-based forest management work in the tropics?
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- To find out if community-based forest management is effective, we read 30 studies that best represent the available evidence. (See the interactive infographic below.)
- Overall, community-based forest management does not appear to make a forest’s condition worse — and may even make it better.
- The evidence on socio-economic benefits is mixed, but what research there is suggests that community-based forest management sometimes aggravates existing inequities within communities.
- This story is part of a special Mongabay series on “Conservation Effectiveness”.
Piles of wood lie in an open area behind the main office of the Arabari Reserve Forest in West Bengal, India. Long logs and cut planks of sal trees ( Shorea robusta ), wet from the incessant rain. The timber is ready to be auctioned, a forest department staffer says, and a portion of the profits will be shared with people living around the forest.
Some of those people reside about a kilometer away, in a village called Sakhisol. Forty-one women from the village have formed a committee that helps the forest department plant and harvest the sal trees and protect the Arabari forest. In return, the committee is entitled to 25 percent of the profit from the sale of the timber and access to forest products, says Anjum Mahato, one of the committee members. “Some of the women are in the forest right now collecting sal leaves [used for making plates and cups] and mushrooms,” she adds.
Mahato, and the three women by her side, seem excited about this partnership. “Women are the ones who usually collect things from the forests, so it’s good that we get to be involved in how Arabari is managed,” she says.
Arabari’s community and forest department partnership isn’t new. It started as an experiment some 45 years ago, and its apparent success sparked the Indian government’s Joint Forest Management (JFM) program, which then spread rapidly. According to the latest figures from 2011, more than 118,000 people’s committees are managing 229,000 square kilometers (88,417 square miles), or nearly a third, of India’s forests. The program also boasts millions of dollars in investment from international aid agencies like the World Bank and the Japan Bank for International Cooperation.
The JFM is often included under the umbrella term “community-based forest management” (CFM), a form of stewardship that, according to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), “increases the role of local people in governing and managing forest resources.”
Like the JFM, scores of other CFM programs have taken shape around the world in the past few decades. These programs go by different names, such as participatory forest management, community forest co-management, or community forest management. And they differ in their rules, goals and practices. But, in general, they all aim to give rural communities roles in sustainably managing their local forests either by letting them partner with the government or by recognizing their rights to access and manage the forest themselves.
On paper, community-based forest management sounds like a good idea and it has garnered strong support internationally. But experts familiar with this conservation strategy have found that while CFM may be succeeding in meeting some of its goals, it fails to achieve others. By reviewing some of the scientific literature on CFM’s impacts, we have tried to tease apart its effectiveness.
Why community-based forest management?
Many of the earlier cases of community-based forest management arose largely due to conflicts between forest-dependent communities and governments — both colonial and postcolonial. These governments assumed all rights to the forests, and either extracted timber from them at industrial scales or converted them to large agro-industries. People who depended on the forests for their traditional livelihoods and cultures lost access.
Over the past few decades, however, governments have been promoting community participation in forest management, largely by decentralizing authority over managing natural resources to local or community governments that are closer to those resources. Some of this newfound support comes from the need to conserve forests, especially when government resources are scarce. There has also been an increasing recognition that many of the world’s poorest people live in areas of very high biodiversity. And that given the opportunity, traditionally forest-dependent communities can ensure that forests are managed sustainably.
“Conventional theories applied to forest resources presumed that forest users themselves were incapable of organizing to overcome the temptations to overharvest,” the late political economist Elinor Ostrom, who won the 2009 Nobel Prize in Economics, wrote in a 1999 paper . “Extensive empirical research, however, has challenged this theory and illustrated the many ways that forest users themselves have devised rules that regulate harvesting patterns so as to ensure the sustainability of forest resources over time.”
Lately, economists and conservationists have begun touting community-based forest management as a way to alleviate poverty as well. They frequently offer the approach as a means to achieving the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals of ending poverty and hunger and reducing ecological degradation by 2030. CFM’s role has also been highlighted in talks about the UN’s global initiative to mitigate climate change known as Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+). The belief here is that REDD+ and CFM overlap substantially in their goals of achieving forest protection and generating socioeconomic benefits for forest-dependent people.
Today, community-based forest management enjoys the support of governments, conservation NGOs and international donor agencies. But does this conservation strategy work? Has CFM delivered on its promise to improve both forests and people’s lives? We try to find out.
State of science on community-based forest management
Studying community-based forest management is tricky. While CFM programs frequently involve shifting the control of forests from the central government to local governments and communities (also referred to as decentralization) to improve forest conditions and benefit people, their details vary widely.
At one end of the CFM spectrum are programs that recognize the local communities’ legal rights to the forest land and grant them all or most of the managerial control of it. At the other end are schemes that offer communities a more passive role. The communities in these cases have little to no control over forests, but instead collaborate or cooperate with the government according to a government-prescribed plan. Some CFM programs allow the communities to collect forest products to sell commercially. Others do not. Even within the same type of government-approved community programs, the extent of people’s participation may vary: some programs demand that all local people be enrolled, others allow voluntary participation.
CFM is now quite popular and has prompted a vast body of scientific literature. Yet most of the studies are plagued by the same problems. Most research on CFM takes the form of case reports that simply describe changes that have occurred in a community-managed forest. These can be useful, but they don’t say much about whether the changes were caused by the implementation of CFM or by other factors. Most research is also short-term or very localized, focusing on one forest or one community, which makes it difficult to find patterns or make generalizable conclusions about CFM’s effectiveness.
Few studies actually try to rigorously understand the effectiveness of CFM by comparing community-managed forests with an alternative scenario, referred to as a counterfactual. The counterfactual could be, say, an open-access forest with no form of community management. Studies like these bring us closer to understanding if any changes — lower deforestation rates, for example — are caused by the adoption of community-based forest management or something else, like a change in national forest policy or weather fluctuations.
That said, the quality and quantity of CFM studies seem to be improving. “I think there has been a concerted effort to be more rigorous with regard to assessing impact and a number of studies have tried to look critically at conservation effectiveness [of CFM],” Tom Blomley, director of U.K.-based Acacia Natural Resource Consultants, who has over 20 years of experience working on CFM projects in Africa, told Mongabay.
But most studies, even the rigorous ones, tend to focus on one or few easy-to-measure outcomes, such as forest cover.
“Most studies have tended to focus on effectiveness from a conservation or forest management perspective, that is, does CFM improve forests?” Blomley added. “What is needed is to expand this to look into issues such as livelihoods and governance benefits… as well as wider issues of political economy.”
But trying to get at the social impacts of CFM is hard. Communities are rarely homogenous. People within the same communities may have different economic statuses, occupations or religions. They hold divergent views of the forest and depend on different resources from it. All of this can affect how CFM benefits them. But studies often fail to capture these differences.
Even when measuring similar outcomes, studies use different methodologies, making comparisons between them difficult. Some researchers use satellite imagery to measure changes in forest cover, for example, while others interview the local people to understand their perceptions of forest change.
How we reviewed available evidence
Community-based forest management means different things to different people. Some experts define CFM narrowly, considering only those programs that allow communities full managerial rights and/or ownership of forests to be true forms of CFM. For them, partnerships or collaborations do not count. Other experts, including the FAO, include the entire gamut — from complete community ownership to government-led initiatives — within their definitions of community-based forestry.
For our analysis we defined CFM broadly as any form of decentralized forest management in which people who have a direct stake in forest resources are involved in at least some aspects of forest management.
Since the literature on CFM is vast, we have restricted our review to English-language studies of countries located, at least in part, in the tropics, because that is the focus of our series. Nepal, despite its long history of community-based forest management, is not part of our review since it lies outside the tropics. We have also excluded studies that ask a different form of question, such as what determines the success of CFM rather than what the outcomes of CFM are. Neither have we included studies that compare community-based forest management with another form of forest management strategy, such as a strict protected area. While such studies can be incredibly useful to know what strategy works better in a given context, they don’t answer our question: Does CFM achieve its goals of improving forest health and locals’ wellbeing?
Overall, we found 30 relevant peer-reviewed scientific studies on Google Scholar, including two systematic reviews. (Read more about our methodology here ; you can access all 30 studies we reviewed here .)
Among the studies looking into CFM’s effectiveness in the tropics, 11 were “case reports”. While these studies did not rigorously compare community-managed forests with an alternative scenario, they offered useful insights into the changes that have occurred in the forests and the forest-dependent communities since the implementation of a CFM program. The case reports also typically reported people’s perceptions.
We also found 12 well-designed studies that rigorously compared CFM with an alternative scenario (called “Study III” in the “Select type of evidence” pull-down menu of the infographic). These studies either compared a forest managed under a CFM program with a local or state forest not exposed to any form of community management; a forest or community before and after a CFM program began; or participating communities with communities that were not part of any CFM program. Three of these studies were countrywide assessments offering a glimpse of CFM’s effectiveness across a landscape.
Our review is not exhaustive , but we consider the studies we have included to represent a reasonably good sampling of the existing literature.
The scientific evidence on community-based forest management
Is community-based management better for forests.
Possibly. In countries that lie at least partly in the tropics, where we focused our review, community-based forest management seems to maintain forest conditions and not worsen them.
Take, for example, deforestation and forest degradation, two of the most commonly studied environmental outcomes of community-based forest management. Nearly all of the 16 studies looking into CFM’s impacts on deforestation and forest degradation found that community-managed forests had either lower or similar rates of deforestation compared to openly accessible forests not under any formal community management. On the surface, this suggests that community-based forest management does not make a forest worse — and may even make it better.
But that’s not the whole story.
Forests are not alike. They differ in terms of where they are located, the biodiversity they harbor, and the forestry policies that govern them. Governments may allow felling of trees, livestock grazing, or collection of firewood in some forests, for example. They may even permit the conversion of certain forest lands to plantations or agricultural farms. In other forest areas, felling of trees or other activities may be completely prohibited. So regardless of how forests are managed — by communities or otherwise — some forests are more likely to undergo deforestation than others simply because of the differences in forestry policies. “Deforestation” alone then does not capture the scale of the problem.
For example, a recent landscape-level study from Indonesia found that community-managed village forests (called hutan desa ) on the islands of Sumatra and Kalimantan (the Indonesian portion of Borneo) had lower deforestation rates compared to non-hutan desa sites with similar characteristics. But the deforestation rates varied a lot across the landscape and forest types and between years.
Hutan desa granted on forests where substantial conversion to plantations or agricultural lands is allowed — or forests that face greater degradation — had much higher deforestation rates compared to those given on forests where little to no conversion is allowed. Deforestation rates were especially high for forests on peat soils because these forests face long dry seasons and are vulnerable to fire. In short, village forests that were already degraded, or had higher risks of fire or other climatic fluctuations, performed worse than forests that were better protected and less degraded to begin with.
These results can give governments insight into where to invest in community forestry, the study’s lead researcher, Truly Santika of the University of Queensland, Australia, told Mongabay. It is better not to focus on certain areas that have high anthropogenic pressure, she said.
Co-author Erik Meijaard, a conservation biologist who coordinates the Borneo Futures Initiative, agreed. “It is very context-dependent. And the government needs to be careful in recognizing this rather than making sweeping statements like community forests work in protecting forests,” he said.
Another well-designed countrywide study , from Madagascar, found that levels of deforestation in community-managed forests were similar to those in non-community-managed forests, suggesting that Madagascar’s CFM programs have not really brought about the conservation benefits they had promised. But this does not mean that CFM has failed in Madagascar, Ranaivo Rasolofoson of the University of Copenhagen, who led the study, told Mongabay. “While our studies show that CFM did not achieve its objectives to reduce deforestation, our results also do not support that, on average, deforestation got worse because of CFM.”
One reason for the minimal conservation success of Malagasy CFM, according to Rasolofoson, is that different CFM stakeholders have diverging objectives that are difficult to reconcile. Poor law enforcement and corruption because of the country’s prevailing political instability have also impeded CFM’s potential from being realized, as have low rates of community participation, he added.
“In the few CFM sites I visited, CFM is there but only few people are engaged in it,” Rasolofoson said. “The majority of the local people continue their lives as usual without worrying about or paying much attention to CFM.”
India’s Joint Forest Management program has a similar problem of not being really “joint”. For some villages near West Bengal’s Arabari, for example, the JFM program has faded from memory.
“The forest department does nothing to spread awareness about the forest or the JFM committees,” said Ranajit Ghosh, the 50-year-old head of the elected council of Duki village. Duki is a member of one of the oldest JFM committees in the Arabari Reserve Forest. “Payments are infrequent and very little,” he said. “None of our requests have been fulfilled. So people are no longer interested in the committees or in protecting the forest. Many are now even beginning to forget that the JFM committee even exists.”
Sharachchandra Lélé, a senior fellow at the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment in Bangalore, India, said that this problem is common across India’s JFM programs. “And if people’s participation in JFM programs is minimal, then the outcomes of forest [conditions] become irrelevant to the program,” he said. “So when you say the green cover has increased, it is not because of the participatory management program. It is a result of an imposed afforestation program by the forest department.”
In fact, Lélé does not consider India’s JFM to be a form of community-based forest management at all. Instead, he pointed to van panchayats , a type of community-managed forest in the Indian central Himalayas, where the power to manage and use a forest lies mainly with the local villages and not the local or central governments. These van panchayats formed in the 1930s following large-scale protests by local people at the British government’s attempts to take control of forests.
The van panchayats seem to be working. Two studies published in 2009 and 2010 found that degradation in these community-managed forests is either lower than or similar to that in state forests. And the van panchayats achieve these conservation benefits at much lower costs than the state forests.
Other studies from Africa and the Americas also have found that CFM is usually associated with either no or minimal benefits when it comes to reducing deforestation or forest degradation. One exception seems to be Mexico. A 2012 study that compared effects of CFM in Bolivia, Kenya, Mexico and Uganda found that only Mexico’s community forestry was associated with considerably better forest conditions.
Mexico’s success could be a result of its long history of granting communities rights over forest land, said David Barton Bray of Florida International University, an expert on Mexico’s community forestry. Many of the community forests are also located at higher altitudes, have lower population densities, or have commercially valuable trees like pine and oak, which might be leading to better management, Bray added.
The prevalence of illegal logging is yet another indicator of how well communities, or community-government partnerships, manage forests. Only a handful of studies measured this, and they found that levels of illegal logging were either lower in forests under CFM or the same as in state-managed forests. Biodiversity is also often a good measure of a forest’s health, but again, few studies have looked into biodiversity levels in community-managed forests — a striking omission, considering that hunting is one of the main ways communities use their forests.
Apart from improving forest conditions, CFM hopes to ensure sustainable use of forests. But there is very little research on whether community-managed forests are actually sustainable over the long run.
“That is a major data gap, driven by confusion over what is ‘sustainable management’,” said Lélé. Researchers typically look at tree or canopy cover when they study community-managed forests, he added, which means they are imposing a value on the forest that the communities are not using as a goal. “The communities’ goal is to have a sustained flow of products or services from the forest that will enhance their livelihoods,” he said. “They want firewood, fodder, timber. Unfortunately, there are only a few well-designed studies that look at how extraction affects each forest product, how it changes the forest.”
Is community-based forest management socially beneficial for people?
The results are mixed.
A commonly stated goal of community-based forest management is to improve the livelihoods and well-being of forest-dependent people. But whether CFM really achieves this is unclear.
A 2009 study , for example, found that communities that were part of community-based forest management schemes in Kenya and Tanzania did perceive some improvements in their livelihoods and well-being, such as better availability of medicinal plants or better health status. But they saw no gains in other important aspects of their well-being like food security or household assets. Another countrywide study from Madagascar by Rasolofoson and his colleagues found that, overall, involvement in community-based forest management did not significantly improve participants’ well-being. But the study did find some differences: benefits were higher for communities living closer to the forest edge compared to those living farther away.
Effective community-based forest management strategies are also seen as a way for local populations to make their voices heard. Many believe that CFM empowers local communities by giving them the ability to create rules about forest management, to implement those rules, or to settle disputes. The few studies that have looked at this aspect found that communities participating in CFM had either better or similar levels of involvement when it comes to making rules or solving problems, compared to non-CFM communities.
Another push for CFM has come from the growing belief that communities have a right to manage their forests as a democratic principle, since their livelihoods depend on it. Some hope that community-based forest management will lead to better land tenure : that is, more secure formal or informal rights to the forest land, and institutions that uphold those rights. And that more secure land tenure will lead to better outcomes for both forests and forest-dependent people. But there is limited research that directly measures CFM’s impacts on land tenure.
A recent systematic review led by Johanne Pelletier of Woods Hole Research Center in Massachusetts did look at the question of land security more broadly, though. It included improvements in land ownership, access and use rights, or health and education through infrastructure development, and found that CFM was associated with many of these benefits.
One problem with research trying to examine the social benefits of CFM, however, is that different studies measure different outcomes. This makes it difficult to discern a general pattern.
We did see one common thread emerge from these studies, though: where benefits are available, they tend to be inequitably distributed and CFM programs often even worsen existing inequities.
A number of factors could contribute to this. For example, CFM decision-making bodies tend to be dominated by wealthier or more powerful community members, while excluding women, poorer people and younger men, which could perpetuate social inequality, experts say. Different community members may also have different needs from the forest, which again influences how forest restrictions affect their livelihoods.
For instance, some community forests allow participants to gather only a small, fixed amount of firewood. Wealthier households may be able to supplement their firewood needs from large areas of land they own or by buying alternative sources of energy like gas or electricity. But poorer households that own small patches of land, or none at all, may be more adversely affected by restrictions imposed by CFM.
“In some cases, communities have been accessing timber, firewood and other forest products from open access areas, which includes government forests as they are largely unpoliced,” Blomley said. “This extraction, while providing local benefits, is often at unsustainable levels. So the imposition of new rules from participatory forest management may ironically reduce local benefits as forests need time to recover before sustainable management can be introduced.”
Is community-based forest management economically beneficial for people?
We don’t know yet because the evidence is limited.
Community-based forest management is frequently included in countries’ rural development strategies to reduce poverty. But what little evidence there is suggests that CFM’s effect on economic benefits is, again, mixed. Some communities do see improvements in incomes from forest products or forest-related activities compared to communities that aren’t part of a CFM program. Some others become worse off. The latter is especially true for communities that are heavily dependent on forests and face greater restrictions on forest use than before. So economic benefits from CFM tend to be, again, very context-dependent.
Profits are also hard to come by. In Brazil, for example, communities managing forests for timber rarely see substantial profits, a 2015 study found. In fact, the annual profits earned by the households in the study were, on an average, lower than the minimum annual Brazilian salary. One reason for this, the authors write, is that communities are small and lack the necessary capital to cover pre-harvesting and harvesting costs. Market conditions are also still unfavorable for CFM projects, they add. Local sawmills are still supplied by illegal sources, for example, which pushes timber prices down.
As with social benefits, a common finding across many studies looking at economic benefits is that CFM programs tend to worsen existing inequities.
Pelletier’s 2016 systematic review, that focused on CFM in developing countries, found that community forestry is associated with increased inequitable distribution of wealth. So poorer households often become poorer; men tend to earn more from CFM-related activities than women; and people with formal rights to the forest land tend to benefit more than landless members of the community.
To counter this, steps must be taken to increase transparency and accountability of elected representatives of the communities, Blomley said, referring to Tanzania’s participatory forest management. “Without this, it is quite possible that more educated and richer persons — often represented on the committee — will get proportionally more benefits than poorer households.”
Some CFM projects have found a way out of this dynamic, however. In a small, recently formed community reserve in northeastern India, members of the Bugun tribe use part of their profits for community development, Umesh Srinivasan, a postdoctoral researcher at Princeton University, told Mongabay. The Singchung Bugun Village Community Reserve is the only place in the world where the critically endangered Bugun liocichla ( Liocichla bugunorum ) is known to live.
“Bird tourism is huge there now because of the discovery of the species,” Srinivasan said. “Although so far there has been no real formal benefit-sharing mechanism, tour operators from the Bugun community have been sharing portion of their profits with the village council. The funds have been used to give scholarships to children, for taking care of medical expenses, or for funding traditional festivals. Now, with the establishment of the community reserve, a more formal management plan and more equitable benefit-sharing mechanism is in the cards.”
Similarly, in Mexico, wealthier communities, instead of distributing money to individual households, tend to reinvest their profits into public goods, Bray said. “It could be in the form of potable water systems, computer for schools, lighting for the town,” he added.
Still, it remains difficult to say whether such redistribution of economic benefits is fair or not.
The body of scientific literature on community-based forest management is considerable. But only a few studies have actually tried to look at the strategy’s effectiveness. What research does exist tells only part of the story.
For instance, community-based forest management does not seem to worsen deforestation when compared to open-access forests. But we still don’t know whether the management strategy is truly sustainable.
The evidence for socio-economic outcomes is also limited. While some studies suggest that community-based forest management improves community livelihoods and well-being, and can also provide economic benefits, these studies are largely incomparable because they measure different outcomes using different methodologies. There does, however, seem to be a pattern suggesting that community-based forest management can aggravate existing inequalities — both social and economic — within the communities.
Moreover, available research is not always clear about the extent to which communities are actually involved in CFM programs. This makes it difficult to tease out the true effectiveness of such strategies.
Overall, though, there has been an uptick in well-designed studies in the past few years.
This is good news. Community-based forest management has been touted as a one-stop solution for everything from improving forest health to reducing poverty. As rigorously designed studies grow in number, it might become easier to predict when and where a CFM program is likely to work and to design programs to maximize the benefits and minimize the drawbacks. But to achieve this, researchers might need to reach a consensus about what outcomes to measure, and which methodologies to follow. Only then will a clearer picture emerge.
Writer: Shreya Dasgupta, Researcher: Zuzana Burivalova Editors: Rebecca Kessler, Mike Gaworecki Copyeditor: Hayat Indriyatno Infographic: Zuzana Burivalova, GreenInfo Network
This is part three in the Mongabay series Conservation Effectiveness. Read the other stories in the series here .
Banner image: A member of the Dani ethnic group in Papua province, Indonesia. Photo by Rhett A. Butler.
Follow Shreya Dasgupta on Twitter: @ShreyaDasgupta
Editor’s note: Reviews conducted for this series are not exhaustive, and we encourage authors of research that is relevant to post links to their study in the comments section under each article. We are currently working on a strategy to maintain and update the database periodically.
Editor’s note 5/13/21: We have updated this story to reflect the fact that additional studies have been added to the infographic since this story was originally published.
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| JOINT FOREST MANAGEMENT | |
| INTRODUCTION |
The foresters had long been working with the forest dwellers through the taungya system of cultivation under which the agriculture crops were raised alongwith the forest plantations for a few years. Joint Forest Management (JFM) programme in the present form can be traced to the Arabari experiment initiated by foresters in the state of West Bengal. This experiment provided a strong feedback for incorporation of the system in the National Forest Policy of 1988. In many locations people’s voluntary groups were engaged in protection of forests without any initiative from the Government. Subsequently, based on the experience, the process of institutionalizing people’s participation in forest protection and regeneration began. This type of collective endeavour in protection and management of forests through people’s involvement was later termed as Joint Forest Management.
| STRENGTHENING OF JFM |
As per the provisions of National Forest Policy 1988, the Government of India, vide letter NO.6.21/89-PP dated 1st June, 1990, outlined and conveyed to State Governments a framework for creating massive people’s movement through involvement of village committees for the protection, regeneration and development of degraded forest lands. This gave impetus to the participation of stakeholders in the management of degraded forests situated in the vicinity of villages. The joint forest management programme in the country is structured on the broad framework provided by the guidelines issued by the Ministry. So far, during the last ten years, 27 State Governments have adopted resolutions for implementing the JFM programme in their respective states. As on 15.8.2001, 14254845.95 ha of forests lands are being managed under JFM programme through 62890 committees. The JFM programme in the country was reviewed by Government of India from time to time in consultation with State Governments, NGO’s and other stakeholders in view of several emerging issues. In order to further strengthen the programme, the State Governments may take action on the following suggested lines.
A) Legal backup to the JFM committees i) At present, the JFM committees are being registered under different names in various States as per the provisions contained in the resolutions. Except in a few States where the committees are registered under the relevant acts in most of the states there is no legal back up for these committees. It is therefore, necessary that all the State Governments register the JFM or village committees under the Societies Registration Act, 1860 to provide them with legal back up. This may be completed by 31st March, 2000. Completion of such formation of existing JFM committees may please be reported to this Ministry. ii) There are different nomenclatures for the JFM committees in different States. It would be better if these committees are known uniformly as JFM committees (JFMC) in all the states. Memorandum of Understanding, with clearly defined roles and responsibilities for different work or areas should be separately assigned and signed between the State Governments and the committees. All adults of the village should be eligible to become members of the JFM Committees.
B) Participation of women in the JFM programme: Considering the immense potential and genuine need for women’s participation in JFM programme, following guidelines are suggested for ensuring meaningful participation of women in JFM. i) Atleast 50% members of the JFM general body should be women. For the general body meeting, the presence of atleast 50% women members should be a prerequisit for holding the general body meeting.
ii) Atleast 33% of the membership in the JFM Executive Committee/ Management Committee should be filled from amongst the women members. The quorum for holding meeting of such Executive/ Management Committee should be one-third of women executive members or a minimum of one whichever is more. One of the posts of office bearer i.e. President/ Vice-President/ Secretary should be filled by a women members of the Committee.
C) Extension of JFM in good forest areas For better resource planning and collective management distance from the village and dependency on forests should be the main criteria for allowing JFM programme to operate. Therefore, JFM programme should cover both the degraded as well as good forests (except the protected area network). The microplan or treatment plan and memorandum on understanding should be different for degraded forests and good forests (crown density above 40%). In good forest areas, the JFM activities would concentrate on NTFP management and no alternation should be permitted in the basic silvicultural prescription prescribed in the Working Plan but to promote regeneration, development and sustainable harvesting of NTFP which can be given free or on concessional rates as per existing practice in degraded areas under JFM. The benefit sharing mechanism will also be different for the good forest areas. The JFM committees will be eligible for benefit sharing for timber, only if they have satisfactorily protected the good forests for a minimum period of at least 10 years and the sharing percentage should be kept limited to a maximum of 20% of the revenue from the final harvest. The felling of trees and harvesting of timber will be as per the provisions of the working plan. A certain percentage of revenue from final harvest should be ploughed back in the silviculture & management of the forests. The extent of good forest areas to be allowed will depend upon the number of village household and should be restricted to a maximum limit of 100 ha and generally limited to 2 km from the village boundary. For degraded forests also as far as possible JFM should be first concentrated on areas upto 5 km from the village boundary. The implementation of JFM in good forest areas shall be done in a phased manner on pilot basis. The pilot areas may be monitored closely for a few years and based on the feedback and success achieved the programme can be extended further in consultation with the Central Government. Before allowing the good forests on pilot basis, all the degraded forests of that locality should be covered simultaneously.
D) Preparation of microplan in JFM areas: i ) In case of new working plans a JFM overlapping working circle should be provided to incorporate broad provisions for micro plans. To achieve this flexible guidelines should be evolved for preparation of local need based micro plans. For this purpose, the working plan officer will work in tandem with the territorial DFO and CF for finalisation of the prescriptions of the JFM overlapping working circle. The micro plans should be prepared by the Forest Officers and Village Forest Protection Committees after detailed PRA exercise and should reflect the consumption and livelihood needs of the local communities as well as provisions for meeting the same sustainably. It should utilize locally available knowledge as well as aim to strengthen the local institutions. It should also take into account marketing linkages for better return of NTFPs to the gatherers and should also reflect the needs of local industries/ markets. This should be done with due regards to the environmental functions and productive potentials of the forests and their carrying capacity as also their conservation and biodiversity values.
ii) In areas where the existing working plans are in force (till their revision in future), for incorporation of micro plans in the working plans, a special order may be issued by the PCCFs for implementation of the microplan. In these areas, micro plan should aim at ensuring a multi product and more NTFP oriented approach. Without changing the basic principles of silviculture, deviations may be approved in the existing working plans if necessary. To ensure this, the concerned DFO and CF should dovetail the requirements of micro plans with the working plans. iii) The micro plan should also take into consideration and provide suitable advice for areas planted/ to be planted on community lands and other Government lands outside the notified forest areas including in the district council areas of North East.
iv) Infrastructure/ Ecodevelopment under micro plan should form a separate entity for funding it through concerned development agencies.
E) Conflict resolution In order to resolve conflicts in the functioning of JFM committees and to maintain harmony among different groups participating in the JFM, State Governments may constitute divisional and state level representative forums or working groups. This forum/ group should include representatives from all the stakeholders including NGOs. The model prescribed by the Andhra Pradesh Government for this purpose is a case in point for consideration.
F) Recognition of Self-initiated groups The community groups in many places in Orissa, Bihar, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka are performing the essential functions of forest protection and regeneration. These groups need to be identified, recognized and registered as JFM Committees after proper verification of records and enquiry. The period of their existence and duties performed for protection and regeneration should be suitable assessed and proper weightage given to them for deriving benefits under the JFM programme.
G) Contribution for Regeneration of Resoruces: For long term sustainability of resources, it is essential that a mechanism is created for ploughing back a certain percentage of the revenue earned from final harvest. For this purpose, no less than 25% of the share of village community should be deposited in the village development fund for meeting the conservation and development from its share of such sales. There should be transparent mechanisms for computation of income for sharing the benefits between different stakeholders.
H) Monitoring and Evaluation Concurrent monitoring of progress and performance of this programme should be undertaken at Division and State Level. Evaluation of the programme should be planned at an interval of 3 years and 5 years at Division and State level respectively.
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Joint Forest Management (JFM) in India
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This article provides notes on Joint Forest Management (JFM) in India.
In 1971, a small experiment over 1250 of degraded forests called Arabari Socio Economic experiment was initiated in Arabari Range, East Midnapore Division of West Bengal.
The objective of the experiment was to see whether the degrading forests in the area could be rehabilitated with fringe people (616 families) participating in its protection in lieu of certain forest benefits that they would be legally entitled to including a 25% share of the net income from the final felling of the forest.
The experiment showed a remarkable recovery of die forest, which encouraged the fringe people of other degrading forest areas to start protecting blocks of forest next to them. The Government of West Bengal agreed in 1987 to the promised 25% share of the net income to the people in lieu of the efforts made by them to protect the Arabari experimental area.
As a means for forest management Government of India replicated this order with certain modification requesting the states to follow this order. JFM was adopted by most of the states and by today about 27 states have issued the orders. After the adoption of new Forest Policy of 1988, JFM considered at a national model for forest management. By 2000, JFM covered 10.24 million ha managed jointly by the 36130 committees.
Major important features of JFM are as follows:
1. It is a decentralised forest management operation where usually a small forest block is associated with the people living on its fringe.
2. A committee called Forest Protection Committee (FPC or with different names in different states) is constituted of one or two members (one male and one female) from each family of the village. This committee with the local Forest Department jointly manages the forest block.
3. A small executive committee constitutes of members of the village and some local official and a Panchayat member. The local forester generally acts as the secretary of the committee. The committee runs the routine management of the forest and discusses with the FPC when any important decision is required.
4. A micro-plan is prepared jointly. The plan incorporates the measures and works that would be undertaken to manage the forest for a specific period of time after which it would come for revision.
5. In lieu of the responsibility taken over by the village people, the FPC would be entitled to some benefits of the forest products (generally all of non-timber forest products) and a significant share of the income from final felling of the forest.
The Government of India reviewed the JFM progress in the country during 1999-2000 and after wider consultation with all the stakeholders decided to further strengthen it and on February 21,2000 fresh guidelines were issued to all the State Governments.
The circular inter alia provides:
(a) Legal backup to the JFM committees.
(b) 50% members of the General Body and 33% in the Executive Body with at least one office bearer being a woman.
(c) Extension of JFM in good forests areas (crown density above 40%) with sharper focus on activities concentrating on NTFP management.
(d) Recognition to self-initiated groups.
(e) Conflict resolution mechanism.
(f) Integration of micro-plan with the working plan.
(g) Contribution for regeneration of resources.
(h) Monitoring and evaluation.
In a new innovative policy initiative for involving the JFM Committees in integrated land development and employment generation activities, State Governments have been requested by the Government of India to constitute Forest Development Agencies (FDAs) as federation of these institutions at the district level.
The FDAs will registered bodies legally and will be funded for carrying out afforestation and regeneration activities in tandem with other rural development and employment generation programmes. This will not only ensure regeneration of forests but also decentralisation of administrative powers and genuine participation of people in resource management.
During the last six decades, around 35 million hectares of land has been planted under various national programmes in private land only with a survival rate of 60 to 70%. Subsequently with public initiatives, since 1980s several other categories of forests were developed viz., social forestry/Farm forestry/Agroforestry for reduction of population pressure on natural forest.
In some areas industry has also developed linkages with the local farmers by supplying planting materials, technical advice and making buy-back arrangements. Today over 20 million hectare of forest (Trees) cover exists in farm land only.
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Environmental Biology , Forest Ecology , India , Joint Forest Management
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THE JOINT FOREST MANAGEMENT ACTIVITY TAKEN IN ARABARI ,WEST BENGAL HAS A MAJOR ROLE IN ENVIORNMENTAL HISTORY IN INDIA
Joint Forest Management(JFM) originated in West Bengal in 1980's in India. JFM is the official and popular term in India for partnerships in forest movement involving both the state forest departments and local communities This paper is an attempt to critically survey the movement for Joint Forest Management(JFM) at Arabari, West Bengal. The study commences with a description of the policy context in which Joint Forest Management got initiated at Arabari. It considers the 1980s to have effected a paradigm shift in India's forest policy and legislations. The passage of the Forest Conservation Act in 1980 was followed by a host of measures to unleash a forest conservation movement in India based on local community support. The National Forest Policy of 1988 marked the first effort to set the pace for community participation in forest management. In June 1990, the Government of India issued a circular to give effect to the provisions of the National Forest Policy 1988 in this regard. Joint Forest Management was thus born in India. The background of Arabari ,and the steps taken by that time which leads to a miracle and the current status also discussed in this paper.
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This article demonstrates that the resistance movement of forest communities in western Midnapore division in West Bengal, which acted as a key precursor to the joint forest management (JFM) programmes in India through a June 1990 Ministry of Environment and Forests circular, was based to a large extent on the successful experience of JFM in Arabari Hills under this division. In this particular locality, the resistance movement of forest communities had been mobilized for a long time by poor forest communities fighting for their community rights to forest resources as a matter of immediate survival, opposing top-down approaches to forest management. A detailed study of the existing four Forest Protection Committees (FPCs) of this area confirms that these immediate survival needs, generating mainly sustenance and income from non-timber forest products (NTFPs) for FPC members, are the key element for the long-term sustainability of a JFM system.
Spatial Modeling in Forest Resources Management
Sudipta Kumar Maiti
Moutrisha Ganguly
The Indian Forest Policy of 1988 (MoEF,GoI.1988) and the subsequent government resolution on participatory forest management (MoEF,GoI.1990) emphasize the need for Community-based programme in forest management, which is popularly known as Joint Forest Management(JFM) programme in India. The basic objectives of the programme are proper management and conservation of forests, improving the livelihoods of forest dweller communities and reducing rural poverty. West Bengal is the pioneer state in India in introducing Joint Forest Management has come a long way in 1971-72 at Arabari research station in Midnapore district. The present paper concludes that balance between sustainability of the Joint Forest Management (JFM) Programme and Forest dwellers participation for protection of forest in South West Bengal.
Rucha Ghate
Deepak Singh
Environmental Management
Prateep Nayak
Provides a brief account of the development of the Joint Forest Management Scheme in India, especially in West Bengal, the state where joint forest management has been most widely adopted and which provided the genesis of the scheme that was adopted as part of India's Forest Policy 1988. The development, nature of and rationale for the scheme are discussed. Results to a survey of household heads in villages in the neighbourhood of state forests in the Midnapore region of West Bengal are reported. The survey provides information about the dependence of villagers on forest resources, the sustainability of current forest use as perceived by villagers, and reports their views about forest management issues, including the Joint Forest Management Scheme. The concerns of villagers about joint forest management are identified and analysed. It is suggested that some writers have been too ready to promote the sustainability and social welfare benefits of joint forest management as now pra...
Clement Tisdell
Provides a brief account of the development of the Joint Forest Management Scheme in India, especially in West Bengal, the state where joint forest management has been most widely adopted and which provided the genesis of the scheme that was adopted as part of India’s Forest Policy 1988. The development, nature of and rationale for the scheme are discussed. Results to a survey of household heads in villages in the neighbourhood of state forests in the Midnapore region of West Bengal are reported. The survey provides information about the dependence of villagers on forest resources, the sustainability of current forest use as perceived by villagers, and reports their views about forest management issues, including the Joint Forest Management Scheme. The concerns of villagers about joint forest management are identified and analysed. It is suggested that some writers have been too ready to promote the sustainability and social welfare benefits of joint forest management as now practiced. Some of its important limitations are identified. While it is preferable to open-access, the system in India is as yet deficient in terms of communal and social management.
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Wealth of forests withheld
Some 40 years ago an experiment began in Arabari forest range of West Bengal that caught the fancy of the nation. The forest authorities roped in the people living in the area in regenerating degraded forests. In return they offered them a share in forest resources and revenue. It worked. Two decades later the Centre adopted the Arabari model to start the Joint Forest Management programme. The response was such that today it involves 25 million people.
Madhya Pradesh set out on a generous note. The state’s 1990 JFM resolution promised 20 per cent of the net profit from the felling of timber to forest protection committees in case of dense forest and 30 per cent of the net profit in the case of degraded forests. In 2001 in an unprecedented move, the government promised the committees the entire net profit from timber and bamboo in degraded forests. The new mechanism also laid down that half the money will be distributed among the members, while the rest will be used for forest and village resource development. Such an attractive proposition drew 16 million people into forest conservation and today 70 per cent of the state’s forest is covered under JFM. Harvest time has come and gone but the residents of Sitarampeth village in Chandrapur district did not get a penny in return for protecting nearly 300 ha of reserve forest for over a decade. “No valuation has ever been done of the work done by us,” says Rambhau Dhande, a resident. The forest department has taken away the entire stock of timber without giving the community a share in it. Now the residents keep an eye on the 25 ha of teak plantation raised under JFM. It is ready for thinning. “We would like to fell teak for our own needs, but we dare not for fear of retribution from the department,” says resident Gomaji Naitam. The village of bamboo artisans has nurtured another 25 ha plantation of bamboo and other species but people are not allowed to cut bamboo for their own use. Beyond Jethiabhai Basawa’s mud house in the foothills of Aravali extends a 75-hectare patch of barren land. It was once lush bamboo forest worth Rs 9 lakh. After joining the JFM programme in 1996, his village Munkapada in Rajpipla district had nurtured it in the hope of making some money. But in 2003, the forest department allowed a paper mill to harvest the forest for a payment of Rs 36,748. “This is sheer injustice,” says Jethiabhai. “The village spent years patrolling the forest.” The concept of JFM is alluring enough to keep people engaged in conservation for years. But when it comes to sharing the fruits it is a practical joke. For every hundred rupees earned from timber sale a JFM committee usually gets only Rs 17.5 in cash, thanks to the forest department’s talent for developing a benefit-sharing formula guaranteed to deliver skewed results. Implementation of JFM programmes is expensive. The cost of afforestation, for example, is about Rs 20,000 per ha. Governments claim cost of operation from the harvesting revenue even when it is funded by other agencies. “Nobody knows how the forest departments fix the cost of harvesting. But it is definitely not fair,” says N C Saxena, member of the National Advisory Council who headed the committee on the Forest Rights Act’s implementation. In the first decade of JFM, governments faced complaints of skewed benefit sharing. In 2002 the Centre issued a new set of guidelines. These were supposed to be corrective measures but made benefit sharing even more stringent and consequently brought down community share. The new guidelines allowed JFM in good forest but set a different standard for their management, giving the forest department unprecedented control over JFM committees. According to these guidelines, JFM activities in good forests should concentrate on minor forest produce (MFP) and no alteration should be permitted in the department’s working plan except to promote regeneration, development and sustainable harvesting of MFP. The share of benefit from timber harvest was limited to 20 per cent in both good and degraded forests, which communities could avail of only after 10 years of “satisfactory” work. The Union environment and forests ministry also stifled community say by creating an institution that gives the forest department the power to decide on matters. The Forest Development Agency (FDA) was created to deal with JFM. It is a district-level institution that is treated as a federation of 50-odd JFM committees (JFMCs). JFM institutions plan forestry activity, while FDA sanctions the money for it. Guidelines for the agreements FDAs sign with JFM institutions state: “The MoU should, inter alia, include the right of FDAs to stop and withdraw funding from a JFMC if the performance of the JFMC is found to be unsatisfactory along with the procedure to be adopted in such cases.” The report of the National Forest Rights Act Committee found that FDAs weakened autonomy of village-level bodies. “FDAs are the federations of JFM committees but the president and the secretary are both forest officers and they act as a conduit for channelling Central funds,” stated the report. “This was the biggest tragedy with JFM in the past decade,” says Chetan Agarwal a consultant with environmental non-profit Winrock International India. In late 1990s a few states like Himachal Pradesh and Haryana started devolution of power in JFMCs by revising their guidelines to appoint the secretary of the committee from among the village residents. “But the 2002 guidelines played the spoilsport. They required that the secretary of JFMC be from the forest department, and made JFM a funding-driven bureaucratic structure, which defeated the purpose of long-term engagement of forest officials and communities in forest protection,” adds Agarwal. Another trick that keeps away benefits from community is the absence of working plans for forests under JFM. “Communities always complain we don’t harvest forests to avoid benefit sharing but there is no working plan to do so,” says Aurobindo Behera, principal secretary, forest and environment, Odisha. In 1997, the Supreme Court banned harvesting of forest without a working plan. In most states there has not been any attempt to prepare the working plans. More than 10,000 forest protection committees have forests ready to be harvested. Forest officials say it may take another 10 to 15 years to prepare working plans and get approval from the Union environment ministry. The JFM programme faces existential crisis. On the one hand, pieces of legislation like the Forest Rights Act (FRA), 2006, and the Panchayat Extension to Scheduled Areas (PESA) Act, 1996, have come into existence, giving rights to tribals and forest dwellers over forest resources and their management. On the other hand, communities demand the huge sums forest departments owe them under the programme. Questions are being raised whether the programme should be scrapped.
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Arabari or Arabari Forest Range, is the name of a forest range in the West Midnapore district of West Bengal, India. [1] Conservation efforts were begun in 1972 by Divisional Forest Officer (Silviculture) Shri Ajit Kumar Banerjee, in an area of 1,272 ha by involving local people living around the forest boundary through a voluntary participation process.
The pioneering experiments after Arabari, there were further experimentation in Harda and Jhabua Forest Divisions in Madhya Pradesh (Singh, 1994, Burman, 1996, Malhotra and Poffenberger, 1989, Bahuguna, 2004, Dasgupta, 2004, Bhattacharya et al., 2008a, Bhattacharya et al., 2008b) and few more places including famous institutional intervention ...
The JFM initiative at the Arabari Forest Range in the East Midnapore Forest Division, also known as the 'Arabari experiment', commenced during 1972, by the efforts of Dr Ajit Kumar Banerjee, the Divisional Forest Officer (DFO) of the region. He realized that the degrading Sal forests of Arabari cannot be regenerated without the cooperation ...
Arabari's community and forest department partnership isn't new. It started as an experiment some 45 years ago, and its apparent success sparked the Indian government's Joint Forest ...
The success of the Arabari experiment is attributed mainly to the political commitment of the state government for a better forest management, substantial and immediate benefits to the participating villagers. They were allowed to get 25% of the timber production in every ten years, wages during felling etc. and non-timber forest produce as per ...
famous Arabari experiment. In the 1970s and 1980s a few forest officials in the states of West Bengal, Gujarat, and Haryana, began to address this fundamental question. This resulted in the fnrmatinn nf fnrpct prptprtion committees of different kinds in each of the three states, beginning in Arabari in West Bengal in 1972.
For example, for an experiment, the Government of West Bengal (GOWB) in the 1980s had introduced a programme of incorporating the locals of Arabari forest range into the joint forest management and conservation actions so that the forest resources could be sustainably managed and even protected from the further degradation.
In West Bengal over 1,800 rural community-based forest committees protect. more than 2,40,000 ha of natural. sal forest. A report on the joint forest management experiment. in the state. ONE of the most successful forest management programmes in India is in West Bengal where over 1,800 rural community-based forest protection com- mittees ...
The JFM initiative at the Arabari Forest Range in the. East Midnapore Forest Division, also known as the ' Arabari experiment ...
The first successful model of Joint Forest Management in India is known as the ARABARI MODEL, started in 1972 in Paschim Medinipur District in West Bengal. As on 31st March 2009, the total forest area under Joint Forest Management in West Bengal has been recorded as 557,063.13 hectares. An attempt has been made in the present paper to analyze ...
1971 Banerjee initiated an experiment in Arabari in which local villagers would work with Forest Department staff to jointly manage forest patches adjacent to their settlement. The idea was to provide residents with a supply of biomass and sources of income through the sale of nontimber forest products—fruit,
Besides achieving the 'Arabari Experiment', conquest of collaborative forest protection method in Gujarat, Haryana, also prompted the initiation of the JFM Programme (Bhatt 2014; Sen and Pattanaik 2019a, b).
Arabari is known all over India as the pioneering forest range in implemen-ting Joint Forest Management (JFM) scheme. ... (WFCC) using a choice experiment. The attributes examined are contract ...
Joint Forest Movement scheme at work upgraded forests of the Arabari forest range, West Bengal (Rajeev kumar) . Joint Forest Management often abbreviated as JFM is the official and popular term in India for partnerships in forest movement involving both the state forest departments and local communities. The policies and objectives of Joint Forest Movement are detailed in the Indian ...
Joint Forest Management (JFM) programme in the present form can be traced to the Arabari experiment initiated by foresters in the state of West Bengal. This experiment provided a strong feedback for incorporation of the system in the National Forest Policy of 1988. In many locations people's voluntary groups were engaged in protection of ...
This article provides notes on Joint Forest Management (JFM) in India. In 1971, a small experiment over 1250 of degraded forests called Arabari Socio Economic experiment was initiated in Arabari Range, East Midnapore Division of West Bengal. The objective of the experiment was to see whether the degrading forests in the area could be ...
The first concept of JFM was originated in the "Arabari experiment" of Midnapore district of West Bengal in 1970s.The forest cover of this state is 16,901.51 sq km which is 19.04% of geographical area in 2019 and this state is one of the tribal dominated states of India. As per census 2011, the tribal population in West Bengal is 5296963 ...
2011). As a sequel to this programme Arabari experiment of joint forest management (JFM) system in West Bengal (India) has experienced remarkable success during the 1970s', it came to be institutionalized as a supposedly viable programme for forest conservation in the state from 1990 onwards. It is supposed to be tripartite forest
The experiment was successful and was expanded to other parts of the state in 1987. JFM is still in force at Arabari. This process of greening the forest was brought about by setting up Joint Forest Management committees consisting of the local villagers and as result of their efforts a forest which was initially almost worthless became an ...
Following on the Chipko movement of the 1970s and the initial experiments in West Bengal, Haryana and Jharkhand, the significance of managing forests with communities was understood. ... Community forest management in Arabari: understanding socio-cultural and subsistence issues. Society for the Promotion of wastelands Development, New Delhi.
The forest department has all discretionary powers," says Ajit Banerjee, the architect of the Arabari experiment (see interview). Arabari everywhere Across the country, inadequate benefit sharing from timber and bamboo revenue has weakened the JFM programme. Speaking to Down To Earth, P J Dilip Kumar, director general of forests, had in ...
among them Arabari and Bhadutola forest range contains most of the area. These forest ranges are dominantly covered by hardwood Sal (Shorea robusta) which is an economically remunerative tree. The Arabari forest range is chiey impor - tant for the protection of forest and improvement of rural livelihood and it was the rst (in 1972) joint forest ...
In India, Joint Forest Management (JFM) programme was first introduced in the year 1972 at Arabari forest range in West Bengal with the collaboration of local community and forest department for the protection of reserve forest and improvement of rural livelihood. Subsequently, in 1990 the JFM programme was further extended at nearby Bhadutola forest range of Paschim Medinipur (West Bengal ...