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Forest certification has emerged as a marketing tool for linking the good forest management practices with the environmentally conscious consumers. Its genesis can be attributed to the society's concern for the social and environmental significance of forests. Forest management certification when coupled with the chain-of-custody certification; then, the supply chain stages for such forest products can carry an ecolabel. Non-timber forest products (NTFPs) are of socioeconomic and cultural importance for the forest dwelling communities, particularly for the tropical countries like India. India is home to an amazing diversity of plants, with over 46,000 plant species recorded to occur there. NTFP's availability, utilization, commercialization, exploitation, management practices, policies and tenure systems in different parts of India have high diversity and variability. There is concern, however, that collection methods for most of NTFP species are destructive and wild populations are declining as a result. Thus, the harvest of NTFPs is coming under increasing scrutiny from certification programmes, as it plays a key role in the sustainable management of forest resources and community benefit worldwide. Thus, the present research paper highlights the issues relevant to certification of NTFPs in India, based on more than a decadal experience in dealing with this subject at Indian Institute of Forest Management, Bhopal.

The extraction and exploitation of non-timber forest products (NTFP) has been one of the major causes of the degradation of forests in developing countries like India. The highly unorganized and secretive nature of intermediary operations leads to market imperfections that are usually to the disadvantage of the collectors and cultivators. This often leads to destructive and unsustainable harvesting techniques. We provide a possible solution based on a market information system (MIS) that can help to remove market imperfections by providing information related to demand and supply to collectors and cultivators. This can be helpful in promoting sustainable harvesting and also to policy-makers and implementation agencies. A conceptual framework related to an MIS for medicinal and aromatic plants, a subset of NTFPs, is presented. The development of such MISs can not only help to reduce unsustainable harvesting techniques but also to improve the economic condition of some of the poorest people.One of the major reasons for this degradation of forests in India has been the harvesting of non-timber forest products (NTFPs) in a non-sustainable manner, substantially through lack of information and education, and this needs to be addressed. Although similar situations exist in many other countries (e.g. Brazil and Indonesia), this issue has gained added urgency in the case of India since the passing of the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act 2006, by the Government of India (Gazette of India, 2007). This act empowers the tribal and other indigenous residents of these forests, giving them the property rights to forest produce. Although this new law has many positive aspects, it could have unintended consequences and has been criticized by citizen groups as a prelude to widespread deforestation as a result of the lack of information available among indigenous people (Sethi, 2007). This new law became effective 1 January 2008.It is now fairly well accepted that supply chain management issues can be crucial to furthering the cause of sustainability (Vermeulen and Seuring, 2009). Market imperfections can develop in the supply chain when wholesalers (or any player) gain and retain market power by controlling the availability of information. We address one such situation where a market information system (MIS) can help transform a closed market to an open market where each stakeholder in the supply chain has a level playing fi eld in terms of market information. Existing stakeholders as well as new ones can then use this system in a competitive manner. At the same time, the role of the community in maintaining and developing forests is increasingly being realized (Pandey, 2010).

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