Implications of Indian Foresters’ Perspectives of Joint Forest Management

Abstract

A study was conducted in Kullu district in the province of Himachal Pradesh in Indian Western Himalaya, to investigate the perceptions of Indian foresters about aspects of forest management relevant for effective Joint Forest Management (JFM). A lack of uniform understanding was found amongst forestry staff about almost all the studied issues pertaining to JFM. A need is identified to emphasise social aspects in the training of the foresters (including in-service training), along with the existing silvi-technical aspects. For JFM success, measures need to be devised to reduce the political interference in JFM, reduce hierarchical rigidity, and increase interaction between field staff and the administrative hierarchy. Strategies should be devised to make JFM participants as well as forestry staff equally responsible to honour their commitments with respect to JFM.

Community Forestry and Forest Conservation: Friends or Strangers?

“…If the state provides the instruments and the legislation to communities to manage their forest resources, the local forest officers might see their influence diminishing, and could even consider obstructing the devolution process. Foresters' common negative attitude towards community forestry experiments has been observed in several developing countries, including India (Sood and Gupta, ) and Madagascar (Blanc‐Pamard and Rakoto Ramiarantsoa, ; Raik and Decker, ).…”

Role of foresters' perspectives in orienting agroforestry programmes

“…Crop production and industrial wood production, which were carried out on separate types of land required different professional skills, had different aims and were very often managed by different owners (usually farmers versus the government). Therefore, tendency to plan forestry and agriculture land uses individually has developed since then and the conditions changed little until now (Sood and Gupta, 2007).…”

“…Agroforestry, in its scope, is not only concerned with biophysical nature of the resources but also with the socio-economic and cultural aspects of the people depending on the type of agroforestry system (Sood, 2003). Therefore, implementation of agroforestry programmes would not only require silvi-technical skills but also social skills associated with management of interaction between people with resources, mainly trees, crops and or animals (Sood and Gupta, 2007). This would require a shift in the training and attitude of the foresters from 'managing trees in isolation of people' to 'managing trees with involvement of people' (Matta et al, 2005b).…”

“…Agroforestry is concerned with the growing of trees on farm land but the execution of any agroforestry intervention and design would be considerably influenced by the state Forest Department because it is both a planning and an executive agency for all forestry programmes and activities in most developing countries like India. There are many empirical studies on foresters' perceptions of Joint Forest Management (Gupta, 1999;Matta et al, 2005a,b;Sood and Gupta, 2007) but empirical studies on foresters' perspectives of agroforestry are in their infancy (Workmann et al, 2003). Therefore, the purpose of present study is to understand the perceptions and views of the Indian foresters about different aspects of agroforestry to gain a better understanding of how the system operates.…”

Social Science in Forestry Curricula: A Case Study of Colombia Forestry Programs

“…There are a number of challenges in including the social dimension as an important component of sustainable forest management, including its complexity [3] and the existence of disciplinary boundaries [4]. Traditionally, forestry professionals have been trained to understand the biophysical aspects of forest and timber production [5,6].…”