Presence and effectiveness of material benefit provisions under Joint Forest Management in India: the cases of World Bank-aided Village Forest Committees in Madhya Pradesh

Ota, Masahiko; Antil, Sheetal; Bhattacharya, Pinaki; Masuda, Mitsuharu

doi:10.1080/14728028.2014.886532

Cited by 5 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…Until the late 1980s, national forest policies in India emphasized optimization of commercial forestry, which prohibited local villagers' access to forests (Ota et al 2014). The result was rapid and widespread forest degradation, exposing the failure of top-down state forest resource management policies.…”

Section: Emergence Of Community-based Forest Management (Cbfm)mentioning

confidence: 99%

How Van Panchayat Rule Systems and Resource Use Influence People’s Participation in Forest Commons in the Indian Himalayas

Nagahama¹,

Saito²,

Yamamoto³

et al. 2019

JSD

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Van Panchayats (VPs) are self-initiated forest management groups institutionalized since 1931 in the Himalayan Uttarakhand state of North India. VPs are considered to be successful case of Community-Based Forest Management (CBFM) despite an observed decline in VP practice around the 1990s. This study clarifies CBFM in the context of local rules, forest resource use and people’s participation. It reveals the possible factors behind better resource management of forest commons use from four VPs in Uttarakhand. A multi-dimensional research approach was followed comprising a literature review of the state forest department data, forest inventory, interviews with village leaders as snowball samplings in several villages, and semi-structured interviews with villagers/house-holders. Results showed that local rules are different depending on the villages expect for prohibited timber logging. The most useful tree species for local people was Banji oak (Quercus leucotrichophora) and every village had an oak forest which was utilized for fuelwood and fodder for daily livelihoods. VP forest size and the basal area of trees also influenced people’s participation in forest management. Much larger size of the VP forest land is declining due to the people’s de-motivation for forest management. Furthermore, a higher education of the householder increased the level of participation. Transparency of Management Committee (MC) for the VP members is an important aspect. To summarize, availability and utilization of the valuable forest resources and its management by villagers following local rules and the VP system was considered to influence people’s participation in the forest commons.

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Section: Emergence Of Community-based Forest Management (Cbfm)mentioning

confidence: 99%

How Van Panchayat Rule Systems and Resource Use Influence People’s Participation in Forest Commons in the Indian Himalayas

Nagahama¹,

Saito²,

Yamamoto³

et al. 2019

JSD

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“…Despite revising forestry priorities to include local communities, objectives listed in the policy are potentially conflicting (Lele and Menon 2014) and critiques of participatory initiatives have grown in recent decades (Bhattacharya et al 2010). Scholars argue that initiatives can further entrench internal divisions and exploit communities towards implicit conservation agendas (Sundar et al 2001), focusing on a fundamental failure to understand local sociocultural contexts and troubled relationships between local people and conservation actors (Rishi 2007;Nayak and Berkes 2008;Ota et al 2014).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Doing Chowkidaari: Vulnerability in Village-Forest Relations and the Compulsion of Forest Work

Runacres

2021

Conservat Soc

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This article explores the conditions and perceptions of daily wage work provided by the Forest Department around Panna Tiger Reserve in Central India. Drawing on 15 months of ethnographic fieldwork, it analyses the conditions of forest work within this context of livelihood prohibitions, the broader political economy of precarious labour, and village-forest relations in Panna district. Through different case studies, the article unpacks the dynamics of familiarity, negotiation and exploitation that characterise forest work, utilising forest workers' own description of their work to comment on how a confluence of vulnerable conditions compel local people to take up the precarious daily wage work offered by the Forest Department. The workers' descriptions also offer the concept of 'compulsion' as an important addition to interdisciplinary discussions about 'vulnerability.' I argue that forest workers are a missed opportunity for good relations between conservation projects and local communities, as actors who regularly manage the simultaneous demands of their village communities, and Forest Departments and navigate the complexity and nuance of the relationships between and within both. Rather than examples of conservation benefits for local communities, the poor conditions and insecurities of forest work lead to decreased support for conservation and worsen the reputation of the Forest Department in areas where gainful employment is desperately needed.

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“…Nevertheless, until the late 1980s, national forest policies in India emphasized the optimization of commercial forestry, which prohibited local villagers' access to forests (Ota 2014). The result was a rapid and widespread degradation of forests, which exposed the weakness and failure of topdown state forest resource management policies and actions.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Van Panchayat Movement and Struggle for Achieving Sustainable Management of the Forest : A Case Study of Uttarakhand in North India

Nagahama

Satya²,

Saito³

et al. 2017

SDRP-JESES

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ABSTRACT:During the nineteenth century, the denial of customary rights of people by the British colonial forest department, led to conflict with the local society. Our study shows how this conflict paved the way for the origin of van panchayats (VPs) in the northern Indian state of Uttarakhand at the beginning of the twentieth century. The objective is to analyze such conflicts and see how VPs appeared and eventually evolved into people's participatory forest management. VP as a system was institutionalized in 1931. The end of the British Empire and the emergence of independent India (1947) began a new era in the history of forest management. Several experimental attempts were undertaken. VP rules were revised and amended to accommodate the evolving changes in the relationship between local villages and the state Forest Department. This led to the birth of the system of joint forest management (JFM) in early 1990s. In one sense, VP could be regarded as a people's movement for the restoration of customary rights, which eventually resulted in the Forest Rights Act of 2006. This Act substantially restored people's sovereign rights over forest, independent of either the state or Forest Department interference. Nevertheless, struggle for full empowerment of local villages over their surrounding forests and other resources continues.

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Presence and effectiveness of material benefit provisions under Joint Forest Management in India: the cases of World Bank-aided Village Forest Committees in Madhya Pradesh

Cited by 5 publications

References 15 publications

How Van Panchayat Rule Systems and Resource Use Influence People’s Participation in Forest Commons in the Indian Himalayas

How Van Panchayat Rule Systems and Resource Use Influence People’s Participation in Forest Commons in the Indian Himalayas

Doing Chowkidaari: Vulnerability in Village-Forest Relations and the Compulsion of Forest Work

The Van Panchayat Movement and Struggle for Achieving Sustainable Management of the Forest : A Case Study of Uttarakhand in North India

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