Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment

Abstract for ATREE Annual Research Seminar, 2009, Bangalore

Building community ownership for sustainable harvest and co-management of forest resources

Ramesh Kannan, R.P Harisha and Nitin Rai

Forest dwelling communities are directly dependant on Non Timber Forest Produces (NTFPs) for their livelihood requirements such as food, fodder, medicinal plants, small timber and income from the sale of NTFPs. Nevertheless there is no adequate or commiserate management by local communities of these resources. There is a need to develop participatory co-management which will take into account not only the dependency over the forest resource but also the ecological and institutional possibilities for co-management. The paper is an outcome of four years of active research carried out in Male Mahadeswara Hills Reserve Forest, Karnataka, where Soligas are a predominant local tribal community. Four villages were chosen based on following criteria: distance to forest and market and proportion of tribal and non-tribal households.

Data was collected by interviewing households and encompassed 30% households in each village. The NTFP income data in the figure above shows that non-tribal villages (H.hola(L), K.bare(L) and Kom(L)) depend on forest resources for subsistence as well as cash income. On the other hand, tribal villages (Gura(S), H.hola(S) and Kom(S)) depend on forest resources for cash income alone. In particular they generate income from fuel wood collection and bamboo basketry. The reason is that most nontribal villagers hold land and practice rain-fed agriculture but tribal villagers have no landholdings and are heavily dependent on forest resources for cash income as well as for subsistence. The existing NTFP supply chain process which is regulated by LAMPS (Large Area Multipurpose Society) is neither sustainable nor profitable for the harvesters. NTFP harvesters are paid wages for what they collect from the forest, by the contractors. At present there is no way for the harvesters to bypass the contractor-managed NTFPs collection process which diminishes harvesters' income. The tribal communities can take ownership over the resource which they are harvesting through certain provisions of The Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006. Now the Forest Rights Act is vesting rights to the NTFP harvesters to access, collect, use and dispose off the NTFP which they have been traditionally collecting. It also provides space for local level processing, value addition and marketing of NTFPs by the gatherer or their co-operative or their collective associations. This will redesign the existing practice of NTFP collection. In particular, Gram Sabha can play an active role in forming village level committee to monitor sustainable harvesting practices and manage forest resource. We argue in this paper that this new model of community ownership has to be considered for traditional knowledge based NTFP collection and co-management of the forest landscape.

Keyword: NTFPs, community ownership, co-management, traditional knowledge

Reference:

1. Report of the National Forest Commission, Government of India, Ministry of Environment and Forest, 2006.
2. Uma Shankar,2003 Domestication of Valuable Forest Resources for Subsistence and Trade: Utilization Management and Conservation. Proceedings of the conference on Polices, Management Utilization and Conservation of Non-Timber Forest Products (NTFPs) in the South Asia Region, page 15-17
3. Bhattacharya.P 2003. Sustainable NTFPs Management for Livelihood and Income Generation of Tribal Communities: A Case from Madhya Pradesh, India. Proceedings of the conference on Polices, Management Utilization and Coservation of Non-Timber Forest Products (NTFPs) in the South Asia Region, page 30-31