Sanjay Joshie
New legislation in India allows communities to take charge of degraded forest areas. One village claimed to have legal rights over a particular forest area. But users from neighbouring villages protested. An external NGO helped the communities to accept each other as legitimate forest users. Jointly the villages are rehabilitating the area.
A majority of India’s tribal communities inhabit upland and forest dominated landscapes. They have little agricultural land and are limited in livelihood options. There used to be dense forests in the areas where they lived, which fulfilled a lot of their livelihood needs. But when the colonial state took away the legal rights of tribes to use their forests in 1878, traditional protection broke down and outsiders took away valuable forest products from the area. As a result, the forest cover in India dropped to 11 percent in 1990, down from 32 percent in 1900. Now, deforestation has led to widespread damage to downstream farms.
Chitravas, in the southern Aravalli ranges in India, is one of the millions of affected villages. Chitravas means “home of the leopard”, and the village has always had a dense and rich forest. When in 1988 new forest policies allowed people’s participation in the protection of forest, Chitravas was quick to form a committee to protect the forest. Three nearby communities protested the fact that Chitravas inhabitants were claiming the forest this way. They have been using the plot as long as they remember.
Inclusive decision making
In 2001, the Foundation for Ecological Security (FES) started its work with Chitravas village, to help the committee come up with plans to manage the plot. The FES team took advice from the Divisional Forest Conservator and organised a village general body meeting, where all the communities expressed their concerns. FES then organised repeated meetings to understand the traditional forest use patterns in the area so that the real forest users could be included. Based on the evidence gathered in these meetings, the communities jointly prepared a customary user rights list. This helped in deciding the voting rights for the Village Forest Committee.
The forest turned out to be actively used by two thirds of the families in Chitravas and the three surrounding settlements. These 325 forest users agreed to protect and manage the forest plot through “Joint Forest Management”. This lead to a committee of 18 members in total. While this committee was bigger than usual, the inclusive distribution of leadership ensured that representatives of all the communities supported the decisions made and would not boycott activities.
Implementing joint plans
The new committee decided on an action plan, which was approved by the forest department. First, communities rebuilt a stone wall to protect the forest land. Planting of Jatropha curacus along the stone-wall provided an additional vegetative barrier. The construction of loose boulder check dams, gully plugs, contour trenches and gabions ensured in-situ conservation of soil and moisture. In addition, 50,000 saplings of various species and grasses were planted. Womens’ groups took up livelihood activities such as kitchen gardening, and pasture development activities. This provided poorer families with water and healthy food.
Improvements
Organising in this way led to various improvements. Local governance improved – the community has been able to establish a true form of local self governance. Now, the villagers have started accessing other programmes available with the local government, such as agricultural services. Protection has also resulted in more and better biomass: from 140 t/ha in unprotected plots to 302 t/ha in protected plots. In dense forest, soil losses are six times less than in open land. Women have been able to take part in the community decision-making process and have even assumed leadership. Last but not least, the plot now provides water. The number of wells has increased from ten to forty. Flash floods used to happen regularly in the monsoon, and the banks of the stream were eroded year after year. Now the plot stores water.
Problems to overcome
Of course, not everything went smoothly. In the process of coming to a shared plan for the use of the forest, the village encountered many problems. For example, farmers used to encroach on the forest. One villager planted a crop of around half a hectare inside the forest. The villagers gave him time to harvest his crop, if he then agreed to close the fence. But after the harvest, he started preparing the field for another crop, defying committee orders. The committee called for village meetings on this issue. The farmer in question did not show up, and people started holding meetings in front of his house. So the matter was taken up with the local government. Finally the community pressure was so intense that he had to vacate the area. He then started to participate in the land conservation process.
To protect the land, the committee hired guards. This did not work, and so the community devised the “stick system”: three persons from different households carry sticks as a sign that it is their duty to guard the plot. If they find any animals inside, they report this to the village committee, who imposes sanctions according to the village norms. As people from Chitravas could not participate in the stick system, they paid extra for products harvested. In the earlier situation such concessions were unthinkable. This was because before, the inhabitants from Chitravas did not allow families from other communities to be committee members.
There are still occasional problems such as the guard on duty is not sincere or does not go to guard; cattle is found inside the plot; or families not turning up for labour contribution on the site. But now such things are resolved internally. The committee discusses such matters, refers to the byelaws, and then penalises the defaulters by fines or labour.
Incentive
Joint Forest Management has provided a degree of tenure security, and an incentive to local communities to participate in forest protection and restoration activities. They thus link up conservation with livelihoods.
The people in Chitravas, like in other villages, initially liked project benefits such as waged labour for wall construction. But now that farmers are seeing their forests regenerating, fodder growing, and streams flowing for a longer period, it has made them see other benefits. Farmers have expressed what they see as future benefits, how they would ensure equitable sharing later, and how they would ensure protection of their forests for eternity.
Sanjay Joshie. Foundation for Environmental Security (FES). Bhilwara, 119, Subhash Nagar Extension, Near Subhash Nagar Community Hall, Bhilwara – 311 001, Rajasthan, India. E-mail: aravalicell.fes@ecologicalsecurity.org ; http://www.fes.org.in
