JOINT FOREST MANAGEMENT: A COPING STRATEGY IN THE LOSING BATTLE OF FOREST MANAGEMENT

Abstract

Forest management has been a problem for many countries. The practical evidence pointsto the fact that it has been a losing battle, because despite all the measures taken to stopforest degradation and denudation, forests have been depleted. Joint Forest Management isa strategy to bring two parties together, the state sector and the local people. Tomaterialise the system many requisites must be fulfilled. There is a need to integratedifferent tenurial situations primarily the de jure rights of the state and the de facto rightsof the people that have been socially accepted in relation to their territorial occupancy overgeneration. The integration of traditional practices with technical management systemsintroduced by the state sector is also required. It also points to broader linkages betweenforest resource management and the non-forest resource management and livelihood.

The partnership between the well established formal institutions equipped with technicalstaff and legal provisions and the people whose resources and concerns differ from the stateagencies seems to cause problems. Our experience reveals that the state agencies havesuffered from their inability to enforce state policies. People also have failed toinstitutionaJ.ise their rights and most of the cultural features and social regulations havealready been lost.

The economics of the products that people gather for subsistence and in some cases for themarket cannot be taken as stimulations for which people will come forward. Theexperience regarding Joint Forest Management in India and Nepal for example hasrevealed that the two parties can be brought together under the strategy. The lack of apeople centred approach other than the state controlled mechanism has been found to be athreat to the system therefore this paper argues that for a better future more ground work isneeded to see when and where the strategy could be adopted.