Managing Forests through Community Efforts

Giving local communities the opportunity to manage their forests has simultaneously reduced deforestation and poverty in the particular region. The community-forest management led to a 37% relative reduction in deforestation and 4.3% relative reduction in poverty. This is particularly significant in a low income country, where more than a third of the country’s forests are managed by a quarter of the country’s population. The impact of more than 18000 community forest initiatives across Nepal, where community forest management has actively been promoted for several decades. Forests are critical to sustainable development; they regulate the world’s climate, sequester carbon from the atmosphere, harbour biodiversity, and contribute to the local livelihoods of millions of people worldwide.

Forests are the heart and green lungs of our planet. They are home to most of the plant and animal species in our biosphere, fertilise our soils, moderate our climate and provide an infinite number of other ecosystem services. Yet humans continue to destroy this priceless natural heritage, with forest destruction increasing in recent decades. Faced with the urgency of the situation, it is necessary to strengthen its action by launching an impactful initiative that will be long-lasting and will actively participate in the protection of forests and their biodiversity through the actions of the people who live within and around them.

Community forestry is an evolving branch of forestry whereby the local community plays a significant role in forest management  and land use decision making by themselves in the facilitating support of government as well as change agents. It involves the participation and collaboration of various stakeholders  including community, government and non-governmental organisations  (NGOs). The level of involvement of each of these groups is dependent on the specific community forest project, the management system in use and the region.

Different community forestry arrangements are possible depending on the type of territory and the type of social relations being considered. In respect of such institutional arrangements, three main types of community forestry may be distinguished:

1. Management of any woody resources on lands which are located within a local territory, irrespective of whether these resources are privately, communally or de facto state-owned

2. Management of common pool resources, such as communal forest or grazing lands, which are shared or held in common and jointly used by people who are formally or informally organized in a forest user group

3. Collaborative management of state forest  lands under cooperative arrangements with a public forest administration

The following cross-cutting principles which could be worked on while community initiatives do the forest management:

• Focusing on the conservation of high ecological value areas, particularly primary forests and zones with low anthropogenic activities,
• Exercising conservation through a holistic approach to preserve all elements that make up these natural ecosystems and the biodiversity they contain; fauna, flora, soil, air, human beings, and all life cycles which they are part of.
• Respecting the knowledge and rights within and around conservation areas, moving forward with their full and effective participation and supporting them as the forefront of decision-making processes and conservation action, using gender-just, rights-based approaches and participatory methodologies in order to take into account the rights, role, needs and aspirations of all members of the community without discrimination.
• Practicing and promoting science-based, evidence-based, adapted and applied methodologies for projects’ activities and monitoring, to guarantee their long-term ecological effectiveness for the proposed solutions and clear results for the conservation and growth of local biodiversity.
• Practicing and promoting a multi-disciplinary approach to conservation, taking into account conservation science, environmental law, but also social science including the understanding of economic, political and cultural contexts.
• Fostering open-minded and open-sourced dialogues, research, information sharing, best practices exchanges, which can increase our understanding and our practice of forest conservation globally as well as locally.

The goals and objectives of community-based forestry may seem extensive and vague at times, but they generally focus on rights and access to forest resources, the distribution of benefits from forests, and the retention, management, and restoration of healthy ecosystems. Other objectives might focus on increasing land conservation, reducing fragmentation of managed ecosystems, increasing community stability, reducing fire risk, increasing reforestation rates, and acknowledging resources not currently valued in the traditional economic sense.

Matter referenced from:

1. The Speaking Tree, Times of India Publications; Ahmedabad, Ed. May 26th, 2019, pp.01- Forest Initiatives by sciencedaily.com
2.  https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=0CAIQw7AJahcKEwiIx9vhga7_AhUAAAAAHQAAAAAQAg&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.foei.org%2Fwhat-we-do%2Fforests-and-biodiversity%2Fcommunity-forest-management%2F&psig=AOvVaw3v0IUPnIiEo-eFzOTXqXNZ&ust=1686118630549263
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_forestry

By: Dr. Bhawana Asnani.

Happy to see Reviews, Additions, Suggestions and Comments, further.