Common Property Resources, Forest Extraction and Livelihood: An Insight to WSHG Entrepreneurs of Tribal Odisha

Abstract

The ownership of common property resources was always in conflict within community and community vs government. Definition about common property resources are advanced on the mainly upon their priority, visibility, accessibility and understanding. Further, its broad classification includes harvesting, extraction and natural production. The nature of dependency among Common Property Resources(CPRs) and Private Property Resources(PPRs) follows higher exploitation with initial compared to the later. The present study is carried out in Tribal dominated district of Odisha, India i.e. Mayurbhanj through stratified and multi-stage random sampling to answer how important are CPRs for tribal across Mayurbhanj and their dependency upon types of resources with utilisation and limitation. The assessment of LDI (Livelihood Dependency Index) reveals higher dependency of sample respondents of Mayurbhanj upon CPRs for livelihood continuation even after having an average membership in Self Help Group programme from last seven years. There exist massive need of making diversified occupation adjustment especially for population residing nearby forest like engagement in transport of forest items, maintenance, local auction, daily wage based leaf collection and storage for government auction, maintenance and engaging women members in manufacturing of CPR based items.