Joint Forest Management: Experience and Modeling

An Analysis of the Property Rights of Forest Dependent Communities: The Indian Context

“…This policy resulted in the promulgation of the Circular on Joint Forest Management (JFM) in 1990 by the Central Government which accorded a significant role to the forest dependent communities in the management of forests and devolved rights to forest produce. Chakrabarti et al (2005) trace the evolution of the involvement of forest communities in the management of forests and environmental resources by the Indian State (1990) through the principles of co-management / JFM. As observed by the researchers, the forests and other environmental resources, though owned by the state, are considered as common property resources which have deteriorated to open access forest systems.…”

“…After ceding forest lands to forest dependent communities as described above, the State retains ownership control over approximately 95 percent of the forests in the country (Sankaran, Sinha, & Madhav, 2008). Chakrabarti et al (2005) develop a general equilibrium model to capture the key aspects of JFM. The model implies that given the importance of caste groups in the In-dian social hierarchy, elites in the village forest community may capture a larger share of resources via the property rights in the form of larger share of wage payments and unauthorized forest resource collections.…”

“…Given the above fact, there is also a possibility of the Indian state withdrawing the property rights given to the forest dependent communities. As reported by Chakrabarti et al (2005), the Chinese state has frequently resorted to withdrawal of property rights to its forest communities for non-performance and non-fulfillment of contracts between the forest communities and the state. Thus, there are precedents for withdrawal of property rights by the state.…”

Numeracy and Financial Literacy of Forest-dependent Communities

“…First, this financial learning may enable the FDCs to more effectively utilize their resource endowments. In indirect support of this inference, Chakrabarti, Datta, Howe, and Nugent (2005) reports that forests and environmental resources in India have been more efficiently managed by FDCs through JFM than by the government using indicators such as resource extraction levels and distribution of benefits. However, much more needs to be done on the financial literacy, as the forest department records show that several VSS or forest communities in Andhra Pradesh collapsed after funding (from multilateral banking institutions) stopped due to the closure of the JFM project between 2012 and 2014.…”