The Sustainable Development Institute (SDI), a non-governmental, non-profit organization funded through the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, has been studying the trends in policy among the major donor agencies, including the World Bank, that support the role of communities in managing forests and natural resources. SDI identified a number of the newer projects that have a major community forestry component and emphasize village level development. We selected the newer projects because they also should reflect the participatory policies introduced in recent years by donor agencies and we are interested to see how these policies are being implemented on the ground. SDI's main purpose is to improve the understanding of the pivotal role of local communities in sustaining environmental quality and economic development. Thus the participatory policy of these major donors is of particular interest to us.

I paid a ten day visit to India, in February 1996, to gain a sense of what is happening at the village level in the state of Madhya Pradesh where a statewide World Bank Project has adopted Joint Forest Management to combat increasing crisis of forest resource degradation.

National parks, wildlife reserves and other types of protected areas are a crucial means of conserving biological diversity. Local communities living within or adjacent to these areas have been excluded from the management plans in the past. The ensuing conflict of interest between the local people and the typically underfunded park management has caused people to question this traditional approach to conservation. In recent years, there has been a growing recognition that the management plans for protected area systems must include local people. This shift in approach has come from the discovery that the park management cannot work through policing by the park staff alone. Without attention to the underlying causes for continued exploitation of forest resources by local communities, the protected area systems will ultimately be diminished to a point of no return.

In tropical Southeast Asian protected areas, where the local communities are relying on the forests as a source of livelihood, removing access to the forest by setting park boundaries cannot succeed in eliminating forest exploitation without the creation of alternative income generation. Apart from the fact that the national park staff cannot police the hundreds of thousands of hectares of park, there is a need for regional and spatial planning in these areas where park systems have been set aside. Thus the concept of integrated conservation and development projects applies to the local and regional level, and attempts to find a balance between the needs for the conservation of biodiversity and economic development.

The Kerinci Seblat National Park is one of the largest reserves in Indonesia, spanning four provinces across the southern part of Sumatra. The area was identified in the 1980's as an important area for wildlife and biodiversity. Much of the area had been set aside from Dutch colonial times. In the past fifty years since independence, settlers have been pouring into the richly forested area from all over Sumatra and from Java. In the mid-1980's, the World Wide Fund for Nature together with the Indonesian government, set aside this area to become a national park. In 1988 WWF established an office worked with the provincial, regional and local government to develop park boundaries. In 1992, due to increasing encroachment, the boundaries were redrawn. By this time, the site had been proposed to become a World Bank and Global Environment Facility pilot project for the integrated conservation and development project concept.

In the state of Orissa, in Eastern India, village-based forest protection committees are taking matters of forest management and conservation into their own hands. This community forest protection in Orissa is fundamentally a decentralized grassroots movement initiated by small villages to protect local natural forests from further degradation. In many places in Orissa, communities, on their own accord, are forging unions or federations representing hundreds of villages to protect and regenerate forests, and even push for policy reforms. Orissa may have the most progressive forest policy of any Indian state; yet, inconsistencies in state forest policy and incentives for forest commercialization present obstacles for practical implementation of sound and equitable management. The vitality of these village-based movements demonstrates that implementation of sound forest management practices by forest communities is leading the policy transformation in this region; it is the forest department that needs to catch up with the local communities managing forests and not vice versa.

In a recent visit to the vast state of Orissa, Claudia D'Andrea, Program Associate of the Sustainable Development Institute investigated the rising phenomenon of the formation of unions or federations by visiting with four non-governmental organizations involved at various levels with some of the communities organizing themselves into very large federations. Ms. D'Andrea visited the grassroots organization People's Institute for Participatory Action Research (PIPAR) active in the Dhenkanal district of Orissa with the highest number of forest protection committees in the state; the Bhubaneshwar-based Regional Centre for Development Cooperation (RCDC) active in Western Orissa and the neighboring state of Eastern Madhya Pradesh; Vasundhara Institute, a forestry sector support organization active at both policy level and on the ground near to the state's capital; and OXFAM (India) Trust, which works all over the state but supports some activities of the Movement for Trees and Living Beings, known as BOJBP, one of the oldest and most conservation-oriented of the federation movements.

After the Earth Summit in Rio de Janiero, a special organizing committee was set up to establish an independent global commission addressing the problems of the deteriorating status of the world's forests. The idea for an independent commission developed out of a proposal from Ambassador Ola Ullsten of Sweden at the Global Forest Meeting held in Bandung, Indonesia in 1992. The goal of the Commission is to examine the use of the world's forests in the context of sustainable development. The WCFSD was launched by the InterAction Council of Former Heads of State in June 1995. A series of five regional Public Hearings are to be held around the world to identify the regional and international institutional, legal, and policy reforms that will lead to more equitable and sustainable forest management. The first of these five hearings was recently held in Jakarta, Indonesia for the Asia region. The next regional meeting will be held in Winnipeg, Canada, September 29 through October 5, 1996, and will address the problems of forests and sustainable development in North America and Mexico, the NAFTA region. Subsequent meetings will be held for the Latin American region, in Georgetown, Guyana in early December; the African region, either in the Congo Basin or the Dry Zone countries of Africa in early 1997; and in Russia for the European region in mid 1997. The following is a report by the Sustainable Development Institute which had the opportunity to attend the first Asia regional hearing and meeting.

The World Commission on Forests and Sustainable Development (WCFSD) is an independent body of experts that was established after the Earth Summit of June 1992 to examine the problems of the deteriorating status of the world's forests. The Commission is holding five regional public hearings around the world to hear the views of different "stakeholder" groups on these issues. The Secretariat and the Commission will produce interim reports, and a final report will be issued in mid-1997.

The North American hearing was the second of the five regional hearings, following the model of the 1980's Brundtland Commission, planned by the WCFSD. The Sustainable Development Institute was invited to attend all meetings and speaking events along with the panel of experts. The Commission aimed to examine three areas: the sustainable use and management of forests; trade and export of forest-related products, and financial mechanisms and instruments needed for sustainable development.

The North America hearing focused on Canada, Mexico, and the United States. The abundance of Canadian stakeholders tended to dominate the hearing and detracted from the concerns over forests and sustainable development in Mexico and the U.S.. However, despite the smaller numbers of Mexicans and U.S. participants, an overwhelming message emerged that greater local and community-based control over forest resources may lead to wiser and more sustainable use and management of forests. Less decisive conclusions were reached on the other two areas of focus.

It was the intent of the Commissioners to have the participants address several questions in each panel that might indicate areas where international agreements might be strengthened, or recommendations might be formulated for the development of wiser use of diminishing global forest resources.

The WCFSD is concerned that progress is not being made in stopping forest loss and degradation due to a variety of realities on the ground that are frequently not discussed at international forest meetings. Thus the Commission has attempted to examine problems of forests and sustainable development not being addressed in the major global forest policy fora such as the UNCSD's IPF; Montreal, Helsinki, & Tarapoto Processes; the COP to the Convention on Biodiversity; and ITTO; At each of the regional hearings, the Commission has raised four basic questions:

• How much and what type of forest should be managed and protected?
• How should forests be managed and protected?
• By whom should they be managed and protected? and
• For whose benefits?

On behalf of the IUCN, I attended the 15th Commonwealth Forestry Conference in Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe from 12-17 May 1997. My primary goal was to gain an understanding of the direction of the Commonwealth Forestry Conference. Additionally, it was an opportunity to broaden the membership of the working group on Community Involvement in Forest Management (WG-CIFM) and further the network of practitioners in the development of specific recommendations for community forestry policy. This community forestry policy project is being run through an electronic conference of the working group on CIFM and the Sustainable Development Institute (SDI), a Washington-based NGO with a policy research project focusing on community forestry. The recommendations and results of this electronic conference will be directed to a number of international and independent bodies, including the World Commission on Forests and Sustainable Development (WCFSD).

Overview

In the complex world of international forestry, often what transpires in the field is barely reflective of what has been designed on paper. Whether site-specific donor-backed projects, national government attempts to reform institutional and sector policies, or local community-generated protection activities, even the best-intentioned efforts to achieve more sustainable and equitable management of the world's forests fail miserably to realize their goals. For the growing number of people concerned with forest protection, particularly in the tropics, a key factor to sustainable management is the full involvement of forest dwelling peoples and those living near forest areas in the planning and implementation of forest management schemes. Not surprisingly, perspectives abound on what actually constitutes "local participation" in forest management processes, running the gamut from sporadic "consultations" with local communities by donor agency staff to extensive engagement of local community ideas and activities throughout the life of a given project.

As part of SDI's attempt to conduct a "comparative analysis" of forest management policies designed by the chief international lending agencies - World Bank, U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the Asian Development Bank (ADB), and the InterAmerican Development Bank (IDB) - and forest management practices on the ground that depend on local community participation, I have examined institutional policies, countless project reports and evaluations, and spoken with agency staff and consultants to gain some insight into the links and gaps between policy and practice. While what has emerged is a disjointed, rather unclear picture of how donor policies concerning forest management and local community participation have translated into reality, some notable shifts in policy thinking and trends have appeared.

Generally, there is increasing language in some donor agency portfolios about the need to incorporate local communities and NGOs into forest and protected area management plans. The World Bank and USAID seem to have made the greatest strides in this area, with the ADB having recently formulated an official forest policy (3/95), and the IDB only just beginning to consider lending for environmental projects.

(In March 1997, the Sustainable Development Institute and sent e-mail queries to some 150 people, from twenty-six countries, with a professional interest in promoting the idea of community forest management. The World Conservation Union (IUCN) kindly agreed to provide SDI with the e-mail addresses of its Working Group on Community Involvement in Forest Management, a multi-stakeholder network facilitated by IUCN. We asked for suggestions and comments about the kinds of national and international level actions and policy shifts that could best strengthen current moves toward greater local control over forests. On the basis of the many useful responses received, we have modified and sharpened the inventory of ideas we initially circulated.)

What follows is a new draft statement on community forestry's importance and needs. Before putting this document in final form, we once again invite your reactions.)

Communities and Forests: Strengthening the Field

Roger D. Stone and Claudia D'Andrea
July, 1998

Overview

In March 1997, the Sustainable Development Institute sent email queries to some 150 people, from twenty-six countries, with a professional interest in promoting the idea of community forest management. The World Conservation Union (IUCN) kindly agreed to provide SDI with the email addresses of the Working Group on Community Involvement in Forest Management, a multistakeholder network facilitated by IUCN. We asked for suggestions and comments about the kinds of national and international level actions and policy shifts that could best strengthen current moves toward greater local control over forests.

On the basis of the many useful responses received, we modified and sharpened the skeleton inventory of ideas we initially circulated.  To the extent possible, the recommendations for actions that follow represent the collective opinion of our respondents.  While they were most generous with their time and thoughts, however, these people were not asked to help form the analysis that backs up the recommendations. For these sections of the paper, the authors are solely responsible.

Joint Forest Management in Madhya Pradesh;
Meetings in New Delhi;
The Madhya Pradesh Forestry Department;
The District of Dewas;
Observations of the Forestry Project at Dewas;
The Ford Foundation-TERI Projects in Haryana;
Implications for the Madhya Pradesh Forestry Project

Introduction

 The Sustainable Development Institute (SDI), a non-governmental, non-profit organization funded through the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, has been studying the trends in policy among the major donor agencies, including the World Bank, that support the role of communities in managing forests and natural resources. SDI identified a number of the newer projects that have a major community forestry component and emphasize village level development. We selected the newer projects because they also should reflect the participatory policies introduced in recent years by donor agencies and we are interested to see how these policies are being implemented on the ground. SDI's main purpose is to improve the understanding of the pivotal role of local communities in sustaining environmental quality and economic development. Thus the participatory policy of these major donors is of particular interest to us.

 I paid a ten day visit to India, in February 1996, to gain a sense of what is happening at the village level in the state of Madhya Pradesh where a statewide World Bank Project has adopted Joint Forest Management to combat increasing crisis of forest resource degradation.

Participation on the Ground (back to contents)

As in Washington, DC, in India participation means different things to different people. In recent years attempts to involve local people in planning and implementation of major development projects have been motivated by a recognition that participation increases cost-effectiveness and project efficiency. In contrast, many see community participation as a right, in which the main aim is to initiate mobilization for collective action, empowerment, and institution building.(1) These are by no means mutually exclusive goals, but the underlying motivation will influence the approach to implementation. In India, in any event, from talking with the foresters and many others there is a growing awareness that the forests cannot be protected without the involvement of local communities.

 After a brief field visit to the new Madhya Pradesh Forestry Project in the state of Madhya Pradesh, India, I have found that implementation of World Bank policy on participation has a long way to go. Due to a range of factors including cultural, sociological, economic, historical, bureaucratic, and institutional, participatory policy as defined by the World Bank has no relevance at the village level. The Principle Chief Conservator of Forests, the highest level official of the forestry department, for the state of Madhya Pradesh told me precisely that. In my view, without the concerted effort of specialists in participatory approaches, gender sensitivity, and community organizing, a project like the Madhya Pradesh Forest Project will be nothing more than a vehicle for career advancement for the Forestry Department officials.

 After extensive interviews with individuals from the Ministry of Forestry, from non-governmental organizations, and from the forestry department of MP itself, it seems quite apparent that the project could go one of two ways. There exists the strong possibility that the project could fail to engage any of the communities in any useful and sustained way and that the training of the upper echelons of the forestry department will only precipitate the process by which they are transferred to choice positions in other states. At the same time, there may be a chance that the strength of the spontaneous formation of community protection groups, present long before the first tranche of project loans was delivered, and hopefully the interest of some forestry department officials, may carry through the kind of revolution in forest regeneration that is needed.

 I am alarmed at the lack of understanding of participatory approaches and gender sensitivity of the forestry department. Based on my observation of the other projects I saw where non-governmental organizations have played an active role in training community members, I feel strongly that NGOs can make the difference. Joint Forest Management is a blanket category for collaborative arrangements among the forestry department officials and villagers. Defining the process for arriving at the collaborative arrangements is not simple. There are so many factors and each village is different. However, in general it seems clear that involving NGOs in the process can help ensure that villagers have can weigh the consequences, benefits, and implications of their participation and this will can help ensure the formation of sustained groups that understand they have a true stake in the project.

Joint Forest Management in Madhya Pradesh (back to contents)

 The concept of Joint Forest Management (JFM) was introduced in the 1990's to reduce the growing conflict over forest resources among the forest department officials and local villages dependent on the forest. In June 1990, the Government of India (GOI) issued a notification that the state of Madhya Pradesh must involve local communities in the management of forest resources through collaborative arrangements with the forestry department of Madhya Pradesh. According to most foresters and NGOs that I spoke with this circular merely legitimized a process that had already begun because the FD was finding that without the active participation of local people, the forests could not be protected.

 The recognition of the need to involve villagers in forest protection coincided with a major policy shift in 1988. At that time the National Forest Policy was amended to encourage forest regeneration by the participation of those most affected by forest degradation, those with the largest at stake. In 1990, the GOI issued a requirement that state governments establish usufruct rights for local communties in exchange for their participation in the regeneration and protection of public forests. Almost all Indian states have implemented some form of policy that allows for local villager participation in forest management.

 Madhya Pradesh has a total forest cover of 135.8 square kilometers which is approximately twenty percent of the entire state. The severe pace of degradation is seriously affecting the livelihood of forest dwellers, particularly the tribals. The June 1990 Circular on forestry called for the formation of forest protection committees from the villages adjacent to degraded forest land. The Circular mainly establishes the following:

• Procedures for the formation of Forest Protection Committees
• Duties and Responsibilities of the Forest Protection Committee
• Responsibility of the Forest Department
• Facilities to be given by the State Government

I began my study by meeting with a number key sources on JFM including Kamla Chowdry, Chair of the Society for the Promotion of Wasteland Development (SPWD); Satyanarayana of the World Wide Fund for Nature (in the absence of Arvind Khare); Rizvi, Executive Director of SPWD; O.N. Kaul, Director of the Biodiversity and Forest Program of the Tata Energy Research Institute (TERI) and the Dr. R.K. Pachauri, President and Director of TERI. I also spoke with Jeff Campbell, Program Officer of the Ford Foundation. In addition, I met with the Irshad Khan of the World Bank New Delhi office. Finally, i met with the Deputy Officer in the Ministry of Forestry that handles the project approval process for the World Bank projects. I gained their impressions of Joint Forest Management in general and of JFM in the Madhya Pradesh Forestry Project, in particular. I established my contacts in Bhopal, the capital of Madhya Pradesh, and departed for Madhya Pradesh.

The Madhya Pradesh Forestry Department (back to contents)

 Working from the Indian Institute of Forestry Management (IIFM), I met with trainers familiar with the World Bank's MPFP, in particular Dr. Pradyut Battacharya who works with the Asia Sustainable Forest Network. Through the IIFM, I arranged to meet the ranking officials at the forestry department which administers the forests of the state. At the Forestry Department, I first met with the co-manager of the task force for the project, Mr. R.K. Singh. He gave me a lengthy and detailed explanation of the rationale and the goals, and strategies for achieving these goals in each project component. More than anyone else, R.K. Singh seemed absolutely convinced that this project will make a huge impact on the state of Madhya Pradesh and will achieve great afforestation and improve village well-being.

 Next I met with Radan Purbar who is in charge of designing and organizing the training component of the project. He smiled and with all sincerity gave me his excited explanation of some of the training he is organizing. When I raised the sticky questions as to hierarchy, who is administering the training, what sort of cases studies they will be using, how the training impact will be monitored and evaluated, what kind of follow-up is expected, what sort of commitment the participant has to remaining in the forestry department of Madhya Pradesh, etc. Radan Purbar seemed certain that there would be no insurmountable problems and that he envisioned the momentum created by the training would be enough to run over any obstacles.

The FD is contracting the training to two government institutes that do not have significant track records in participatory approaches, the Academy of Administration (WALMI) and the Technical Teacher's Training Institute (TTTI). Radan Purbar described some of the training he has proposed:

• Trainee-training-workshops that change the attitudes of the DFO toward his subordinates to breakdown the hierarchy system in the FD;
• Direct Trainer Skills;
• Management Training - Basic management skills;
• Watershed Management - treating forests as catchment areas;
• Conflict Resolution - for dealing with village conflicts;
• Silvicultural practices - for illiterate villagers;
• Tribal sensitization.

 Next I met with the PCCF, D.P. Singh. The first thing he did was to cross-examine me on the purpose of SDI, on my academic qualifications, and finally on the premise for our study. He continuously interrupted me in my attempts to explain what we were trying to find by coming to MP. He charged that we had no business in coming to MP to spy on the World Bank project and that we were obviously up to no good. He insisted that there is no way a foreigner could ever understand India's long and complicated history. He was so condescending as to ask me, "Did you know that India was colonized by the British?" But most impressive in regard to our study was his assertion that World Bank policy is completely irrelevant to the village level. And he had no intention of paying any attention to the policy of the World Bank.

 From the perspective of the forest department this project is a real success because they were able to design so much of it based on the concept that had emerged at the field level. The PCCF, D.P. Singh, the head of the MPFD, first balked at the premise of this study to look at the implementation of World Bank policy on participation. He said the FD was looking for funding to continue to expand their department activities and managed to get a loan from the World Bank because the Bank wanted to fund a project like theirs. According to him they are only using the World Bank funds to do what they were already doing and to administer the kind of training that they want to; and that they could have gotten the funds from any source. He said the FD was lucky that they had a relatively good task manager (TM) who was able to work closely with them to develop the project without dictating the terms of the loan.

 The PCCF complained that so many donor agencies come in talking about community participation without even knowing what that means or what sort of obstacles might exist at the community level; in fact, they want to implement "participation" without even knowing what the situation is on the ground. He said real participation is impossible. He said they are trying to sell "participation" that is not participatory. The PCCF said if we want to look at participation we should bring in some sociologists to sit in a village for a few years. He completely rejected the idea that we could get anything out of quick visit to the field.

 Now, partly what he says must be true, and part of what he says is pompous and arrogant. Clearly, the WB has dictated certain preconditions to the loan. The head of the task force on the MPFP says that problems with implementing JFM are not on the technical side, they are on the social side. He said that real participation means giving something up from both sides and compromising on what each side wants and that is not happening in most cases. For him the solution lies in training the forestry officers to operate differently and change the way they regard the villagers. He is admitting, as did the PCCF, that participatory approaches are not the way things are done in the FD. In order for JFM to work, a change of attitudes is required among both the upper and lower levels of the FD and among the villagers.

 The FD has a program of human resources development for its staff right down to the village level. But the bulk of the funding and effort in the MPFP will go to training the levels from District Forest Officer and upwards. The head of the task force is convinced that the process once started will take on a life of its own that the change will happen even if some key forest officers are moved to other states, the momentum for FD officers to work with the villagers will have been started.

 The training described to me sounds appropriate for its goals to introduce participatory approaches to dealing with the people down the forest department hierarchy by attempting to change the ideas of the officers about their subordinates. There is a very rigid hierarchy in the FD across India. The difficulty is that any break in the chain of command down to the village level will risk that there are not genuine efforts to change the way forest officers approach villagers. As it was explained to me, the main problem is one of status and benefits accorded to the forest officer at the village level. Generally, the village level officer (the beat officer) does not want to give up his control and his power. Then again, if the village level officer understands that working with the only people is the best solution for forest problems but his superior (the range officer or district forest officer) does not want to give up the control or the benefits he receives, the result is also conflictual for the local people.

 According to the forest officials, the villages vary greatly in their receptivity to the ideas of forming a committee. It depends how homogeneous or heterogeneous the village is and on how capable the land is of regeneration. Often there are clashes in interest between different village groups, but generally if the incentives are there for the people to get involved, then these conflicts can be worked out. The key activity at the local level is to get a set of village rules and sanctions regarding forest use and this is what the local level forest officers must do.

The District of Dewas (back to contents)

Upon the recommendation of the PCCF, I visited the district of Dewas which is under the direction of district forest officer, Mudit Kumar Singh. He was unable to accompany me to the field but met me on the morning I departed and arranged to have his local forest officers show me some of the forest lands and the villages in Dewas, about two and half hours from Bhopal by car. The concept of JFM was introduced three years ago to Dewas. The District of Dewas covers 2,100 square kilometers and has about 50,000 hectares of forest land. There are 63 forest protection committees active in the district. In the past year, staff training modules were organized for the range officers and beat officers in Dewas to introduce them to Participatory Rural Appraisal techniques as well as a pioneering training that brought together the forest officers and the village forest protection committee chairmen and workers to increase mutual understanding.

 M.K. Singh told me that most emphasis over the past three years has been put on restricting the livestock from free grazing and introducing stall feeding. Fuel efficient cooking devices were also introduced to attempt to reduce the demands for fuelwood. These stoves included Gobar Gas Plants, improved chullahs, sigris, pressure cookers. I saw in the villages that they were collecting cow dung for fuel.

 In Dewas, I saw how social fencing has been implemented and I saw the old cattle fences with the trenches. The village resource development projects that were shown to me included a school that has actually been built with funds from the World Food Program, and a well for water. I also saw pictures of some of the villagers receiving training in mushroom cultivation, carpet weaving, and boutique painting all of which could potentially provide a good alternative income for the local villagers. I met some of the women who are working in the nursery and who are enrolled in the boutique painting training.

Observations of the Forestry Project at Dewas (back to contents)

The district forest officer (DFO) was unable to accompany me to the field because he was facilitating a training in a neighboring district. He sent me to Dewas with a forest guard who helped me hire a car. We arrived to the FD house in Dewas around 1:30 p.m. and were met by the range officer (immediately below the DFO and oringinating from the area), the beat officer (under the range officer and from the local area living in or near the villages dealing directly with the villagers daily). I launched into my questions. Only two of the officers had a fairly good command of English. He answered most of my questions over lunch, and then I set off with the rest of them to view the plantations.

 The lanky range officer dressed in mufti set off at a rapid pace in the heat of the afternoon anxious to show me as many corners of the teak plantation as we could manage. He spoke Hindi and his superior translated for me about the techniques being applied to control erosion and protect the trees. The plantation was about three years old. We ran into a villager at work policing the forest. I noted a rather strange interaction between the beat officer, who was in uniform unlike his superiors. This beat officer struck the villager as I was turning away from them. I turned back and asked if I could take a picture at which point they stood side by side and as I turned again I saw him speaking aggressively with the villager. The other forest officers ignored the villager for the most part.

 I was shown the way the teak is coppiced. Young teak grows out from a single stump, so it is necessary to come through and thin out the smaller or deformed shoots to allow the thicker ones to continue to grow tall and straight. I saw many examples of coppicing and thinning. They also showed me the young bamboo, a few varieties of acacia, and the occasional Mahua tree. The foresters told me that the bamboo would grow tall and green as soon as the rains began to fall. In February, during the time I visited, Dewas looks exceedingly dry; the leaves on the trees are sparse and dry. The bamboo is almost indiscernible. Furthermore, it was not a forest. That the biological diversity is poor is a given. Essentially this plantation is fulfilling the bare minimum requirements of fuelwood, fodder, and basic building materials to the local people. Meanwhile the teak grows taller and eventually, in thirty years time, can be harvested by the forest department. The villagers will get thirty percent of the final harvest and possibly a daily wage for the cutting. But the villagers main incentive for protecting the forest is for those basic minimum requirements.

 I saw three different plantation areas, each at different stages of growth and saw the small rock dams they have put in place to control soil erosion. I saw the same combination of basic trees in each location: teak, acacia, and bamboo. I asked if the villagers are allowed to plant other trees, in particular fruit trees and medicinal plants. The foresters said it is not possible because the land does not belong to the people it belongs to the state and they do not have a way to regulate the use of the plant or the tree crops. I believe in other JFM arrangements these local needs have been overcome, and I would argue that this sort od usufruct right would greatly enhance the local economy and well-being of the local community. Mahua for example is a very valuable tree because its fruit can be eaten and it can be used as a medicinal plant. The wood is never used because everyone knows the tree's products are too valuable.

 The area of Dewas that I saw was flat and dry. It seems clear that reforestation will take much more than plantations. The plantations are mostly profitable to the forest department. Without expanding the minimal usufruct rights granted to the local villagers, it looks to me as though the forest protection committee is hanging by a thread of an incentive. The villagers are fulfilling their end of the bargain by tethering their cows and limiting their gathering of fuelwood. They are purchasing the fuelwood and fodder they need from the forestry department during the dry season. The villagers are dependent on the forestry department and the forestry department is depending on the villagers but it looks to be only a slight variation of the former situation.

 When we went to the village, I observed the entrenched hierarchy everyone had described. The first village was divided into the part where the landholders lived in houses with roofs and the part where the landless live in traditional mud huts. There is a building for the Panchayat midway between the dwellings. We sat next to what they told me was going to be a school, provided by the World Food Programme via the Forest Department. They also showed me a well that had been built with village funds collected through the forest protection committees. The forest officers and I sat on somebody's bed frame made of wood with rope made of bhabbar grass stretched across it, the best chair they could offer. The villagers sat on the ground. Because of the time of day there were only kids, some older men, the village head, and some women, not more than twenty people. The women stayed in the village compound a few hundred yards away and covered their faces.

 I asked the villagers there about the project through the interpretation of the forest officers. It was very frustrating not to be able to ask them in Hindi. I got the answers I expected they would give me for the most part well aware that to them I was a fly-by-night visitor from outer space interested in the Bank project. Yet, I got a very strong impression from seeing the way that the forest officers interacted with the villagers that the hierarchy is very strong. Again I saw the beat officer abusing some villager. It may be his routine way of asserting his power over the villagers, or perhaps he was especially concerned because of my visit.

 When I asked if anyone had any questions for me, one old man asked me if I could help him get land. He was not interested in buying bamboo fodder from the forest department he wanted to have land for himself and his grandchildren. I was impressed that he was willing to speak out and he had quite a lot to say. I would have liked to hear it first hand. After the forest officer translated for me he answered him and then told me that he had explained again that it was almost as good that the man could use the bamboo shoots from the public forest land. It seemed a fair translation. I think these forest officers truly do mean well.

 Clearly, I viewed a snapshot of this process of transition to community participation in the management of forests. I noted an absolute lack of consideration that I might even want to hear what the women had to say in the village. they told me there was no time and that I could speak with the women in the nursery. I had a very small amount of time in the village, but gained some sense that there are some serious obstacles to community participation and gender sensitivity in the village. We returned to the nursery. We went to speak with the women. I tried to ask the questions directly to the women, hoping that the forestry officer would translate for me. I was so amazed at what occurred. I asked questions to the women, and the forest officers answered for them. I asked how long they had been working in the nursery, how often they worked in the nursery, if they were happy working in the nursery...the forest officer answered for them.

 I asked if any of them had children. The forest officer yelled at them. They tittering and covering their smiles with the corners of their saris divided into two groups. He answered for them again indicating the group on the left were married without kids and the other group each had at least one kid. I asked their ages. Nothing was translated directly to the women and they were not allowed to ask me anything. The forest officer finally told me they had to go back to their houses because they had work to do. I managed to take some photographs of the women first. the whole interaction was so odd. I kept feeling that there was something very strange as if the forest officers are not at all accustomed to talking with the women. He was yelling at them. It made me wish I had had more experience in India, so that I could be sure that what I was interpreting wasn't too far off base.

The Ford Foundation-TERI Projects in Haryana (back to contents)

I had the chance to verify that my observations were not obscured thoroughly by a cultural gap. In the Ford Foundation projects I saw in Haryana, in northern India, although the villagers still do not entirely trust the forestry officials, the women are active participants and decisionmakers in the projects. This has much to do with the involvement of TERI, the Tata Energy Research Institute. An NGO helps build a bridge for the forest department to learn how to approach the people and the likewise for the people to approach the forest department.

 The Ford Foundation funded JFM projects in the northern state of Haryana appeared in striking contrast to what I saw in Madhya Pradesh. My comparative field observations are partly unfair because the FPCs in the district of Dewas, in Madhya Pradesh, are three years old as opposed to the ones I saw in Haryana. What I learned was that the TERI program director, Mr. Bakshish Singh, had been visiting the village for close to six years. He said that in some cases the hill society had formed after one year and in other cases the village had only recently formed a society. In all cases, participation of the village communities in forestry management has led to the formation of community institutions at the grass-roots level which have assumed a definite role with clearly defined rights and responsibilities in the management of the forest resources.

 I saw three villages in Haryana. One of the villages in the hilly belt of the Shivalik mountains where the Bhandjas, or tribals who traditionally made baskets, are dependent on the local forest to supply them with bamboo. The Bhandjas formed a hill resource management society after only one year to protect the forest from fires and illegal felling and to secure their source of bamboo. The families purchase permits to fell bamboo at Rs 7 per one hundred stalks of bamboo which only grows between October and June. During the other months the villagers must turn to other sources of income and this three month period is usually when many of the villagers incur huge debts.

 Like other hill tribes, the Bhandja society is not as hierarchial as the villages I saw in Madhya Pradesh. Apart from a more cohesive group formation, the women were active participants in the discussion. Despite heavy muslim influence in the region which meant the women covered their heads and faces as they spoke in front of the men, the prior president of the hill society had been a woman as had been the village head. The Bhandjas have collected member dues for the past five years and use those funds to administer small loans to the members at a minimal borrowing rate of 2% per month. This rate is considerably less than the amount the paid formerly to middlemen. According to the TERI staff, Mr. Bakshish Singh, most of the villagers are in debt from taking out loans for important celebrations or wedding ceremonies rather than developing more creative enterprises. TERI is helping the villagers to improve the quality of their baskets.

 Next, I visited a village in the Shivalik belt, where a banjara community that has traditionally made rope from bhabbar grass (Eulaliopsis binata) has recently formed a hill society to address their forest resources and secure a supply of bhabbar grass. In recent years, the banjaras have had to purchase bhabbar from contractors that lease land from the forest department to grow bhabbar then villagers pay the contractor.

 The villagers that have joined the hill society are benefitting by being able to contract the land from the forest department directly and outside their immediate area to maintain the production of rope. It took a long time before the community was ready to form a hill society to protect their own sources of bhabbar and to contribute to the hill society fund from which they can borrow at a lower rate than from the middlemen. The villagers were resisting change despite economic sense. TERI's field staff explained that once a few people in the village finally tried to lease bhabbar fields directly from the Forestry department and ended up earning more money, the other villagers became more interested. The patience required in waiting until the villagers were ready to join the society was worth the rewards. By waiting until the village decided on its own to form a society, and each individual member decided on his or her own to contribute to the village fund, the basis for a process of village development was created. Until all the society members felt they had a stake in participating, Joint Forest Management could not be truly participative.

 In the third TERI project in the Shivaliks, the villagers were building check dams together with the forestry department and reforesting the hills around the dam. Check dams are small scale dams that are constructed in naturally suited locations that can provide irrigation that can transform barren areas to productive fields. Agricultural development is one way to take pressure off the forest resources. I saw one dam that had been constructed four years ago and one that was in the process of construction. The villagers had requested help from the forestry department in building a check dam to control soil erosion from flooding while developing a gravity-based irrigation system.

 Of particular interest to me was the equal and active role women took in these villages where TERI was working. I asked Bakshish Singh if they had been so open and forthright with their opinions from the beginning and he laughed. He told me when he first came to the village, the women would not sit together with the men. They would hide their faces and not say anything in the meetings. TERI solicited the help of some NGOs that specialize in working with women. These groups worked with the women and then with the men and over time were able to bring them together. So, this participatory forest protection project has clearly had a tremendous impact on the social dynamics within the village.

Implications for the Madhya Pradesh Forestry Project (back to contents)

Ideally, I would have liked to see more parts of MP and see how JFM is being implemented in different areas. Perhaps we will be able to do that over time. The WB funding only began to flow in September 1995. A number of questions need to be explored if we are to examine how the WB's involvement can improve the project. First is the question of NGO involvement at the community level to help the forest officers to develop more participatory approaches and achieve some gender sensitivity.

 A second question to explore is what the impact on incentives will be with the direction of WB loans into the village resource development projects (VRDPs). Will villagers have the same sense of ownership of the project if funds are being given to them? It is important to know how much money will reach the village level. This would beinteresting to explore.

 The success of JFM in so many places has not been dependent on money but on the agreement and trust relationships built between local villagers and the local forest department officials. Understandably, a large portion of the WB loan will go toward the training and development of the FD officers. But what kind of training will they receive? From my conversations with the training managers of the MPFP, there is a heavy emphasis on overseas training of the upper ranks in the FD. Whereas what is probably needed more to ensure the afforestation will succeed is training for the lower ranks in participatory approaches, gender sensitivity, etc. These are issues that can be addressed now as training programs are developed.

 The involvement of NGOs was discussed with both the training manager for the MPFP and the task force officer for the project, as well as with the local level forestry officials. From what they say, they are open to having NGOs involved in the project and in the training. They say they have invited them to participate but that there are not many NGOs in the state of MP. In contrast, the Principle Chief Conservator of Forests was suspicious of the involvement of NGOs and said they were unnecessary.

 Checking this information against my NGO sources, indeed there is not a long history of voluntary agencies in MP. However, there are a lot of activist NGOs that emerged during the recent lobbying of the World Bank over the Narmada Dam. Their stance is quite antagonistic towards the government and they are unwilling to cooperate with the FD. This may explain the PCCF's negative reaction to NGOs. He accused me of being a spy from a lefty organization on a fact collecting mission. I struggled to assure him that this was not the case. All the same, there is a plethora of non-antagonistic NGOs in India who would be capable of working with the FD or providing the FD with training in participatory approaches, gender sensitivity. etc.

 Kamla Chowdry, former Executive Secretary of the SPWD recommended one important avenue that the WB could use to support the process of implementing participatory policy. She learned that there is a regional committee that oversees the project and would like to see it opened to civil society. This would include NGOs and other community representatives. She attended a meeting of the committee and saw that it was completely meaningless because nobody on the committee really has any control over decision making regarding the project. They are all third level bureaucrats with no power. If the government of the state of MP is to take this project seriously there has to be more effort to make this committee a democratic forum where real issues regarding the project can be raised and addressed. This would support the process of implementing participation at the village level.

Analysis (back to contents)

 If we are to give JFM and this project a balanced view, then as the PCCF suggests, we should bring in a sociological analysis. It seems clear at least in India, that the obstruction of true community participation, involvement, and engagement has less to do with the World Bank and more to do with complex levels of institutional bureaucracy, social and institutional hierarchy, and in the organization and composition of the village where a project is being implemented. By looking at participation in the MPFP, we are also studying a larger picture of the impact on villagers of increased funding to JFM projects.

 Some of the JFM practitioners I spoke with had differing views about JFM. According to Jeff Campbell, Program Officer of the Ford Foundation which has funded much of the Social Forestry Projects across Asia in past decades and has been a leader in funding JFM projects in India, if we were to look at several projects over time, we would find that the outcome of the project depends on so many factors that it is very difficult to isolate the specific impact of the donor agencies on the JFM arrangements.(2) In a sense, it doesn't make a bit of difference what donors say they want to do.(3) It depends very much on local forestry departments (FDs) and particularly on what sort of resources that state has available to divert toward the project for reimbursement from the WB (which is how the WB operates financially).(4) It is also very difficult to tell what will happen with JFM ten or fifteen years down the line. The Ford Foundation itself does not support the government but rather NGO entities which has different implications for the way JFM is implemented. The WB Joint Forest Management projects go toward reimbursing government entities.(5) Examining the impact of policy through JFM is really quite ephemeral because it is so different in each place.(6) So much depends on the foresters from the FD, the local people, the actual forest.(7)

Ultimately, I learned from the Ministry of Forestry as well as from the Executive Director of the Society for the Promotion of Wastelands Development, a key player in documenting JFM across India, who both told me, whether a project is sustainable ultimately depends on the villagers.(8) I also heard repeatedly from foresters in the FD in Madhya Pradesh and from NGOs in New Delhi, that JFM is all a learning process for the FD and the villagers. Furthermore, both NGOs and the FD say that JFM is a constantly evolving concept.

 However, knowing that JFM is an evolving process does not mean we should take a passive approach to ensuring that the concept is sustainable in a given area. In the case of the Madhya Pradesh Forestry Project, the FD should be doing everything it can to bring in the kinds of organizations that can help smooth the process. According to the JFM practitioners I spoke with, in order for JFM projects to be sustainable two things are necessary: the people need a sense of ownership of the project, and they need an incentive to change their current behavior patterns.(9)

These two things require addressing two very sticky questions: (1) equity issues - within villages and among them; and (2) power relationships - within villages and among villages and the forest department as well as within the forest department.(10)

Looking at what TERI has done with Ford Foundation funding, it seems apparent that building a sustainable relationship between the FD and the people takes a great deal of time and trust-building. In the case of the MPFP, it seems that the level and output of training of the FD has a misplaced priority. Of course it is too early to tell, but it appears in striking contrast with TERI projects in Haryana, in the North of India, where well-formed hill societies visibly appear to be in control of the project; they recognize that the money they are collecting for the village funds with society member dues are a viable source of village banking; and that there may be an increased demand for the products they produce from NTFPs on the local market due to improving the quality of their products. In sum the emphasis is on the improvement of the local standard of living and regeneration of the local forests with guarantee of access to the products they need at a sustainable rate of harvest. From what I learned, the MPFP is more skewed toward the transfer of technical forestry skills to local people for the maintenance of the FD managed hardwood teak and sal (Shorea Robusta) plantations.

 A lot also depends on the land itself.(11) There are certain biological limits to each region in India. With population increases, likewise, where local forest resources cannot continue to sustain local needs, people need to change the way they are using their resources.(12) Alternative resources must be introduced and, gradually, commercial or market activities, and finally efficient energy alternatives to fuelwood should be brought in.(13) Clearly, introduction of such diverse programs as family planning, pisiculture, and renewable energy are needed.(14) The forestry department is not prepared to address these activities. Such activities are outside the bounds of what the FD can handle but they are a necessary part of an integrated approach to the problems of forest resources.(15)

In sum there are two aspects of any JFM project that deserve consideration in an analysis of the impact of donors directing sizable loans into JFM. Investing a lot of money into JFM, as being done in the MPFP of the World Bank does not mean that the concept will automatically spread.(16) A change of attitudes is required and that is a very complex process which takes not only time but the commitment of local people to the idea. That commitment is also not automatic. The incentives to band together, such as access to forest resources, may not form the basis for solid democratic institution-building at the local level. Secondly, a lot of marketing analysis is needed to properly account for the value of the NTFPs and to assist local villagers in assessing the marketing of those products.(17) NGOs may provide the bridge needed to carry both the process of attitudinal change and the assist villagers with practical marketing approaches. NGOs should be brought in to work together with the FD at all stages of the project.

Conclusion (back to contents)

 Linking this report to our initial phase, there are several reasons why we think that SDI can contribute substantively to the improvement of the Madhya Pradesh Forestry Project. We are operating based on several assumptions. First, we believe that true local participation will mean local empowerment and that empowering local communities will improve both the local economy and local environment. Second, we are operating on the premise that the World Bank hopes to address the real problems of poverty. Third, we think we can influence the World Bank and other donor agencies and decision makers in our own way by interfacing directly with task managers of projects and by presenting our findings in public fora. Finally, we feel we are in the appropriate position to conduct this sort of study to support the efforts of grassroots groups and serve as both as a communications vehicle to publicize their accomplishments to decision makers and the policy community.

 We will continue to follow the development of the Madhya Pradesh Forestry Project to the extent possible through our contacts and if we get the chance to do second site visit we will be able to get a further understanding of how things are developing in MP. Above all, we hope to be able to interface directly with the TM of the project and push for the involvement of NGOs at the village level and on the regional committees.

Footnotes: (back to contents)

1. op cit Pimbert and Pretty, 1995.

2. Personal communication with Jeff Campbell, in New Delhi, India, February 21, 1996.

3. ibid

4. ibid

5. See study on the Karnataka Forestry Project by Arvind Khare of the World Wide Fund for Nature formerly Executive Director of the Society for the Promotion of Wastelands Development. He has done a rigorous financial analysis to see what a small amount actually hits the ground.

6. Campbell, op. cit.

7. Campbell, op. cit.

8. Personal communication with Mo. Munindra, IFS, Deputy Secretary to the Government, Ministry of Environment and Forests, C.G.V. Complex, New Delhi, February 20, 1996; and Rizvi, op cit; and R.K. Singh, IFS, Joint Director for Human Resources Development, World Bank Task Force, Madhya Pradesh Forestry Project, MPFD, Bhopal, February 23, 1996.

9. Personal communication with S. Rizvi, Executive Director of the Society for the Promotion of Wastelands Development, February 21, 1996.

10. ibid

11. Personal communication, O.N. Kaul, Dean, Forestry and Biodiversity, TERI, New Delhi, February 20, 1996.

12. ibid

13. ibid

14. ibid

15. ibid

16. Munindra, op cit

17. Munindra, op cit