Joint forest management- a Step towards decentralised Governance of natural Resources in Karnataka

Derekar, Jayanand Hambeer (2015) Joint forest management- a Step towards decentralised Governance of natural Resources in Karnataka. Journal of Media and Social Development, 3 (4). pp. 36-50. ISSN 2320-8244

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Abstract

The shift in control of forests from people to the state resulted notonly in their alienation from their livelihood bases, but also degradationof the forest. For centuries forest dependent communities had shared asymbiotic relationship with the forest, around which their life and culturehad developed. But colonial approaches to forest conservation andprotection that alienated the inhabitants of forest lands treated them asintruders, rather than participants in management of the forest wealth.It was not until the Forest Policy of 1988 that the concept of co-management of forests was seen as a viable alternative to forestconservation. The Joint Forest Planning and Management (JFPM)programme was the outcome of the participatory forestry approachand was introduced in the country for the first time in 1993, as analternative to the centralised governance of forests. The JFPM, as thename itself suggests gave an emphasis to the notion of joint managementof forest resources by involving local communities, while at the sametime giving them a share in forest resources. The Village Forest Committee(VFC) was envisaged as the institutional mechanism for operationalisingthe JFPM programme. In Karnataka as many as 5006 VFCs have beenstarted under different forestry projects since JFPM was introduced in1993. However, the VFCs have a long way to go before the intendedoutcomes of the programme are to be realised. This paper gives a briefhistorical background of JFPM by bringing out the shifts that havetaken place in the forest policies and analyses the role that theprogramme can play as a mechanism of decentralised governance.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	Joint Forest Management, Natural Resources,Decentralised Governance, Forest Policy, Village Forest Committee,Stakeholder
Subjects:	A Arts and Humanities > Sociology
Divisions:	Department of > Sociology
Depositing User:	Dr Raju C
Date Deposited:	06 Mar 2021 10:18
Last Modified:	06 Mar 2021 10:18
URI:	http://eprints.uni-mysore.ac.in/id/eprint/15754

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