INDIA IN TRANSITION. Time we managed forests differently

In India, legally established protected areas have historically been the most important means adopted for biodiversity conservation. Protected areas (PAs) primarily include National Parks and Wildlife Sanctuaries, and more recently, Community Reserves and Conservation Reserves. Today, there are 703 PAs all across India, covering almost 5 per cent of its land area.

PAs are widely recognised for their significance in climatic and hydrological modulation, provision of diverse forest goods, nutrient cycling, and crop pollination. Yet, the decline of biodiversity, even inside these supposed bastions of conservation, is alarming.

The task of conservation has become even more difficult as most PAs are surrounded by people who are alienated from the aims and need for wildlife conservation. Restrictions on forest use, poorly managed village displacement, conflicts with wildlife, and unclear forest rights fuel resentment among local communities.

People in and around PAs live with issues of livelihood insecurity on a daily basis and see little effort on the part of PA managers to redress their problems. One of the major tasks facing PA managers is to enhance local support for wildlife conservation. While this is necessary for ethical reasons, there are practical reasons for doing so as well.

A cooperative local community can help reduce poaching and other illegal activities, and provide knowledge and human resource for better ecosystem management. Public participation and outreach also go a long way in developing a more conducive ambience for dialoguing with different stakeholders in situations of conflict. With much less policing to do, PA managers can focus more on constructive activities such as research and wildlife management.

For a long time, the public involvement in PA management was restricted to appointing naturalists and wildlife enthusiasts as honorary wildlife wardens. While experienced in natural history, most of the wardens had little or no scientific training.

Few possessed a holistic view of social-ecological systems in which the PA was embedded or had a sense of history about the site. Further, the interface of PA managers and wardens with local villagers was restricted to fining them for illegal activities such as grazing or poaching.

During the 1990s, the government, aided by the World Bank, sought to redress this problem through the India Eco-development Programme (IEDP). The IEDP was limited in terms of geographical spread and funding, being carried out only in nine project sites with a budget of ₹3 billion over a ten-year period ($67 million at the time). However, the IEDP represented a departure from the exclusionary norms of conservation prevalent in India at the time through its emphasis on local benefit and participation.

However, the IEDP turned out be a non-starter in many ways. Various schemes were started with seed money from IEDP, but could not be sustained beyond the project period. One of the root causes was the inability to create sustainable village institutions that could work effectively and carry on the activities beyond the project period. Top-down approaches, activities inappropriate in the socio-economic context and continued exclusion of marginalised groups also contributed to the problems.

There were a few exceptions. Periyar Tiger Reserve (Kerala) conducted an ecotourism program to train local people, earlier dependent on illegal activities such as poaching. Having the advantage of knowing the flora and fauna well, they were converted into effective nature guides to take tourists on wildlife treks and hikes through the rainforest reserve.

Other successful cooperatives were created for enhancing local incomes such as direct selling of plantation produce and food stalls during religious pilgrimages. But such successes were few and far between and in most of the sites, IEDP sank without a trace after the funded project.

Another opportunity for improving PA management in India came in 2005, ironically with the local extinction of the Bengal tiger in Sariska Tiger Reserve.

A national-level Tiger Task Force, headed by environmentalist Sunita Narain, was set up to explore the long-term issues plaguing tiger conservation. As a result of its deliberations, the Tiger Task Force argued for the setting up of an Advisory Committee in each State with representation from forest officials, village groups, NGOs, and other qualified individuals, an existing legal provision.

Through its intervention in advising management planning, the proposed Advisory Committee was meant to help resolve conflicts between local economy and ecology. However, this was not even partially operationalised by State forest departments.

As of today, Tiger Reserves (which constitute only 48 out of the 703 PAs in the country) continue to have a limited budget for eco-development activities.

Unfortunately, even this budget is rarely used for village-based activities except in high profile Tiger Reserves. A recent positive development has been the setting up of State-level monitoring committees to keep track of rehabilitation programmes for people displaced from PAs.

Generating involvement in local PAs requires not just the government but also considerable funding. Livelihood interventions, conflict mitigation and compensation schemes, and public outreach programmes are diverse areas requiring financing, which is not currently available.

The large, 85 per cent budget cuts of the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change in the Twelfth Five-Year Plan have already made it harder for PA managers to meet even basic costs such as salaries and purchase field equipment, leaving little for additional activities.

One solution is to use funding from the national Compensatory Afforestation and Fund Management and Planning Authority (CAMPA). CAMPA funds are garnered from government and non-governmental user entities for the purposes of compensatory afforestation when forest land is diverted for industry and infrastructure development.

Today, they are worth ₹380 billion ($5.9 billion). The use of CAMPA funds for improving PA management can be justified as it will have long- and short-term benefits for biodiversity conservation. Also, tourist entry fees to PAs, running into millions of rupees annually, can strengthen such interventions.

Successful civil society initiatives, though scattered, have demonstrated that public outreach vastly improves effectiveness of nature protection. For instance, snow leopard conservation in Himachal Pradesh and bird-based tourism in Uttarakhand — on-going efforts led jointly by State Forest Departments and NGOs — are beginning to yield results.

New legal categories of PAs in India such as Conservation Reserves and Community Reserves mandate public participation, a requirement that can be leveraged for good use. Existing provisions in the Wildlife Protection Act for people’s involvement can be operationalised. Incremental improvements in governance can be made through locale-specific activities based on partnerships amongst different sectors.

The writer is a Senior Fellow at the Centre for Ecology, Development and Research. This article is by special arrangement with the Center for the Advanced Study of India, University of Pennsylvania