Anthropology Development vs. Development Anthropology: Mediating the Forester-Farmer Relationship in Pakistan

Abstract

The Forest Service of Pakistan has concerned itself since colonial times largely with the production, protection, and extraction of trees in the nation's state forests. The only contact that its officers had with most farmers (except large landowners, with whom they had traditional patron-client relations) was to levy punishments for violations of forest laws or gather fees for the use of forest resources. In recent years, the state forests have declined in area and importance, and the need to increase on-farm supplies of tree products and halt resource degradation has increased. As a result, the Government of Pakistan, with the assistance of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), decided to change the basic direction of the Forest Service—away from state lands to private lands, away from commercial to subsistence or mixed subsistence/commercial production, and thus away from the rural elite to the small farmer. The vehicle chosen to accomplish this was the bilaterally funded Forestry Planning and Development Project, Pakistan's first major social forestry project.