Role of Community Institutions in Joint Forest Management

Abstract

Forest is one of the most important resources for the very survival of human beings, especially those who are living in and around the forest. However, one of the major reasons for its depletion is unsustainable exploitation often by the same very people whose survival depends on the forests. Several attempts have been made in different countries to save this invaluable resource. Joint Forest Management (JFM) in India is one of such attempts which is characterised by active participation of the community institutions together with the Department of Forests. In this paper an attempt is made to discover the underlying institutional factors that enable or inhibit functioning of the Joint Forest Management Committees (JFMCs) and their effectiveness. Primary data were collected from 200 members of 63 JFMCs from four territorial forest divisions of Paschim Medinipur district of West Bengal. Apart from JFMC members, 19 forest department officials and staff were also interviewed to know about the performance of the JFMCs. Collected data were coded, assigned scores and analysis was done with the help of statistical package for social sciences (SPSS10.0) for windows. Results suggest that locally evolved institutional arrangements are major factors that contribute to JFMC functioning which is represented by gradations. Moreover, among various parameters of institutions, control mechanism plays the most significant role in influencing the functioning of JFMCs. Therefore, to assess the performance of JFMCs in a shortest possible time, review of control mechanism only will represent a fairly accurate picture.