SOCIAL FORESTRY AS AN ALTERNATIVE STRATEGY FOR FOREST PLANTATION DEVELOPMENT

Abstract

The alarming trend of deforestation and forest degradation has created the needto adopt alternative strategies for sustainable forest plantation development. Itis widely accepted that plantations undertaken b.v the Forest Department (FD)alone are inadequate to create the tree cover necessary to meet all the woodrelated needs of the country. Studies made for the Forestry Sector Alaster Plan(F5~\IP; showed that about 70% of the wood supply is derived from non-forestsources and that this trend can be expected to continue for the next 25 years. Inthese circumstances, ways and means have to be found of increasing the partplayed by the rural people in tree growing, in order to improve the productivirty0/ the non-forest wood resources. In keeping with the government's economicpolicy, ways must be developed and promoted for involving farmers, the estatesector, communities and other private groups in forest plantation establishmentand management. The National Forestry Policy (NFP) of 1995 already includesprovisions to give emphasis to the promotion of social forestry. In order to giveeffect to these policies several far-reaching strategies have been proposed underthe F~S'JvJPs,uch as allowing home gardens and other agroforestry systems to beestablished on leased state land that has been degraded or deforested,introducing incentives to encourage the maintenance of home gardens, andconversely to discourage the conversion of home gardens to other land uses.Various types of institutional support, including credit, technical assistance andresearch will be provided as required for the development of social forestry bystate agencies that will work with the rural people.