Forest Dependence, Livelihoods and Poverty - Class Assigment

Forest Dependence, Livelihoods and Poverty Ashish Bharadwaj

II M.Sc. Economics, 2007

Madras School of Economics

Design of the study

Aim of this assignment 1

Current scenario 2

Establishing links between environment and poverty 3 Forest-Livelihood Nexus 4

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8 Results, Conclusion and Policy Suggestions

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6

Data and Methodology

Model

References

Importance of Forests is globally recognized not only as important source of

subsistence, employment, revenue earnings, raw materials to a number of

industries but also for their vital role in ecological balance, environmental stability,

biodiversity conservation, food security and sustainable development of a country

Deforestation per se is not a problem and in fact may be a necessary condition for

economic development. Unsustainable deforestation activities, however, result in

environmental degradation.

• Rural women are disproportionately affected by natural resource degradation (B. Agarwal, 1995)

• Concentration of the poorest groups in perhaps the ecologically most fragile areas implies greatest risk to their welfare

• Natural Resource degradation, if not

checked, will result in large-scale

poverty & destitution, and can hamper

the very process of socio-economic

development (Nandkarni 2000)

• Environment Degradation impacts

the poor much more than the better off

(greater dependence, limited assets,

vulnerability to disasters)

Some Statistics…

India’s forest cover is estimated to be about 6,75,538 sq. km. or 20.55 percent of the

country’s area

However, the per capita availability of forestland in India is 0.0747 ha which is still one of

the lowest in the world against an average of 0.5 ha for developing countries and 0.64

ha for the world

Dense forest shrinking in almost all the major States

>57% of total geographical area degraded

NRSA study concluded that forest cover of the country reduced from 16.89% to 14.10%

during the seven years from 1975 to 1982

Source: SFR (2003) and Sehgal & Abrol (1994)

0

20,000

40,000

60,000

80,000

100,000

120,000

140,000

For

est

Cov

er (

in h

ecta

res)

AP MP UP Orissa

States

Forest Cover of Major States in India (1987-2001)

1987

1995

2001

Some of the forest rich states for e.g. Madhya Pradesh , Chhatisgarh, Jharkhand,

Uttranchal , Himachal Pradesh and seven north east states for which human

development reports are available, shrinking dense forest cover adversely affects the

constituents of human development (World Bank 1999, Poffenberger 2000)

In India, about 100 million people reside in forests, and are heavily dependent upon a

variety of forest products and services for their subsistence and livelihood. Another 275

million people live on the forest fringes and earn bulk of their livelihood from forests

(World Bank 1999, Poffenberger 2000)

Direct benefits from

environment

Poverty

reduction

Indirect benefits from environment

Enhanced Welfare Income derived

from forest goods &

services

Food Requirements Primary health care

Education

Official statistics on forest cover suggest

that rich diverse forest in the category of

dense forest is consistently declining

while total forest area is increasing, at

least for last two decades

Dense Forest

Open Forest

Scrub

Non-Forest

Forest Cover of India

Sources:

• State Forest Reports

• Forest Survey of India & Forest Research Institute Statistics

• Global Forest Resources Assessment, FAO 2000, 2001b, 2001c

• World Bank Data

• Distribution of Geographical area and Forest Cover (dense, moderately

dense and open forests) for States

•Production of NTFPs (medicinal herbs, tendu leaves, fruits, honey,

spices, bamboo, agarbatti etc.) during 2000-01 and 2001-02

• HDI values and ranking for States 1991, 2001

• Timber production (2000-01) for States

• Afforestation on Forest Land During 2000-01 and 2001-02 for States

• Fuel wood consumption

Data and Sources

Where,

HDI = Value of Human Development Index

FC = Forest Cover (in sq.kms.)

NTFP = Non timber forest products (total production value)

TP = Timber production (in cu.m.)

AFF = Afforestation (in sq.kms.)

1,2,...,10

i i i i i i i i i iHDI FC NTFP TP AFF u

i

Model

1. Ecosystems and Human Well-Being, Policy Responses, Vol.3, Millennium

Ecosystem Assessment, Island Press 2005

2. The Earthscan Reader in Forestry and Development, ed. Jeffrey Sayer,

Earthscan 2005

3. People and Forests: Communities, Institutions & Governance, ed. Clark

Gibson, Margaret McKean and Elinor Ostrom, MIT Press, 2000

4. Economics of Environment and evelopment, ed. Pushpam Kumar, Ane

Books 2005

5. FAO Corporate Document Repository, Forestry Department

6. Abrol, I.P. and Sehgal, J.L., 1994. Degraded lands and their rehabilitation

in India. In: Greenland, D.J. and Szabolcs, I. Editors, 1994. Soil Resilience

and Sustainable Land Use CAB International, Wallingford, UK

7. Poffenberger, M. (ed.), 2000. Communities and forest management in

South Asia. A regional profile of the Working Group on Community

Involvement in Forest Management. Forests, People and Policies, IUCN,

Gland, Switzerland. .

8. http://envfor.nic.in/fsi/sfr99/misc/summary.html

9. Forest Principles, Earth Summit 1992, Rio de Janeiro

References

Some possible policy suggestions:

a) More secure PRs over resources

b) Participatory resource management (Joint Forest Management) involving local communities and public agencies.

c) Effective regulation and enforcement of controls

d) Effective price system for NTFPs

AND…

Generating awareness of ecological & economic impacts of natural resource depletion

But, its good to see certain sections of society working hard on this front !!

Thanks