EDC: conservation or development?
As part of the course curriculum in post graduate diploma in forestry management at the Indian Institute of Forest Management (IIFM) I have been travelling to different protected areas in and around Madhya Pradesh for past two years. Besides, I had worked around a few protected areas in Assam during my summer internship. The process involved interacting with different stakeholders in the conservation process like the forest department, local communities, various institutions etc. It gave me an exposure to different forest management aspects. One of the institutions that I frequently interacted was eco development committees (EDC). During my interactions with some of the EDCs I came across a few interesting observations; these committees had funds allocated for different activities, people were ready to work under the committee program, an organizational structure was present still most of these committees were near defunct with very little operations. I pondered if everyt...