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 everything is in place why is it not working? This curiosity led to do some check on the structure and mandate of these committees.

According to MoEF&CC EDCs are bodies similar to joint forest management committees (JFMC) in villages of protected areas and their buffer zone. The JFMC is democratic decentralized local institution of forest communities fully or partially part of the Gram Sabha so, EDCs need to have a similar structure by definition; only difference between them being that the EDCs cannot be allotted a patch of land. The two primary objectives for setting up EDCs are protecting wildlife and other biodiversity and undertaking eco development activities in the village. MOEF&CC enshrines the following as the rationale for developing the EDC/JFMC

However this is the de-jure status of the bodies, the de-facto being different from this. My interactions with the village communities and the forest officials has helped me understand that the committees were managed by an officer of the level of Forest Ranger who is responsible for planning of the activities and maintaining the books of accounts. The final authority for the committee is the divisional forest official (DFO). So, the role of the DFO becomes critical to success of the EDCs. A village head is nominated among the members who is representative of the village members and organizes meetings, coordinates project works. Most of the communities near the protected areas are illiterate tribal people, who have a very little say before the forest officials. This makes it challenging to bring the local communities on board to have a say in the management activity for the EDCs. In recent time there have been some intervention from the nongovernmental organizations but the functioning has been limited to bigger national parks like Pench, Kanha and Kaziranga national parks in MP and Assam. In most of the villages I visited there was no concrete project work planned under the EDCs to utilize the available funds allocated to them. This amount may be as high as Rs. 7 lakhs – Rs. 10 lakhs like in Khatiya village in Kanha. In most of the protected areas these institutions have failed to create local leadership. The number of meetings conducted by forest department with villagers for discussing on matters concerning EDC has been minimal. In most of the cases, the EDCs were created for namesake as per the mandates to the forest department for creation of such bodies.

Currently the work done under eco development committees mostly include creation of boundary walls along the periphery of protected areas as done in Pench tiger reserve, watershed management structures like check dams, handicraft works like idols, masks etc. from clay, plantation works in buffer areas, village patrolling in many parts along the fringe of Kaziranga National Park mainly to prevent human wildlife conflict, encroachment prevention to the protected areas. In most of the villages I interacted, work done in EDCs followed a top down approach. In most of the villages the village representative for EDCs and the villagers either had no education or only primary education except a few villages like Khatiya, Naujan where the village representative had education beyond schooling. Under such circumstances empowering the villagers need to be suo moto on part of the forest department.

Community projects have been taken up as part of EDCs in different parts of the country and there have been success stories but, it is observed that as an institution it has been unable to achieve its laid objectives at a national level. The intended beneficiaries of the EDCs are the villagers of the protected areas and the buffer. The people in these areas are prone to high amount of human wildlife conflict both from the carnivore and herbivores. The cattle are eaten by carnivores with very less successful cases of compensation and agriculture fields are grazed and raided by the herbivores. The people living inside the protected area are the worst affected from such events. These are usually the tribal communities and are vulnerable communities. In many of the protected areas the conservation have bore fruits and the number of wild animals has increased and the number of people in the surrounding villages has also increased with no increase in the land area causing serious increase in intensity of human wildlife conflict on aforementioned areas. These conflicts are expected to rise significantly in years to come with the current trends of forest management principles laying more focus on conservation. There is yet another area of debate where thinkers have now started to question ‘what is the optimum number of tigers we intend to conserve’. In future we may come up with better models with peaceful coexistence off wildlife and anthropogenic species. This is also vital to maintain the tolerance level of the people along the fringe villages of the protected areas. There cooperation is essential to the conservation of the wildlife. Most of these people were forest dependent people who have altered their way of living from traditional forest dependent to non forest dependent. These communities have compromised on national interest. It is not very unusual to feel that they should be benefited in return. EDCs could serve as one of the medium.

The question now arises what can be done to achieve the twin objectives of conservation and development. The process starts with multi stakeholder discussion. The forest department, the villagers, NGOs and developmental agencies like the livelihood mission. Private organization willing to fund eco developmental activities under corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives also can become part. Integration of these agencies is important for success in long run. Selection of work is vital for the success of the EDCs. The work done should not only provide development opportunities but also reduce the dependence of the communities on the forest. Selection of work should follow a mix of top down and bottom up approaches. Areas of expertise of the local communities need to be understood and project works developed close to such activities would be more preferable. A community having expertise in medicinal plants can cultivate such plants or create herbal tourism centers under eco developmental activities or a community involved in making bamboo furniture the forest department could help them extract bamboo in sustainable manner from predefined buffer areas and train them with modern treatment methods for making better furniture. The developmental agencies need to create proper market mechanism for funding and marketing the products. A lady beat officer had mobilized a few women in the village near her beat office in Ratapani wildlife sanctuary to form handicraft items made of waste paper and clay. The EDC named ‘paper messi’ had shown success. Paper messi is encountered with many caveats like missing market linkage, unavailability of funds. This is primarily due to inability to integrate with other agencies. Every agency is limited by its scope and capability. Interdepartmental coordination is vital for success of EDCs. This brings us to an important step where a stakeholder needs to exit from the regular functioning of the EDC. An exit plan for every stakeholder needs to be present in the initial draft with and approximate timeline. The exit plan or hand holding for capacity building should be such that the reversal to forest dependence doesn’t happen. The forest department may keep the onus of ownership but needs to devoid itself of regular working of the EDCs. This is vital for attaining the objective of creating local leadership. It would also enhance their capacity building and eventually increase their say in conservation works. When an activity is big enough for a single village more than one village needs to be involved. Furniture from Lantana is such an activity that has recently been identified. The functioning should be segregated into multiple organizations like marketing, production just like a private entity and further grooming can happen in that direction. Eco tourism has been attempted in some areas but it can only come up in areas of tourism potential. If such scope is available the forest department needs to promote it.

I strongly feel we will certainly need the EDCs and the new forest policy that is underway for draft will have a vital role in shaping the future of the EDCs. The previous forest policy gave way for community participation in terms of JFMC/EDC and over time many such institutions were created in different parts of the country with very limited success in terms of functioning. The past experience has shown that the involvement of the local communities is vital for the success of conservation of the protected areas. However this cannot be done at the cost of the local communities. So, a concerted development versus conservation is required and EDCs can serve as an umbrella institution to deliver it.

JPRajkhowa