Perspectives on Forest governance among the indigenous communities of India's Eastern Ghats

Anugu Amarender Reddy, Tek Maraseni, Souparna Lahiri, Sikha Karki, Upama Koju, Anita Shrestha and Tim Cadman

Forest Policy and Economics, 2024, vol. 169, issue C

Abstract: Forest plays a significant role in the rural economy. It contributes to food security and provides resources and enterprise opportunities for poor communities. By enabling sustainable local forestry enterprises, effective forest governance regimes have the potential to remove the barriers that prevent the forest from contributing to the livelihoods of poor people. At present, such opportunities seem remote, particularly for Indigenous communities. In this context, a study was conducted in the Eastern Ghats of northern Andhra Pradesh, covering 588 Indigenous villagers living on the forest fringe who were surveyed about the condition of the forest, the uses, and services they provide, and community perspectives on the current forest governance regimes. The data collected were statistically analysed using five participatory indicators of governance quality. The results suggest that although forests had multiple usages and were of high environmental, social, and economic value to the local community, the governance of the forest regimes investigated was not optimal. Low governance ratings, especially in transparency and accountability, indicate a lack of openness and responsibility in managing forest resources, revealing a major flaw in the current regime. This may demonstrate that both traditional and more recent approaches to forest governance are not especially suited to reduce deforestation and forest degradation properly. Consequently, there is a need to address limitations within each management regime and forest governance. Most importantly, it necessitates the full and effective participation of local Indigenous villagers in developing and implementing management regimes.

Keywords: Livelihood; Forest management; Governance; Indigenous communities; Effective participation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1389934124002041
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:forpol:v:169:y:2024:i:c:s1389934124002041

DOI: 10.1016/j.forpol.2024.103350

Access Statistics for this article

Forest Policy and Economics is currently edited by M. Krott

More articles in Forest Policy and Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().