This could well be an excellent example for humanity on how to live in good health and enhance your economic condition by contributing to biodiversity conservation. Thousands of people belonging to 80 villages in Nayagarh district have shown exemplary community effort to conserve and promote the local forest wealth for their economic wellbeing and nourishing an immensely-beneficial green cover for good health.
In 1995, the residents of these villages under Ranpur block formed a Maa Maninag Jungle Surakshya Parishad with a resolve to protect the local jungles from getting depleted because of various reasons. The timber mafias were mindlessly felling trees and smuggling them out to make quick bucks. This apart, some dishonest people were busy in overexploitation of the forest resources that led to their fast destruction.
“Under the guidance of Vasundhara, a global action research organisation on forest conservation and restoration of forest rights to tribals and other traditional forest-dwellers, the villagers got united and decided to protect the jungles from the mafias, poachers and other dishonest elements. It was decided that selected representatives of each village would guard their forests every night. Not only males but also women folks also formed groups and guarded the forests with thengas (bamboo sticks) in their hands. This helped us not only protect the forests but enlarge their sizes,” Parishad secretary Arakhita Sahoo said.
With the passage of time, the Maa Maninag Jungle Surakshya Parishad has grown in size. Currently, 217 villages are enrolled with it.
Vasundhara executive director Y Giri Rao said the village-level Jungle Surakshya Committees meet on the 25th day of every month and discuss and evaluate on their efforts for protection and promotion of the forests under their jurisdictions and marketing of various forest produce, including sal leaves, sal seeds, mahua flower, kendu leaves and bamboo roots.
With the Vasundhara’s persistent efforts, many Jungle Surakshya Committees have got community rights under the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006 to assert their rights over the forestland over which they were traditionally dependent. In a recent function, the District Level Committee (DLC) of Nayagarh provided 14 Community Rights (CR) and Community Forest Resource Rights (CFR) covering 24 villages of the district to have control over the forests they have been protecting all these years.
The CFR protects the villagers from any legal actions from Forest Department officials, who are duty-bound to stop common people from entering forests to collect firewood and forest produces.
“There has been a significant improvement in the livelihood patterns of the local people. Women folks have formed self-help groups and each of them is earning between Rs 3,000 and Rs 10,000 per month by stitching siali-leaf plates and selling processed forest produces. This has helped them meet their day-today expenses besides funding the educational needs of their children,” said Giri Rao.
Increasing evidence across the globe points towards the fact that local communities-managed forests are better protected than those not managed by local communities.
(The writer is an advisor to Centre for Socio-Economic Studies, New Delhi, and a journalist)