India - Andhra Pradesh Community Forest Management Project : social assessment
Trivedi, Pravin K.
The Andhra Pradesh Forest Community Project aims to reduce rural poverty through improved forest management with community participation. In 1992 the government adopted a Joint Forest Management approach, wherein all forest dependents organize themselves into a cohesive group - Van Samrakshana Samithies (VSS) - to protect, regenerate, and manage the forests. From a mere 200 VSSs in 1995, today there are more than 6,700 VSSs in the state managing 1.68 million hectares of forest area. A comprehensive and integrated Social and Environmental Assessment has been done wherein to key issues for forestry sector in general and for the project in particular. Some of the issues include: a) Forestry and environment improvement can directly influence the poverty problem to a great extent. The challenge is how to reach the poorest of the poorest. b) Rapport with the stakeholders by Forest Department builds up the trust relationship. c) Establishing and maintaining backward linkages as well as integrating gender concerns for overall development of rural and tribal families can be better done in a group rather than an individual. d) Combined trainings, orientations, deliberations, filed exposures, and workshops are found to be quite effective tools for advocacy, capacity building, social mobilization, improving performance and skills of VSS, NGOs, and functionaries or facilitators. e) Integration of micro-plan with other development plans would go a long way to be effective.
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