Challenges in front of Forest based livelihoods

Over the years, forest based livelihood has faced immense challenge in changing scenario as well as threat to different other stakeholders directly or indirectly involved in it. Given the limited availability of cultivated area, forests are important sources for food or income. According to 2001 census of India, 1 84 million tribal approximately 55 per cent lives in the forest. And apart from this, villages situated nearby forest areas, people are highly dependent on forest for their livelihood. During the last ten years of transition, the processes such as restitution, privatization, reformulation of policy and legislation were common features of forest based development in our country which has affected the scope of livelihood and threatened the possibility for future generation dependent on forest activities. Not only these factors have contributed at large scale but also there are many such as forest loss and degradation, loss of access to forest resources on account of capturing by elite groups and increasing modernization has brought down the market possibility for rural producer. The amount of collection of forest products has changed in last few decades. The degree of change varies from different products with the highly collected products (fuel wood, charcoal and timber) generally decreasing and while the less collected forest products (edible wild food, medicinal plant, honey) show no change or minimal change. A common reason cited for the decrease of availability of forest products is increase of population collecting it which is further attributed to increased village population and increase in demand for these forest products. Latest report of the government of India shows that increasing population, increasing manufacturing industries, mining, and deforestation has put pressure on tribal people or section dependent on it to sustain their livelihood. It is another reason that forests activities have bring a substantial change in their livelihood by using some indicators such as financial, physical, natural, human and social capital. Generally, there is a general improvement in the livelihood asset of the people except natural resource assets. Improvement in financial assets is shown by increase in number of livestock holdings of the people. With the establishment of self-help groups, there has been increased savings among the households and also the interest rate has reduced significantly. It has been also observed that due to introduction of several incomes generating option by the government has increased the created the consumerism and movement of money very quickly and subsequently increased economic activities in the village. Physical assets also increased as having facilities in houses with piped water, electricity and houses covered with iron sheets. Regarding human capital, high improvement in the number of children now attending school. As for social capital, highest increase in the number of participation by the villagers, SHGs groups, children and women in the process of making community more transparent and open. However, despite these improvements, there is continuous decrease in natural assets in the form forest products and at the same time there has been increase in conflict among villagers on diversified issues. There are some factors which have contributed highly in reduction of livelihood opportunity from forest and pushing tribal and villagers into chaos.

Forest loss and degradation

Due to increasing number of activities in forest area, millions of hectares of lands and woodlands are getting disappeared. That, along with over-harvesting of forest products and forest degradation resulting from fires makes fewer products available to rural households. The clearest case of forest degradation is also wild meat result of hunting. In this situation, what will happen in near future continuous hunting will decrease the source of protein and also imbalance the natural phenomenon in the forest which will result in dying of non-vegetarian animals and chances of increase of malnutrition unless someone develops low cost alternative source of protein and makes them available to the local
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Purushothaman Seema, land-use strategies for tribal: a socio-economic analysis

population (Bennet 2002). Increasing population has been continuously converting forest area into barren land for their living purpose. Since population has multiplied several times irrespective of same available land the need of human has increased by so many times so they are cutting down trees for their benefit without considering aftereffect of this and exploiting available resources in the jungle. Now 1400 tigers have been left in the forest due to inhuman activities. Strikingly it need to remember that there was one time when forest area was more and population was less but suddenly increase in the density has covered more area of forest. Now as a result the low productivity of forest coupled with ever increasing demand for forest products due to Indias huge and increasing population contributes to the degradation of forest. The development concern particularly rapidly increasing economic activities has implication on forest cover and land use pattern of the country. The forests are subject to anthropogenic pressures like over grazing, shifting cultivation, vulnerabilities to forest fire and so on. These drivers are directly linked to the livelihood of the forest dependent communities. Forests are not only source of providing resources to these millions of poor households but also provide employment in these hinterlands. This makes forest an important contributor to the rural economy in the forested landscapes in the country. The widespread poverty and lack of income generating opportunities often make these people resort to over-exploitation of forest resources. The collection of firewood for sale in the market, though it is illegal, is also extensive in many parts of the forested region of the country and constitute the source of livelihood for 11 per cent of the population (IPCC, 2007).

Loss of access to forest resources

In many forest landscapes, it has been seen that communities who are weak and politically inactive lose their rights and resources to elite class of the community. Commercial farmers, ranchers, hunters, logging and mining companies and charcoal makers and migrants from other regions often displace traditional forest users. Government policies frequently favour these groups with different kind of soaps such as concessions, licenses, permits and new roads while denying similar rights to poorer local inhabitant. Often creation of forest areas and protected areas by the government restrict local people to access the resources. Privatization of forest land may limit the access of poor households to what had been common property resources. Less access to certain forest resources lead to over exploitation of other endangered resources. Other most important thing is decentralization of authority and resource control now occurring in many developing countries including India though it is not necessary that it provides the guarantee of providing resource access in forest area. In the last 15 years, ownership or control of the forest estate by indigenous and rural communities has doubled but still decentralization factor does not guarantee poverty alleviation but may improve its chances because state actor or administration potentially increases their bargaining 3 power with them. Corrupt practises in the forest sector tend to go against the poor rural households.

Stagnant markets
The market for some non-timber products have become saturated or are shrinking. This applies particularly to markets for poor household items such as basket and mats used mostly by rural people. Similar products from other sources, which are of higher quality, can easily replace these products and generally slow the growth of rural income limits consumers purchasing power. In addition, slow growth in per capita income restricts to shift them for production of high quality products that requires capital and skills both. These are forest products that really help them to get out of
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Oksanen tapani, pajari brita, tomi tuomasjukka- forests in poverty reduction strategies: capturing the potential 3 Sunderlin William, angelsen arild, belcher brian, bulgers paul, nasi Robert, santoso levania, wunder sven,2004 livelihoods, forest and conservation in developing industries: an overview

poverty. Therefore if market deregulation and liberalization come into effect in order to make process easy for rural households so that they could be able to fetch more income, however market liberalization does not always favour the interest of the poor and government monopolies can easily 4 be replaced by privates one. Thus, there is still need for government intervention to protect vulnerable people against these negative effects. The challenge of reconciling livelihood improvement and forest conservation in developing countries is daunting and largely unmet. Some argue that due to large number of intrinsic characteristics of forest and forestry, the real scope for reconciling between these two objects is inevitably quite limited. In the course of last several decades, rural incomes have on average increased in Indian, yet natural forests have been disappearing at a high rate. And finally if this trend remains to be continuing at this speed, one day time will come when there will be no jungle at all and then no livelihood for dependent population.

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Sunderlin William, angelsen arild, belcher brian, bulgers paul, nasi Robert, santoso levania, wunder sven,2004 livelihoods, forest and conservation in developing industries: an overview