Sustainable Rural Development

Governments all over the world have focused upon sustainable rural development in an
organized way. Rural locations in particular, need more economic development in order to match
urban centric development.

All the spheres of development including economic, social, cultural have primarily benefited
urban locations. Even in case of industrial growth, urban places got best of growth and
prosperity. Many actions have been taken to fill this chasm between rural and urban growth.
Several awareness programs have been initiated to create awareness about ecological
significance among the rural population. Significant demonstrations have been provided to make
the best use of natural resources

Poverty in rural areas has remained by and large, the main focal point of governments and
development agencies. Sustainable rural development is the most effective way to eliminate this
curse. To improve the standard of living, governments have allocated more financial muscle for
the rural areas. Constant efforts are being taken to ensure development of infrastructure in such
areas. Also, environment friendly growth stimulators have been provided to rural populations.

To maintain sustainable rural development, several regional development agencies, national

governments, international development organizations and NGOs are putting in their best efforts.
The things which have been focused upon include, advisory services to farmers and forest
holders, creating awareness about economic values of forests, modernization of agricultural tools
and equipments, introduction of new process, products and technologies, emphasis upon
infrastructure development etc.

New methods have also been encouraged for farming in barren lands. Most of the farming land
remains unused during no-crop season in underdeveloped countries. To improve that, cyclical
production of different crops is encouraged so that land does not remain unused.

Farmers are also being supported by launching numerous agro-environment schemes. Income
generation and equal growth are likely resultants of such initiatives. These initiatives are being
taken in not only developing countries but in developed countries as well.

Joint Forest Management

Joint Forest Management often abbreviated as JFM is the official and popular term in India for
partnerships in forest management involving both the state forest departments and local
communities. The policies and objectives of Joint Forest Management are detailed in the Indian
comprehensive National Forest Policy of 1988 and the Joint Forest Management Guidelines of
1990 of the Government of India
Although schemes vary from state to state and are known by different names in different Indian
languages, usually a village committee known as the Forest Protection Committee (FPC) and the
Forest Department enter into a JFM agreement. Villagers agree to assist in the safeguarding of
forest resources through protection from fire, grazing, and illegal harvesting in exchange for
which they receive non-timber forest products and a share of the revenue from the sale of timber
products.

Origins
Joint Forest Management originated in West Bengal accidentally at the Arabari Forest Range in
West Midnapore, near Midnapore town in 1971. The major hardwood of Arabari is sal, a
commercially profitable forest crop. Ajit Kumar Banerjee, a silviculturalist, working for the
Forest Department as the Divisional Forest Officer, was conducting trials which were constantly
being disturbed by grazing and illegal harvesting by the local populace. At the time there were
no initiatives for sharing of forest resources between the government and the locals, with the
government considering many of the locals no more than "thieves".[4] The forest official, against
the suggestions of his co-workers, sought out representatives of eleven local villages and
negotiated the terms of a contract with an ad hoc Forest Protection Committee. The initial
program involved 612 families managing 12.7 square kilometres of forests classified as
"degraded". 25% of profits from the forests were shared with the villagers. The experiment was
successful and was expanded to other parts of the state in 1987. JFM is still in force at Arabari.
[1]

A few years later, Joint Forest Management was employed in the state of Haryana to prevent soil
erosion and deforestation. In 1977, villagers were persuaded that instead of grazing on erosion-
prone hills, building small dams would help agricultural output on areas currently under
cultivation. The program led to reforestation of many hills in the state.[5]

Current status
After the initial successes in West Bengal and Haryana, the JFM schemes received national
importance in the legislation of 1988 and thrust in the Guidelines of 1990. As of 2005, 27 states
of the Indian Union had various JFM schemes with over 63,000 FPCs involved in the joint
management of over 140,000 km² of forested land. [6]

Nepal's Community Forest Management Program gives much stronger authority and rights to the
local community groups. The Nepalese government attempted to implement a program similar to
JFM in Tarai region. However, the Federation of Community Forestry Users' Network
(FECOFUN) and other forced the government to rethink its plans.
Common Property Resource and Management:
CPRs are an integral aspect of the social and institutional arrangement made to meet everyday
requirement of village communities. They are of particular relevance to the landless Ag.
Labourer & the rural artesian. In MP where is irrigated land is a small proportion of the
cultivated area and land are often left fallow after a single crop the dependence on CPRs to fulfill
subsistence needs are pronounced.
CPR may be identified by access, common use and communal purpose. Jodha would define
CPRs as a communities’ natural resources where every member has access and usage facility
with specified obligation, without anybody having exclusive property right over them (Jodha
1995b).

Common properties are best managed by social institutional arrangements that enforce a
structure of management. Fundamental to understanding the complexities involved with
management of a common property resource is the way the government (or the people
themselves) form(s) institutions around the resource. The institutions which control
decisionmaking regarding natural resources play an important role in providing access for all.
Small group size, well defined boundaries on resources and user groups, and ease of monitoring
and enforcement are essential conditions for the success of these institutions in sustaining
common property resources and gaining the compliance of generation after generation of
appropriators to the rules in use (Box 9.2). While informal CPR management arrangements,
being socially embedded, have the potential to solve problems of access, they need to work
within the framework of formal organizations. Formal rules could determine the organizational
structure and function of a particular informal institution managing a natural resource, and rules
and sanctions, while informal arrangements can ensure involvement of locals and sustainability
of conservation efforts through cooperative agreements. These organizations are in a better
position to analyse the processes involved in conscious inclusion (or exclusion) of certain people
in the use of a natural resource. Of the three solutions that exist to resolve this problem of
tragedy of the commons, namely centralized management of the resource, privatization of the
resource, and local control of the resource, local control is preferred because it is more inclusive
than the other options. Making local ‘user groups’ control the common property resource by
giving opportunity to people who have a common material interest to participate in management
of the resource has been found to be both ecologically and economically efficient. ‘Water user
organizations’, for example, are becoming increasingly popular in India, and are more efficient
than the government machinery for managing water resources. However, the application of
informal CPR management has, in many ways, been unduly restrictive. It has been focusing on
micro-enterprises in management of forest patches at the village level, rather than looking at
higher-level forest management and economic processes. The emphasis has been on the bare
bones of participatory development—new rules, one-off participatory planning events, village
committees— rather than broader and longer term processes such as the management of trade-
offs among diverse objectives, and the need for scaled-up participation. Production of trees, tree
products, and fodder has been emphasized upon while broader ecological processes and debates
about alternative uses and competing rights and responsibilities have been overlooked.

Vanishing Common Property Regimes:

The breakdown of common property regimes due to policy failures and social and political
conflicts, in combination with rapid population growth, has increased the pressure, particularly
on forest resources and grazing lands. This has resulted in expansion of cropping areas and
increased stocking of livestock, mostly in highly fragile or marginal lands. As ‘more users’
increase the ambiguity in the custody of the common property, it is overexploited and in the long
run becomes completely degraded and unfit for use. With the 1980 Forest Conservation Act,
tribal populations living in the forests for centuries were suddenly devoid of all use rights. With
vast tracts of forest areas being declared national parks and sanctuaries, the tribals have no option
but to break the law to earn basic subsistence. Unfortunately, government response to such
encroachment has been strict policing rather than leading to deterioration of forest land rather
than involving the tribals in forest management. Joint Forest Management, the process of
involving tribals in maintaining forests, is still limited to small pockets of the country and there
is a dire need to expand such programmes.

Biodiversity:
Biodiversity decline and loss of ecosystem services continue to be a major global threat to future
development. The reduction in distribution and functioning of land, freshwater and marine
biodiversity is more rapid than at any time in human history. Ecosystems such as forests,
wetlands, and drylands are being transformed and, in some cases, irreversibly degraded. Rates of
species extinction are increasing. The great majority of well-studied species, including
commercially important fish stocks, are declining in distribution or abundance or both. Genetic
diversity of agricultural and other species is widely considered to be in decline. Despite the
importance of terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, they are being modified in extent and
composition by people at an unprecedented rate, with little understanding of the implications this
will have in terms of their ability to function and provide services in the future Biodiversity plays
multiple roles in the daily lives of people through the supply of ecosystem services. In
agriculture, biodiversity contributes to regulating and supporting services through soil formation,
nutrient cycling, and pollination. Biodiversity is the basis for cultural services through spiritual
and aesthetic benefits, and amenity values from ecotourism. Some economic estimates are
available, for example, the value of the regulating services provided by honeybees as pollinators
for crops has been estimated at well over US$2 billion per year, and the annual world fish catch
is valued at US$58 billion. In recognition of the importance of biodiversity and the fact that poor
people in rural and remote areas tend to be the most directly affected by the deterioration or loss
of ecosystem services, many governments have established and adopted the 2010 biodiversity
target to reduce the rate of loss of biodiversity at global, regional and national scales. The target
was adopted by the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), and endorsed by the 2002 World
Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD). There have been local success stories with the
conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity, particularly where economic incentives have
been made available, such as for ecotourism, biodiversity-friendly agricultural practices,
certification schemes and various initiatives on payments for ecosystem services. However, at a
global level, and in most regions of the world, biodiversity continues to be lost because current
policies and economic systems do not incorporate the values of biodiversity effectively
in either the political or the market systems, and many policies that are already in place are yet to
be fully implemented.