Politics of co-optation: community forest management versus Joint Forest Management in Orissa, India.
The article considers the impact of introducing government co-management policy in the form of Joint Forest Management (JFM) in an area with a five-decade-old self-organized community forest management system in Orissa, India. We ask a question that appears not to have been previously examined: What happens when JFM replaces an already existing community forest management arrangement? Our comparison of the JFM arrangement with the self-organized community forest management regime (pre- and post-2002 in a selected village) provides three conclusions: (1) The level of villager participation in forest management has declined, along with the erosion of the bundle of common rights held by them; (2) multiple institutional linkages between the village and outside agencies, and reciprocal relations with neighboring villages have been abandoned in favor of a close relationship with the Forestry Department; and (3) the administration of the forestry resource has become politicized. We conclude that the "one-size-fits-all" approach of the JFM, with its pre-packaged objectives and its narrow scope of forest management, is likely to limit experimentation, learning, and institutional innovation that characterizes community forest management.
Nayak
Prateep K
PK
Natural Resources Institute, University of Manitoba, 70 Dysart Road, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. nayakprateep@gmail.com
Berkes
Fikret
F
D019058:Community Networks; D003256:Community Participation; D003247:Conservation of Natural Resources; D003657:Decision Making; D017753:Ecosystem; D005260:Female; D016468:Forestry; D006801:Humans; D007194:India; D008297:Male; D010067:Ownership; D011057:Politics; D011209:Power, Psychological