Outline of Policy Brief being prepared as part of the FAO executive training programme in
Forestry; May 27-June 6, 2013; Thimphu Bhutan
Participant: Amruth M, Kerala Forest research Institute, India
Title: Sustaining NTFPs for better livelihood options
Approach:
Urgency of the clear and complimentary policy in management of NTFPs
Highlight the urgency of intervention through statistics on and casestudies on
consumption
Establishing the linkages between poverty / livelihood and unregulated market
Bringing issues to the focus
Threat to the rare, endemic and endangered species due to unsustainable harvesting
(such as early, destructive and over harvesting)
Habitat loss and degradation
Livelihood issues of traditional harvesters of NTFPs (unregulated market, demand
driven harvesting and absence of monitoring and control)
Indigenous communities and traditional knowledge
Importance of NTFPs to various traditional and modern health care systems,
handicrafts and small scale manufacturing units
o Multiplicity of players in the field
o Incompatibility of institutions and markets
Presenting policy recommendations
o Institutional forms and networking (participatory and certification oriented)
o Institutional and market linkages (regulated market, monitoring and
certification)
o Training on sustainable harvesting and regulated markets etc.
Local Value addition- Sorting and grading –processing-branding-establishing market
linkages-certification (box: case of wild honey marketing –Key stone foundation)
Cultivation in private lands / homesteads
Participatory Enrichment and regeneration
Evidences and references (list of references under preparation)
List of successful case studies
Studies on the successful and failed experiments
Reports of various integrated conservation and development projects
1
The Problem:
• Inability to regulate unsustainable mode of Non-Wood Forest Produces (NWFPs)
and to provide incentives for indigenous communities
• Background
The issue at focus is sustainable extraction of Non-Wood Forest Produce (NWFP) and
equitable redistribution of benefits from the state forests of Kerala in south-west India. This
is an issue directly related to the livelihood of large number of the forest dependent people
in the region. A number of studies are already available on the nature and magnitude of the
issue. However, these studies have hardly informed the institutions of forest resource
management in the state.
With the introduction of the Participatory forest management nearly a decade ago, the
system of NWFP collection and marketing in the state has now more number of
stakeholders and additional number of institutions.
The existing arrangement involves a network of cooperatives organised under a
Confederation of Scheduled Tribe’s Development Cooperatives and another network of
Participatory Forest Management (PFM) institutions which have very limited
organisational communication and high level of operational overlaps. While the latter
is a participatory institution the former is totally close to democratic process in the
benefit sharing. The contradictions arising out of these two intuitional arrangement is
aggravated because these are coordinated by different ministries in government. The
scenario leads to policy impasse as the policies and approaches of the one department
contradict the other and subsequently deprive the forest produce gatherers of their fair
share of incentives.
The decreased incentive forces the forager to collect more quantity of produce leading to
over harvesting, early harvesting or destructive harvesting of the produce. One of the
biggest threat to the biodiversity conservation of the tropical moist forests in the
western Ghats is institutional incompatibility for NWFP management. This also is one of
the most illustrative examples of sustaining poverty, debt trap and exploitation aggravating
the environmental degradation and biodiversity loss. In the problem tree I have tried to
present the complex nature of the scenario of policy/institutional failure. This is an issue
about which we have well researched information base. But there is no road map to
resolve the issue at the level of policy implementation.
Goal:
Evolving comprehensive policy for establishing institutions that regulate unsustainable
mode of Non-Wood Forest Produces (NWFPs) harvest and to provide proper incentives for
members of indigenous communities involved in the NWFP-collection
2
The Problem Field
Corrupti
Inadeq
Invisibilit Low on in
uate &
y of the political the
Invisibilit mutuall Lack of
Cause
potential sensitizati Tribal
y of the y
of on among co- local
issue of compet
NWFP value
NWFPs the operativ
biodivers ing
trading
from stakehold es addition
ity loss instituti
by &
various due to ers & ons
middle necessa
forests in unsustai accompan men ry policy
Problem
theInability
stateto regulate unsustainableied
nable mode lack of
of Non-Wood Forest Produces (NWFPs) and to
provide incentives for indigenous communities environ
in terms harvestin political
ment
of labour g will for
and policy
income change
Reduced Reduced Failure or Social
Consequence
income for quality loss of reproduct
the collector and/or confidenc ion of
of NWFP- increased e in poverty
Unsustai
(Increase in Habitat prices for Decreased institution Increased
nable poverty) degradatithe opportunit s? exploitatio
harvestin on &productsy for local n from the
g accompa value middleme
nied addition n trading
impacts and NWFPs
related
benefits
