Forest policy in India before 1988. The 1988 forest policy Joint forest management. Locally inspired collective action. State sponsored people's participation. Constraints of government policies. Programmes complementary to joint forest management. Property regimes and JFM in India.

Originally published in 2004. In a radical breakaway from colonial and postcolonial policies that were based on centralized and revenue-orientated control of forests, the government of India announced the Joint Forest Management (JFM) policy resolution in 1990. JFM promised important managerial concessions, including share in cash profit from the timber harvest to forest citizens, in exchange for management of state-owned forests. The government also asked the Forest Departments to invite village councils and NGOs to take part in the joint forest management schemes. Over a decade since its inception this volume examines the JFM, highlighting how state bureaucracy, local institutions and NGOs attempt to achieve the multiple goals of meeting subsistence needs, rural equity, sustainable forestry practices, and forest cover conservation. Investigating four institutions - village-based forest protection groups, the Forest Department, village councils, and NGOs - across the States of Jharkhand and West Bengal, the book focuses on forest citizens and how they interact with other JFM institutions. In doing so, it challenges notions of assumed virtues of moral economy and romanticized views of gender and indigenous knowledge and practices. The monograph also raises issues of social capital (local history, politics and leadership), common property resource (CPR) management and incentives for participation. While pointing out various inconsistencies that exist in the participatory forest framework, the book also shows the potential of JFM and suggests future directions forest management should take in India and elsewhere.

The Western Ghats forests are endowed with large species and habitat diversity, which is nowadays under threat by increasing demographic pressure and changing land use. To address these challenges, a novel and comprehensive approach is sought from the principles of landscape ecology. Morpho-pedological features are used to delineate landscape units all over the Western Ghats of Kerala, among which the Western Anamalai region is chosen to elucidate the relative influence of physical factors, bioclimate and anthropogenic pressures on the characteristics of natural vegetation and on the status of the vertebrate fauna. Highlighting patterns of resource utilization by proximal and distant stakeholders, the book goes about identifying value-based management zones, while proposing management strategies for conservation and sustainable development.

Papers presented at the Regional Workshop on Participatory Forest Management: Implications for Policy and Human Resources' Development in the Hindu Kush Himalayas, held during 7-12 May, 1998, at Kunming, China.

While previous studies focus on lack of enforcement of forest laws, poverty, and ecological values of forest dependent people, coherent studies on people’s motivations for forest illegalities and non-compliance behavior remain scanty. Emmanuel Ametepeh argues that the systematic analysis of cause-and-effect patterns related to forest management measures and policies through the lenses of the Forest Transition Theory uncovers severe limitations. The resulting multi-complex stress factors adversely impact and hence manifest in the form of deviant compliance behavior (“syndrome”) in the management endeavor of forest-fringe people. The Author shows that motivations for forest illegalities and associated non-compliance behavior is largely an outcome of adverse experiences forest people have been subjected to as a result of historical and contemporary neglects and marginalization in the management endeavor.