ABSTRACT
Andhra Pradesh was formed in the 20th century from component regions with diverse backgrounds, similarly to Orissa, and has struggled to become a unified state. It comprises an extremely diverse range of agro-ecological areas, from (mainly tribal-populated) forested hill in the north-east to arid red sanders forests in the south. Earlier participatory forest management (PFM) initiatives in areas under the Madras Presidency areas were shunned by the state government in the 1950s, and it was only with the introduction of joint forest management (JFM) in 1992 in Andhra Pradesh that local people’s forest use was again formally legitimated. JFM implementation was heavily supported by the World Bank from 1995 to 2000 and 2002 to 2007.
The Andhra Pradesh Forest Department has sought to distinguish itself by transforming its PFM programme from JFM to community forest management (CFM), although while the rhetorical claims for policy evolution seem laudable, this chapter examines whether the outcomes and impact of PFM, whether JFM or CFM, on the livelihood systems of people in Andhra Pradesh have been beneficial.
The overall conclusions are that PFM implementation has been highly problematic due to the lack of any real devolution of power to local people, and the persistence of patronage power relations between forest department field staff and local elites. In tribal areas, many adivasis, in the context of comprehensive and chronic social oppression and marginalization, have suffered under PFM from being excluded from their customary fallows cultivation lands, and seeing them planted with exotic tree species. Although households have received cash disbursements under the World Bank project for a few months’ wage labour in lieu of the cultivated land they have been forced to give up, this is merely a temporary project-based palliative, and without improving the livelihood productivity of the forest land resource it is probable that after the project cycle ends local land-poor households will revert to fallows cultivation in the forest. Only if local people have authority to plan longer-term sustainable forest land management, based on secure tenure, is PFM likely to succeed.
