ABSTRACT
The Joint Forest Management (JFM) programme in India is defined as a "concept of developing partnerships between fringe forest user groups and the Forest Department (FD) on the basis of mutual trust and jointly defined roles and responsibilities with regard to forest protection and development. This chapter analyses how livelihoods and identity politics shape interactions between local communities and forests, focusing on implications for JFM in Sikkim, India. The JFM programme in India has mostly been evaluated on its ecological, economic, and institutional impacts, with less emphasis given on supporting and encouraging interconnectedness between humans and other inhabitants of the forests. Vemuri found that hierarchical bureaucracy, which was the quintessence of the exclusion-based forest regime in pre-independent India, prevails in its post-colonial forest management practices, with decision-making authority remaining in the hands of the central and state governments. Through decentralized community-based management, JFM seeks increased popular participation as a means to resolve disputes emanating from conflicting forest management priorities.
