ABSTRACT
As modern forestry took shape in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, its major missions of resource conservation and sustained yield production were centered in regions away from those where agriculture was practiced. Two central concerns of the 1970s brought forestry as a field into the international development picture. The first was the environmental concentration on deforestation and allied problems of soil erosion and flood control that gained widespread attention in that decade. The second factor was the successive oil shocks that inspired concerted efforts to find alternative sources of energy. To give a more concrete idea of the linkages between rural development and forestry, and to begin to look at the forestry sector from a rural development perspective, it would make sense to look at an example. The Social Forestry Project in India's Gujarat state offers a case study in this regard, for it is one of the more outstanding stories in the whole field of development forestry.
