Impact of Joint Forest Management in Tribal Livelihood- A Study on South-West Bengal

Typically tribal communities live in forest and its fringe areas. Forests dwelling tribal people directly or indirectly depend on forest or forest resources to meet their daily livelihood needs. For the dependency on forest resources causes of irregular collection of forest resources lead to degradation of forests and subsequent crisis of forest resources and environmental depletion. In this connection Government of India and forest department for the protection and management of forest resources launched a Participatory Forest Management programme which is popularly known as Joint Forest Management (JFM) programme in 1990. The JFM ensures sustainable and participatory management of forest as a forest based natural resources for development of livelihood of forest dwelling tribal communities. The present paper based on a field survey of tribal dominated Paschim Medinipur and Bankura districts in South-West Bengal. The study explores the impact of JFM programme in tribal livelihood basic indicators.