SOCIAL FORESTRY FOR INDIA

By Y. M. L. Sharma, IFS (Retd)

Summary

Y. M. L. Sharma, a retired Chief Conservator of Forests for Karnataka and visiting professor of Farm Forestry at the University of Agricultural Sciences, Bangalore, uses this Forum of Free Enterprise booklet to make the case that forestry must be reconceived as a basic developmental asset on par with power, irrigation and agriculture. He opens with a survey of India’s forest endowment — sixteen major forest types covering 22.7 per cent of the country, 93 per cent state-owned, much of it degraded — and contrasts the country’s per-hectare forest revenue (Rs 21.50 gross, Rs 11.50 net) with West Germany (Rs 565/130), Switzerland (Rs 494/190) and Austria, to show how dramatically India under-invests in and under-realises its forest wealth.

The booklet’s central argument is that ‘production forestry’ alone — the National Commission on Agriculture’s plan to raise one lakh hectares of manmade forests a year at Rs 242 crores in the first decade — will not meet the country’s swelling demands for fuel wood, fodder, manure leaf and small timber. Sharma draws on Jack Westoby’s distinction between production forestry and social forestry to argue that the latter — trees grown on village commons, farm margins, canal banks, railway and power-line corridors, foreshores of tanks and reservoirs, eroded lands and sand dunes for the direct benefit of nearby communities — must be pursued aggressively. Without it, he warns, 22 million tonnes of cowdung a year will continue to be burnt for fuel instead of returned to soil, and agricultural residues like bagasse, paddy straw and groundnut husk will be diverted from industry to the hearth.

A programmatic middle section sketches a concrete pattern of planting for dry and wet land — Tamarind, Jack, Sapota, Eucalyptus/Casuarina, Glyricidia, Pongamia, Sesbania, Siris, neem, Acacia, bamboo and sandalwood — and projects that farm forestry on India’s 136 million hectares of dry land and 30 million hectares of irrigated land could yield, over thirty years, 375 million tonnes of fuel, 1,000 million m³ of timber, 500 million tonnes of manure leaf, 100 million tonnes of fodder and 25 million tonnes of pulpwood. Sharma calls for an independent state-level Department of Social Forestry and Environment, points to Karnataka’s farm-forestry experiment around Bangalore as a working example, and recommends that the State foot part of the bill since the benefits accrue to the country at large.

Key points

• India’s forest area (22.7% of land) is largely state-owned (93%) and degraded, with about 60% lying in scanty-rainfall zones and only 0.2% of the rural workforce engaged in forestry.

• Per-hectare forest revenue and investment in India lag dramatically behind Austria, the UK, West Germany, Switzerland, Japan and Korea — Sharma’s headline data point for under-utilisation.

• The National Commission on Agriculture’s production-forestry programme alone cannot meet rising demand for industrial wood (projected to rise from 8.92 to 41 million m³ by 1990) or fuel wood (shortage of 21 million tonnes by 1980-81).

• Sharma adopts Jack Westoby’s distinction between production forestry (industrial/household wood) and social forestry (community protection and recreation benefits) and argues both must be funded.

• Social forestry would substitute for the 22 million tonnes of cowdung burnt as fuel in 1974-75 and free agricultural residues (bagasse, paddy straw, groundnut husk, castor stalks) for industry.

• The booklet proposes a six-pronged social-forestry programme: farm forestry, extension forestry on village commons, afforestation of canal banks, railway tracks, high-tension-line corridors, roadsides, tank/reservoir foreshores, and reclamation of eroded lands, sand dunes and mining areas.

• A suggested species-and-spacing pattern integrates forestry with agriculture and horticulture, projecting 375 million tonnes of fuel and 1,000 million m³ of timber over 30 years from dry and irrigated land combined.

• Sharma recommends an independent state-level Department of Social Forestry and Environment, citing Karnataka farmers near Bangalore raising Casuarina and Eucalyptus for the city’s fuel needs as a working model.

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