Forest Management

This paper focuses on the differences between pre-colonial and colonial constructions of nature and how the two interacted with and absorbed one another, with reference to the forests of the Gorakhpur region. The East India Company, while continuing the Mughal framework and institutions in the management of the forests, also embarked upon reinvention of traditions and recreation of customs. Its commercial and strategic interests always remained prominent as it sought to reinforce its notions of power and authority.

The paper argues that forests are not only sources of timber and non-timber forest products, but also of environmental services. It is through the fall in the supply of local environmental services, like nutrient recycling and soil formation, that forest communities bear the external costs that are not included in the price of timber and other forest products. Local environmental services are taken into account in forest management decisions by local communities, but not by external agents, like forest departments, and form a basis for setting up local forest management systems. In arguing for the establishment of forest communities' property rights over forests, the paper supports the establishment of markets for regional and global environmental services provided by forests.

This case study of the Hani of China brings out the importance of forests in providing various local ecological services that are essential for the system of terraced agriculture. The paper investigates local people's knowledge of forest-based ecological services, including water regulation and nutrient recycling, and gender differences in the local knowledge of these services. The paper notes that the Hani have maintained the forest condition quite irrespective of its tenurial status. The reluctance to 'eat the state forest' is attributed to the local understanding that the forests comprise 'critical natural capital' on which their very survival depends.