Abstract
Rural people in developing countries including India continue to access a number of types of ‘forests’ to meet specific needs such as fuelwood, fodder, food, non-timber forest produce and timber for both subsistence and income generation. While a plethora of terms exist to describe the types of forests that rural people use—such as farm forests, social forests, community forests and small-scale forests—the expression domestic forest has recently been proposed. Domestic forest is a term aimed at capturing the diversity of forests transformed and managed by rural communities and a way to introduce a new scientific domain that recognises that production and conservation can be reconciled and that local communities can be effective managers. This paper argues in the context of the central Western Ghats of south India that while the domestic forest concept is a useful umbrella term to capture the diversity of forests used by rural people, these domestic forests are often not autonomous local forests but sites of contestation between local actors and the state forest bureaucracy. Hence, a paradigm shift within the forest bureaucracy will only occur if the scientific forestry community questions its own normative views on forest management and sees forest policy as a means to recognise local claims and support existing practices of forest dependent communities.
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Notes
These needs are both economic and cultural. It is not surprising, therefore, that a vast literature exists focusing on sources from which rural communities meet these ‘forest produce needs’, the manner in which various forests are utilized by communities, the benefits they derive from them, and the systems through which they are managed (Jeffery 1999; Sundar et al. 2001; Lele 2007; Sarin et al. 2003).
Major plant species of evergreen forest include Palaquium ellipticum, Artocarpus hirsuta, Cullenia excelsa, Elaeocarpus tuberculatus, Vateria indica, Calophyllum elatum, Mesua ferrea, Bombax ceiba, Garcinia Morella, Schleichera oleosa, Cullenia excelsa, Mangifera indica, Mallotus philippinensis, Olea dioica.
Major plant species of moist deciduous forest include Bambusa bamboos, Dalgerbia latifolia, Terminalia paniculata, Terminalia tomentosa, Tectona grandis, Lagerstroemia lanceolata, Adina cordifolia, Grewia tilaefolia, Bombax ceiba, Anogeissus latifolia, Xylia xylocarpa.
Major plant species of dry deciduous forest include Anogeissus latifolia, Terminalia chebula, Terminalia tomentosa, Terminalia paniculata, Grewia tilaefolia, Albizia odoratissima, Pterocarpus marsupium, Lagerstroemia parviflora, Dalgerbia paniculata, Zizyphus xylopyrous, Randia dumatorum, Bauhinia racemosa, Diospyrous melanoxylon.
Present day Nilgiris, Wayanad and Kodagu comprise a wide diversity of communities both adivasi (tribal) and non-adivasi, agricultural and non-agricultural, and some who have been there for many hundreds of years and other more recent arrivals. In the Nilgiris, the main adivasi communities are the Todas and Kotas in the plateau areas, Irulas and Kurumbas on the outer slopes and the Paniyans, Kurumbas and Kattunayakans in the lower western parts of the district. In Wayanad, the main adivasi groups are the Paniyans, Adiyans, Jen Kurubas and Kattunayakans whereas in Kodagu the main adivasi groups are the Jen Kurubas, Betta Kurubas and the Yeravas. Today most of these communities, aside from the Todas, cultivate land or work as agricultural labourers, some of them because their ‘traditional’ rights to forests have been curtailed. Amongst the non-adivasi communities, there are communities including the Badagas in the Nilgiris, the Chettis in Gudalur of the Nilgiris and in Wayanad and the Kodavas and Gowdas in Kodagu who have been there for many centuries, as well as more recent immigrants including a number of landed communities from the plains as well as Sri Lankan repatriates.
Some forest uses, such as those in protected areas, are de facto not de jure. For instance, as per the Wildlife (Protection) Act, hunting is prohibited everywhere but yet it occurs in some forests.
A panchayat is an elected village council.
In other states, laws exist that regulate the use of forest produce in the name of supra-local functions. For example, the Karnataka Preservation of Tree Act of 1976 was passed to regulate tree feeling on private land in order to ‘restore ecological balance’.
Forest Acts define the process to notify declare an area as a reserved forest under the control of the state. In reserved forests, access to forest resources is limited; felling timber and hunting are totally prohibited and other practices are controlled.
This Act also requires a committee to be set up to regulate sale, mortgage and leasing of private forest land exceeding 2 ha as well as to regulate the cutting of trees grown on private land.
The Hill Area Committee can allow permission to cut trees if regeneration of trees ‘of an equal number of the same or other suitable species’ (Section 3 of the Tamil Nadu Hill Areas (Tree Preservation) Act) takes place and the person to whom the permission is granted deposits a sum as security (Section 9-2 of the Tamil Nadu Hill Areas (Tree Preservation) Rules).
In exercise of the powers conferred by Sections 35 and 36 of the Tamil Nadu Forest Act, 1882, the Tamil Nadu Timber Transit Rules of 1968 regulate timber transit from both state forests and private land. Some trees are exempted from the purview of these rules. Similar rules exist in other states but the list of tree species varies: 61 species are exempted in Kerala, 36 in Tamil Nadu and 14 in Karnataka. Two species belong to the three lists, namely Erythrina indica and Hevea brazilensis.
Land in Gudalur historically belonged to the Nilambur of Kovilagam and was leased out initially to estates and subsequently to small-scale farmers as well. Much of this land was forest, some of which is now cultivated. The conflict is therefore both about who this land belongs to and what land use should be applied. The Janman Estate (Abolition and Conversion into Ryotwari) Act, 1969, resulted in the Forest Department and other state agencies claiming much of this land. Currently a number of court cases are pending with regard to the status of large areas of both forest and cultivated land.
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Acknowledgements
This paper was prepared after a workshop on ‘Rural Forests in India’ held in Coimbatore in October 2007 under the aegis of the ‘Public Policies and Traditional Management of Trees and Forests (POPULAR)’-ADD project funded by the Agence Nationale de la Recherche (France). The authors wish to thank all the participants of this workshop for their inputs.
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Menon, A., Hinnewinkel, C., Garcia, C. et al. Competing Visions: Domestic Forests, Politics and Forest Policy in the Central Western Ghats of South India. Small-scale Forestry 8, 515–527 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11842-009-9096-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11842-009-9096-0