Report of the Tiger Task Force - PRS

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TIGER TASK FORCE REPORT JOINING THE DOTS ■will be shared with the villages are still being done.The problem here is that confidence in theprogramme erodes when people realise that afterprotected the lands in promise of benefits, they getnothing; people feel cheated.Mohit Gera, senior forest officer, writes of suchproblems in Jammu and Kashmir: “One of the majorimpediments have been the cumbersome sharingmechanism and the lower percentage of shareearmarked for the village forest committees (thenodal village agencies for joint forest management)Some of the other provisions such as constitution ofcommittees at the range level, procedures providedfor taking up community land and its development,and the lack of rules regarding utilisation of villagefunds have always been major obstacles to thesuccess of the programme.” 29The government now needs to look at how jointforest management and community forestry in fringeforests can be integrated to work both for people aswell as for wildlife. Joint forest managementconceptually provides a perfect framework but hasbeen maimed by several limitations. While in somestates provisions have been made for legalagreements between forest agencies andcommunities, in most, collaboration remains ad-hoc,with no statutory guidelines. It works then on theprinciple of committed forest officials, who can usetheir influence for the advantage of people. But oncethey go, the scheme falters again.Clearly, if the basic idea of joint forestmanagement has been reciprocity, the only way itcan work is to create a contract that is legally bindingwhere people can then argue to get what the forestdepartment has promised against them promising todo certain activities beneficial to the forests. Withoutthe forests outside, the fate of the tigers cannot besecured.Recommendations1. The tiger’s habitat cannot be secured unless we secure the future of the millions wholive on the fringe. Currently, there is little information about the numbers or their impacton the reserves, so that it can be used for the reserve’s management. These studies shouldpreferably be carried out on a GIS-based platform and put out in the public domain alongwith all empirical data so that other institutions and researchers can then build on thisinformation. It should be part of the work of the Project Tiger directorate to encourage andundertake research on people-wildlife interactions within and on the fringe of thereserves.2. An important area of conflict between people and protected areas is the problem ofcompensation for damage caused to livestock, crop or life by animals. The scattered datathat exists shows that the compensation paid today is negligible in many cases. And thishappens when the forest department does not even pay for the opportunity cost ofprotection to the people. Naturally this issue very often leads to antagonism amongpeople towards the tiger reserves and their administrations. It is imperative that statesreview the provisions and procedures for compensation for human life, livestock andcrop damage. It has been seen that half the battle for the forest department in winning thehearts of the people lies in not only adequate compensation but in timeliness too. Ascompensation falls in the hands under the purview of the field directors the timelypayment of compensation to people must be one of the criteria that the park managementis measured for during the evaluation of the reserves and their ranking.3. Compensation must be paid for crop damage as well. In addition, compensation mustbe paid to families who continue to live within the reserves.4. There is no doubt that much more will need to be done in the land outside the tigerreserve. The question is how should this be done? It is here that planners must learn fromthe experience of the recently concluded ecodevelopment project in the seven reserves.The key learning from this project are;a. The administrative machinery does not have the capacity to handle such largeinfusions of funds over a short period. In this case, these reserves received roughly Rs 20-The way ahead 129
■ JOINING THE DOTS TIGER TASK FORCE REPORTRs 30 crore each, which is equivalent to the entire money that has been given to them asCentral assistance since their inception.b. The quantum of funds that are allocated on such project cannot be sustained after theproject is completed. This leads to huge problems of expectations within the localcommunities, unless the project has been successful in creating self reliance and cyclictypedevelopment.c. The concept of the programme remains flawed, unless it can find ways to enjoin peopleto the protection of reserves or find alternatives sources for the forest and grazingresources they require.The ecodevelopment project instead worked on the premise that it had to ‘substitute’ (notprovide) forest produce. So, it distributed LPG cylinders to substitute firewood, it builtbiogas plants to substitute firewood and provided alternative employment opportunitiesoutside the forest-dependent lifestyles of people. So it looked for options in tailoring andpoultry.This is because this project, like most governmental schemes, did not incorporate theforest-livestock economy of people and find ways of improving its productivity. It is forthis reason, the LPG cylinders distributed under the project were sold; biogas plants couldnot work because people did not have livestock or water, critical to run the plants. Theresult is that even after huge funds have been invested, in most cases, the impact on thehabitat is minimal.In other words, if the project has to succeed, it must be built on the premise that it hasto secure people’s livelihoods in the forest-grazing-agriculture economy of theirsubsistence. This can only be done if the productivity of the forest and grazing lands isimproved and there is investment in water facilities, to increase productivity.The project can also succeed if it works to enjoin people’s livelihoods with theprotected park. In other words, it works to increase the sustainability of the use ofresources within the park and also enjoins people in sharing the benefits that the parkprovides.d. The project must also improve its delivery systems. The problem withecodevelopment is that it does not work with the existing mechanisms of development inthe village. It creates its own – committees and user groups – for programme management.This works well only where there is an existing capacity to negotiate with projectauthorities, not otherwise.The Tiger Task Force understands that the government is currently working on the nextphase of an externally aided ecodevelopment project. It is important the all the issueslisted above are carefully considered and incorporated into the plan. The country cannotafford such expensive experiments, unless they are carefully crafted and skillfullyexecuted.5. What is clear also is that ecodevelopment, as an approach, remains too fragmented andexpensive for long term change. The first phase of the project, which invested fundsequivalent to the 30-year spending of Project Tiger in seven years over seven sites, wasconsidered too little for all the villages in the fringe. The fact is that benefits will have toreach all the villages and therefore, strategies will have to be revised accordingly to ensurethat this can be done.6. The most important opportunity lies in targeting a revised joint forest managementprogramme in the vicinity of the reserves. It is evident that forests in these areas, habitatsof people and tigers, need to be regenerated. But it is also clear that the current joint forestmanagement programme, with its forest development agencies, remains too narrow and130 The way ahead
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THE REPORT OF THE TIGER TASK FORCEJ
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ContentsIntroductionExecutive summa
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IntroductionThe Tiger Task Force wa
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