Livelihood & Market Access
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Livelihoods of Adivasis in India are intrinsically forest based. Across the country, barring a few exceptions, engaging with land, forests, water and... Read More
Conservation & Indigenous Knowledge
Forests and their ecosystems are essential for the adivasi way of life and for NTFPs. Community based knowledge and use have ensured... Read More
King’s Rule to Community Right
Deepak Pani
Mayurbhanj is a beautiful combination of plains, hills and mountains clothed with green and serene forests which human beings have inhabited for over fifty thousand years. This region is an adivasi heartland of eastern India, bordering Jharkhand and west Bengal, situated in the northern end of Odisha. Throughout the annals of Mayurbhanj history there is reference to forests; the forests have been a silent spectator in the rise and fall of Mayurbhanj since ages.. For the common man in Mayurbhanj forests are a symbol of reverence and awe and have the appeal of religious sanctity. The existing forests are still home to millions of trees, a wide variety of animals, streams and rivers, hills and valleys, ravines and waterfalls.
Is it a Crime to Protect Our Forest ?
Arjun Nag & Umamaheshwar Rao
Over the years the people of Sandhkarmari have struggled against forest mafia to protect their forest, and they have sacrificed much to do this. They even stopped the weekly market – usually a matter of pride for the people of any village - at their village as that led to the illegal transport of wood and forest product from their village forest. These were the circumstances when Legal and Environmental Action Forum (LEAF) started forest protection and conservation in this area, with people’s participation in sustainable harvesting of Nontimber Forest Products (NTFPs); trade in NTFPs; awareness of forest-related issues; health; legal aid; establishment and maintenance of a nursery, etc.
Pepper to Timber Queen
Pandurang Hegde
The forest of Gersoppa is on the banks of Sharavati River in Western Ghats, in Karnataka. The lush forest along the river valley is home to a rich biodiversity. Historically, Arab traders came to these regions to buy pepper and transport it through the ports for trade in Europe. The abundance of wild pepper in the forest surprised the traders from overseas and European travelogues, such as those of Francis Buchanan (1801), mention this valuable resource of these forests. For the past two thousand years this region has been the trading hub of (uncultivated) wild pepper, collected from the forests. The sustained supply of pepper from this region over centuries has earned it the reputation of “Pepper Queen”.
Echoes in Borra Caves, Araku Valley
Samata
Since the 1960s, mining leases have been given in the Eastern Ghats to private companies. Leases have been given even within Reserve Forest areas in some panchayats, in violation to the Land Transfer Regulation Act. In many cases, the local adivasi people have been denied pattas to cultivate their own lands! Even the million year old Borra Caves, which should rightly be a heritage site, were not spared: leases were given for areas directly above the caves. It was in 1993, that Samata first joined hands with the people of Borra Panchayat in their struggle to stop the destructive mining activity in their area.
The Tribal Forest Rights Act
Krishna Srinivasan
2006 is a watershed year in the history of the Adivasi-forest relationship. This is the year when the Government of India could garner enough strength to acknowledge and recognise the historic injustice meted out to the Adivasi communities of the country. This was the year when the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act was passed (hereafter referred as TFRA). It took 153 years for the ‘intellectual’ and ‘progressive’ society to acknowledge a simple fact that Adivasi people and their forests are entwined entities.
Holistic Interventions in the Western Ghats
Lok panchayat
Akole taluka of Ahmednagar district in Maharashtra is located in the main ranges of Sahyadri.
From eighteenth century onwards, by the time forts had lost their historic relevance and Akole region was pushed off to oblivion, traditional communities in this region survived on seasonal cultivation on less fertile lands of this region and hunting and collection of whatever forests around offered them. In summer traditional communities here would be busy preparing shifting cultivation lands, in rainy season they would cultivate paddy in the farms on the terraced hill slopes and in winter, livelihood would be mostly on hunting small games and honey collection and collection of whatever forests would offer them like gum, resin etc.
Resin Harvest and Trade
Snehlata Nath
Keystone has been working on resins as an NTFP for the past 15 years. A number of programmes have been undertaken with surveys conducted in the ecological harvesting and market aspects of resins. The resin in focus has been Canarium strictum, which is collected in large quantities in some areas of the NBR – mainly Nilambur and Coonoor. Keystone has also conducted training programmes on sustainable harvesting methods and discussed different kinds of quality accepted in the market. In 2005-06, two workshops on Gums and Resins were organized in Nilambur, Kerala and Karjat, Maharashtra. These opened up many issues regarding harvesting methods, trade and quality from a wider perspective. Besides resins, the workshops covered gums of Anogeissus latifolia, Boswellia serratus and Pterocarpus marsupium, etc., collected only in small quantities in the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve (NBR), mainly for minor trade and self consumption.
Gum Karaya – A Sustainable Livelihood Option
Kovel Foundation
Gums are one of the large numbers of valuable NTFP in India. Gums are basically plant exudations that result partly from natural phenomena and partly from injury to the bark or stem. They are exuded by plants in liquid form and on exposure, dry into translucent tears, and remain stuck to the bark of the stem or branch.
Several species of plants yield gums. Some of the major gum-yielding species in Andhra Pradesh are: Sterculia urens, Cochlospermum religiosum, and Anogeissus latifolia. Sterculia urens yields Gum Karaya and locally it is called “Kovela, Thapsi, Kondathamara” etc in different regions of the state of Andhra Pradesh.