SHILLONG, Dec 4 ? ?Growing government pressure? was threatening the indigenous community-based system of forest conservation in the North East, where 54 per cent of forest area is under the control of traditional village institutions, communities and individuals, experts said here yesterday.
While forest-dependent communitities of the north-eastern region may have considerable legal authority over the natural resources, based on the constitutional safeguards provided by the Sixth Schedule and Article 371 A-H, at present, the indigeneous community-based systems of forest conservation were being threatened by ?growing government pressure? to control them through policies, programmes and legislations in states like Arunachal Pradesh and Tripura, they said.
Growing commercial pressure also reduced the ?effectiveness? of the traditional institutions leading to privatisation of common property resources, especially in Meghalaya, Mizoram and Arunachal Pradesh, Mark Poffenberger, Executive Director of Community Foresty International (CFI) and SK Barik, member of Community Forest Management Working Group in North-east India, said in an article.
The article, presented at the ongoing second annual regional meeting of the Working Group, said Nagaland has the highest 93 per cent of forest land under community control, followed by Meghalaya with 90 per cent. Manipur is next with 63 per cent, Arunachal Pradesh 62, Tripura 35, Mizoram 33 and Assam 30 per cent. Marginalisation of the role of communities in managing forest land resulted in deforestation and forest degradation in many parts of the world, the article said.
Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, indigenous institutions came under growing pressure as new government-sponsored organisations and agencies were formally empowered to oversee resource management, the experts said. Cultural change also disrupted values, beliefs, leadership patterns and institutional mechanisms that guided the resource use in the past, they said. Economic transitions played an important role in altering resource use practices.
Demographic expansion too contributed to increasing pressure on community-based natural resource management systems, both from internal needs for agricultural land as well as migrant competition for resources, the article said. As a consequence, resource management systems were under pressure both from internal and external changes.
The meeting, attended by senior forest officials of the Union Government, the seven north-eastern states and other bodies, would formulate a community forestry support strategy for the north-eastern region.