Community Forest Management: Indigenous Practices and Gender Dynamics in Sustainable Resource Use

In many parts of rural India, forests are not just a source of timber or revenue – they are the foundation of daily life, culture, and survival. Nowhere is this more evident than in the state of Odisha (formerly Orissa), where thousands of villages have taken forest protection into their own hands, long before government programmes arrived. This is the story of Community Forest Management (CFM) – a grassroots approach to forest governance that has delivered real ecological results while exposing deep inequities around gender and access.

How community forest management emerged in Odisha 🔗

Despite being historically sidelined in policy debates about forests, rural and tribal communities in Odisha have demonstrated that they can be effective stewards of their natural resources. Research on self-initiated CFM in Odisha has found that the state has several thousand community-managed forest groups – possibly more than anywhere else in the world of comparable size, with many operating for over 10 to 40 years.

CFM in Odisha emerged as a direct response to the limitations of Joint Forest Management (JFM), the government’s formal programme for participatory forestry launched in 1990. While JFM aimed to bring communities and forest departments together, villagers often found the state’s proposals rigid and incompatible with how they had traditionally related to their forests. Around 8,000 villages in Odisha now practice some form of community-based forest management, using locally designed rules and institutions rather than a standardised government blueprint.

A study published in Environmental Management comparing JFM with pre-existing community management found that when JFM replaced self-organised CFM systems, villager participation actually declined, the bundle of common rights held by communities eroded, and forest administration became politicised. The study concluded that the one-size-fits-all approach of JFM was likely to limit the experimentation and institutional innovation that characterise community-led management.

Local conservation strategies and indigenous practices 🔗

Communities in Odisha have developed remarkably effective strategies for restoring degraded forests. The core approach involves restricting local access to essential needs – firewood, fodder, and minor forest produce – while completely blocking outsiders from entering the protected forest areas. These are not top-down rules imposed by a distant bureaucracy; they are norms developed through village-level consensus.

Enforcement through community mechanisms 🔗

Villages have created their own systems of regulation. Fines are levied on community members who violate local rules, and violations by outsiders are dealt with more strictly. One well-known practice is thengapalli, a rotational patrolling system where villagers take turns guarding the forest. This simple but effective mechanism ensures continuous monitoring without the cost of hired guards.

These locally evolved institutions are diverse. As research on community-based forest governance has documented, villages in districts like Dhenkanal and Angul developed specific byelaws recording the principles and rules of forest management, with every member of the local institution contributing to the rule-making process. The byelaws state broad management principles while leaving room for revision as circumstances change.

The role of women in forest protection 🔗

Women play a critical – and often underrecognised – role in day-to-day forest protection. Because women are the primary collectors of firewood, fodder, and non-timber forest products, they naturally spend more time in and around forests than men. This positions them as highly effective monitors of forest health. While gathering resources, women observe changes in vegetation, notice encroachment, and can quickly identify illegal activities.

According to the FAO’s analysis of gender issues in participatory forest management, awareness about trees, shrubs, and grasses tends to be higher among women than men because of the time women devote to collecting forest produce. Women have historically been at the forefront of forest conservation movements in India, including well-known struggles like the Chipko movement.

Gender inequities in community forest management 🔗

While women contribute enormously to forest protection and monitoring, they are often systematically excluded from the governance structures that determine how forests are used. This contradiction is one of the most significant shortcomings of CFM in Odisha.

How forest regeneration can work against women 🔗

Here is the paradox: as forests regenerate under community protection and begin to produce surplus timber and other commercially valuable products, the decision-making power shifts to male-dominated village committees. These committees – often influenced by the patriarchal forest department – tend to prioritise commercial exploitation over subsistence needs. A common practice is to lease out regenerated forests near villages through auctions to timber contractors.

This has direct consequences for women. When nearby forest areas are auctioned off, women lose access to the very resources they helped protect – fuelwood, fodder, fruits, medicinal plants, and other products essential for household needs. They are forced to walk much longer distances to gather basic necessities. The FAO study noted that in Odisha, the distance women needed to travel for collecting forest products increased from about 1.7 km in the 1960s to 7.0 km by the 1980s due to degradation and access restrictions.

Exclusion from decision-making 🔗

The FAO’s research on women’s participation in JFM found that roughly 87% of women respondents had never attended a single forest management meeting. Of those who did attend, only about half participated in discussions – the rest were silent observers. Women were frequently not informed about meetings, meeting times conflicted with household responsibilities, and social customs discouraged their attendance.

This exclusion has real economic consequences. While men push for commercial forestry decisions, women’s priorities – biodiversity conservation, sustained availability of fuelwood, fodder, and NTFPs – are consistently overlooked. The poorest households, which depend most heavily on forests for daily survival, bear the greatest burden of these inequities.

The economics of non-timber forest produce 🔗

Non-Timber Forest Products (NTFPs) form the backbone of forest-based livelihoods in Odisha, and women are the primary gatherers, processors, and sellers of these products. NTFPs include items like sal seeds, kendu leaves (used for rolling beedis), lac, medicinal herbs, mahua flowers, mushrooms, and wild fruits.

Kendu leaves: Odisha’s golden leaf 🔗

Kendu leaves are among the most economically significant NTFPs in Odisha. An estimated 600,000 women and children harvest over 350,000 tonnes of kendu leaves annually in the state. Odisha is the third-largest producer of kendu after Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, with annual production around 450,000-500,000 quintals, roughly 20% of the country’s total output.

Yet the women who do the labour-intensive work of collecting, drying, and preparing these leaves see only a fraction of the economic value. Kendu was among the first NTFPs to be brought under state monopoly control, with Odisha nationalising the kendu leaf trade in 1973. This nationalisation effectively turned local gatherers into poorly paid wage labourers, with the bulk of profits going to government royalties and middlemen.

Structural exploitation across NTFPs 🔗

The exploitation is not limited to kendu leaves. According to FAO research, in the case of sal seed collection, primary collectors received only about 19% of the sale price, while the government took 45% as royalty and contractors captured 36%. In Odisha’s rural areas, up to 40% of people’s income comes from collecting forest products, yet the gatherers – predominantly women – remain excluded from policy-making and hold no formal rights over these resources.

Three times as many women as men are involved in gathering NTFPs, and the processing of NTFPs is almost exclusively done by women. Despite this, income from NTFP sales is frequently controlled by men in the household, and women have little access to formal markets or the ability to set up processing enterprises that would allow them to capture more value.

The cognitive dimension of “our forest” 🔗

A crucial factor in the success or failure of community forest management is the sense of ownership and belonging that communities feel toward their forests. The concept of “our forest” is not just about legal rights – it is about a psychological and cultural connection that motivates people to protect and sustainably manage a resource.

When communities perceive that they are genuinely benefiting from their efforts at forest protection, they remain committed. But when the benefits are captured by elites – village headmen, contractors, or government officials – while ordinary members, especially women and marginalised groups, see little return, motivation breaks down. In such situations, communities may resort to poaching, illegal logging, or allowing outsiders to exploit the forest.

Even in formal JFM programmes, this dynamic plays out consistently. The Mongabay analysis of community forestry outcomes noted that in many Indian JFM sites, participation fades over time, with large numbers of village-level committees ceasing to function within a year of establishment. Marginalised villagers often lose their user rights, while wealthier or more politically connected households capture the benefits.

This is why equitable benefit-sharing is not just a matter of fairness – it is essential for the long-term viability of community-based forest management. Without it, the sense of “our forest” erodes, and so does the community’s willingness to protect it.

Trusteeship rights: an alternative model 🔗

Recognising the limitations of both pure state control and unregulated community management, scholars have proposed alternative frameworks. One influential proposal is the concept of Trusteeship Rights, put forward by Singh (2004). Under this model, village communities would manage forests not as owners but as trustees – acting on behalf of all stakeholders who depend on the forest, including future generations.

How trusteeship differs from ownership 🔗

The trusteeship model draws on traditional forest ethics, where communities historically recognised user rights rather than possession rights. The principle is simple: people should use forest resources according to genuine need, not for accumulation or profit. Different user groups – women gatherers, herders, fuelwood collectors, artisans – would each have their interests recognised and protected under a trusteeship arrangement.

This approach aligns with the broader public trust doctrine as recognised in Indian law, which holds that certain natural resources – forests, rivers, air – are held by the state in trust for the general public and cannot be handed over for private exploitation. The Supreme Court of India has repeatedly affirmed this principle, establishing that the state’s role is that of a trustee, not an owner, of natural resources.

Relevance to current legislation 🔗

The Forest Rights Act (FRA) of 2006 represents a significant step in this direction. The FRA recognises both individual and community forest rights for tribal and forest-dwelling populations, including the right to manage and protect community forest resources. It also includes provisions for women’s participation, requiring at least one-third women members on Forest Rights Committees.

However, implementation remains uneven. Many states have been slow to recognise community rights, and conflicting laws – such as those maintaining state monopolies over NTFPs like kendu and bamboo – continue to undermine the spirit of the legislation. The gap between what the law promises and what communities experience on the ground remains wide.

Lessons from Odisha’s community forest experience 🔗

Odisha’s experience with CFM offers several important lessons for sustainable resource management globally. First, communities are capable of managing forests effectively when given the autonomy and incentive to do so. The thousands of self-initiated forest protection groups in Odisha have contributed significantly to forest regeneration, often outperforming government-led programmes.

Second, gender equity is not optional – it is a prerequisite for sustainable management. When women are excluded from decision-making and denied access to resources they help protect, the entire system becomes less efficient and less just. Sustainable forestry requires that women’s knowledge, labour, and priorities be given equal weight.

Third, legal recognition matters. Without formal rights, community management remains vulnerable to being overridden by state agencies or commercial interests. The Forest Rights Act provides a framework, but its potential will only be realised through consistent and equitable implementation.

Finally, the trusteeship model offers a compelling ethical framework – one that moves beyond the binary of state control versus privatisation and instead centres responsibility, need-based use, and inter-generational equity.

What do you think? Can true forest sustainability be achieved without addressing the gender dynamics of who controls resources and who benefits from them? And is the trusteeship model – managing forests for collective need rather than individual profit – a realistic alternative in today’s economic environment?

References

1. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1389934101000685
2. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18288518/
3. http://pdf.wri.org/ref/nayak_02_com-based_forest.pdf
4. https://www.fao.org/4/XII/0799-C1.htm
5. https://www.indiaspend.com/welfare/koraputs-gram-sabhas-harness-economic-potential-of-kendu-leaves-911603
6. https://news.mongabay.com/2017/11/does-community-based-forest-management-work-in-the-tropics/
7. https://www.legalserviceindia.com/articles/ptdoc.htm
8. https://idronline.org/features/rights/idr-explains-forest-rights-act-fra/