Hw who feels the pain is the community. Hence they are the best managers. That's why KFS came up with New forest act, 2016 that empowers the community to co-manage forest resources through establishment of community forest associations (CFAs)

KWS are also to embrace the same. when the community have a say that bottom-up type of management of resources and is the best. When it's the state managing the resources, then it's felt as top-bottom type of management. Here the community feels the resources do not belong to them but state hence they can destroy them or may not bother if the resources are being spoilt. This is where the principle of everyone for himself comes in and God for us all. Read Rachael Carson The silent spring

This is an important question often debated in policy circles. Most local commons are managed well if local communities have well-defined rules and governance mechanisms. Local communities are preferable as they are critical to the success of any program. They also have better local information and important for their participation in managing the resources. Said that, an oversight on general standards and environmental regulations can come from the state. State guidance can avoid depletion of commons in some communities where there is no proper management and potential for private exploitation of resources.     

There is immense literature on the topic of common pool resources.    

It is the government that is the custodian of laws and policies. Maybe put the forest and the communities as administrative subjects of the state; and not state and local communities working as partners? I mean let the government work through the communities and by its own instruments appropriately. My point is focused on Conservation thought; but when there are forests and ecosystems to be Preserved, then the state should not waste time but just implement the right thing. Take this example; how should the destruction of the Mau water tower be handled?

Rashid

Yours is a never-ending question that has had a plethora of arguments and publications written on. The debate over which policies or management practices are ideal for implementing sustainable forestry management (SFM) have been confusing in part because different people truly mean different things when the use the term sustainable management. Fundamentally there are three views of forest management; state-controlled, community managed or participatory management. The choice of which to embrace is based on ecological characteristics, social characteristics and the reciprocal relationships between the two categories. A key difficulty in understanding SFM in such interacting systems is that ecological and social dimensions of sustainability are subject to different timescales of management. While long-term processes dominate forest ecosystems, social systems are predominately driven by short-term factors that fluctuate with the changing societal needs. Inevitably the two systems (and thus which SFM to choose) come into conflict since societal demands that are structured around short-term gains interfere with the longer cycles of ecological maintenance.

Ultimately it is a continuum of choices varying from the state controlled (and ecologically inclined) at one end to the community managed and livelihoods-driven approach at the other end. For detailed info. from Southern Africa countries check for

1. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/231884447_Attitudes_of_coastal-forest_users_in_Eastern_Cape_Province_to_management_options_arising_from_new_South_African_forest_policies?ev=prf_pub

2. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/260591953_Degradation_species_invasion_and_management_in_Tanzanian_dry_forests_what_do_local_people_say?ev=prf_pub

3. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/223918429_The_dynamics_and_sustainable_use_of_high-value_tree_species_of_the_coastal_Pondoland_forests_of_the_Eastern_Cape_ Province_South_Africa?ev=prf_pub

Article Attitudes of coastal-forest users in Eastern Cape Province t...

Chapter Degradation, species invasion and management in Tanzanian dr...

Article The dynamics and sustainable use of high-value tree species ...

I am going to give a third and fourth and fifth and sixth choice to the answers.

1.) SACRED. Best practices are when the forest is SACRED, as the forests in the Western Ghats.  

2.) SUPERIOR ECONOMIC VALUE. And when the forests have a superior ECONOMIC VALUE, to harvest a secondary product from them, which requires their protection in order to harvest.  Like the forests in the mountains above Salalah, Oman that have been protected for about 3,000 years the harvest the frankincense resin. 

3.) PSEUDOMONAS HOST TREES. And the future forest management plan that will be used to protect and manage tropical forests in the future, will be to discover what plants and trees in the forests are the Pseudomonas hosts that produce the rainfall for the planet each year.  

Once these plants are discovered, they not only need to be protected, but their numbers increased, because in recent decades so many millions of acres of them have been cut down, it is starting to impact on the rainfall of billions of people, like the annual Indian monsoon moisture production.  

4.) FOREST WORTH MORE STANDING THAN CUT, for Carbon Credits. This year, I was told of a project to clear several square kilometers of pristine tropical forest in Fiji to grow export crops.  Instead I suggested that Germany was looking for Carbon Credits to offset their carbon use, and that is what is happening right now.

The forest in Fiji ism now worth more to keep standing to produce carbon credits, and is now getting protected instead of being cut down.

If any of these four reasons are not included into forest protection, I have serious doubts that governments or the local people or both combined, can stand up against the juggernaut of international economics.  

The SACRED puts a religious barrier to economic destruction, and the PSEUDOMONAS puts a rainfall "added value" to the forests if you want rain to continue to fall, and the other two provide ECONOMIC REASONS to protect the forests, when they are worth more standing, than chopped down.

The quickest method to protect a forest, would be the CARBON CREDIT method, then the PSEUDOMONAS method, with the Countries like India that benefit from the monsoon moisture, pay to have the forests of Malaysia and Indonesia protected instead of being cut down for oil palm plantations.

That would mean that some of the billions of Dollars or Rupies or Yuan Renminbi or whatever currency that a country is wasting in supporting their military, and will need those funds to be shifted to support the planet's ecosystem functions, that allows billions of people to keep living wherever they do.  

The alternative is to cut all of the forests like the Indus Valley people did 3,500 years ago, causing the rains to stop, then their whole civilization had to abandon their 1,000 cities.  At this point, there is no place for the one billion+ people of India to move, if the cutting of the Malaysian and Indonesia forests produce less and less monsoon rainfall in future years?

Hi Rashid,

Of course, this is a very complex question, but quite significant.

To answer it easily & directly, one should follow a strategic assessment approach:

The Government agencies cover the: 1. Integration studies; 2. Assessment studies; while the Local people cover the: 3. Validation studies.

Get the following special issue on subject:

Special Issue: Decision Support Systems for Sustainable Forest Management

http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/sfor20/29/sup1

Scandinavian Journal of Forest Research

Hi Rashid,

,this is a topical question in sustainable development debate.

I would answer both of them, together they can make the difference.

I suggest you to enrich your analysis with the literature (and experiences) on multi-stakeholder partnerships and co-creation in standard-setting and certification.

Both the governments at different levels (inter-national, national and local) and the communities can bring different perspectives on such complex issues like Sustainable Forest.

i hope this can help

best wishes

Silvana

There  is a lot of scope for debates on this question. In the context of India, Joint Forest Management (JFM) programme is more than a decade old and has been able to bring to forth important understanding regarding incentives for the sustainable management of biodiversity. Hence, the case of JFM in India has been considered here as a mechanism to understand non monetary positive incentives for the conservation and sustainable management of biodiversity. In order to ensure the survival rates of any afforestation and reforestation  programmes, incentives to the farmers  needs to be provided  and increased year wise based on the growth. Government also has  major role to play . India’s Nationally Determined Contributions aims to enhance the forest cover to 33% from the current levels, For eg: Policy has played a major role in the mission /campaign mode afforestation programmes in the states of Telangana and Kerala, South India namely Haritha Haaram and Haritha Kerala respectively .

Researchers also play a major role in monitoring and evaluation

pl refer

http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0147541#sec022

Dear Rashid,

I am agreed with "Silvana's" "Together they can make the difference" opinion. If you want to set a parameter for local people to manage the forest and government do not support them, then it is so tough to save the forest community. It means, government and local people are part and parcel to manage a forest. Without both contribution the whole management system can be broke down. I am fully goes to Silvana's opinion.

Thanks,

Asif

There MUST be either a religious or economic underpinning for ecosystem preservation, otherwise the "International Economic Juggernaut " can corrupt governments or local people's desires to preserve, or both.  A good example is the unchecked spread of  palm oil plantations in SE Asia.

I do not see the economic underpinning in any of the other answers.  For example the government gets carbon credits for the standing forest, and gives that money to the local people, to pay them to preserve the forest instead of utilizing it?  

Maybe the Joint Forest Management (JFM) programme has put together a payment plan for the local people?  And how does the annual payments compare to what the people could make by cutting the forest down?  That is why the forests above Salalah in Oman still exist, because the Frankincense groves were worth more alive than cut down.

There is a need for synergy between the government and community. There is no doubt that  the responsibility falls squarely on the host community while government should provide the policing and funding. religious and cultural factors in a community are often more effective than economic factors in the case of natural forest lands since some believes are attached to them. You can look up literature on community participation in forest and natural resource conservation for further clarifications.

I still believe that a strong economic foundation is the key to the survival of future natural areas--somehow they must be worth more economically whole, than turned into timber or farms or ranch lands.  

And the only quick method that I suggested for the thousands of acres of forests of Fiji recently, that the forests are worth more as Carbon Credits to Europe than clearing them for export crops?  All of the carbon-burning nations need to get on board, and invest billions in protecting and conserving the tropical forests, for their carbon credit,l before they all get turned into timber or palm oil plantations?

And that is exactly what I suggested for the Arabian peninsula a decade ago that you can read at http://www.ecoseeds.com/cool.html to preserve tens of millions of acres of their perennial native grasslands, at least to stop the dust storms that cause damage and ravage the cities each summer.  

There MUST be both an economic AND a human-need benefit to preserving the huge tracts of natural areas that we need for the future.  

And the money-side MUST be discussed first, how do we compensate the local people, so that the resources do not get chopped down or in the case of Arabia, grazed back to barren desert again?

When both local community and the government come together, then it gives a required synergy, otherwise the role played by  local community can not be undermined.

To answer this question, we need to talk about reality, not dream situations that we would like to see happening, for example here in California---

Money has always trumped local communities, and unfortunately governments have been the supporters of whomever has the money and power at the time..  

I just commented on the proposal for a single family, the Fishers, who are in the process of getting a ten year lease on over 200 square miles (150,000 acres or 60,000 hectares) of US BLM public lands, for their own personal use to graze cattle.

Called the "Ord Mountain Allotment" (see Google for more details), is where the Federally Listed Mojave desert tortoise Critical Habitat is located, and this family is going to graze 300 cows that eat the same scant desert vegetation that the tortoise needs to survive, during the most severe drought that California has experiences since recorded weather reporting (see weekly US Drought Monitor).

And does the Federal government ask the local Native American people, if there is a better use of the natural resources on 200+ square miles, than destroying the ecosystem to produce exotic grazing animal food and convert the resources on that  200 square miles into cow manure?  

Or consider the survival of the Listed desert tortoise in their decision?  

No, because the European and White ranchers have the political power since 1769 to use our California natural resources that are supposed to be protected for all of the people, for their own personal use.    We have been following the "Golden Rule" here for over 200 years, whoever has the gold makes the rules.

This pattern of money and power stripping lands of their natural resources has been copied and pasted all across the globe, ever since the European people started chopped up the planet into bite-sized pieces and calling it their own, starting in 1493 (see book "1493" by Charles C. Mann).  Let's call that the "1493 Pattern".  

Now others are getting into the 1493 Pattern game, so there is now a world-wide free-for-all when it comes to all natural resources. 

So unless the local people can somehow economically trump the external (e.g. Multinational) economic use or the monopoly use of their local natural resources, then local control and management will never be achieved, and the 1493 Pattern will continue until they are able to do so. 

It depends what is the main goal of such a management – there is clear dichotomy between conservation goals and human development goals. State usually promotes “fortress conservation” while community tends to favor “co-management conservation”. Useful approach could be “political ecology”, see for instance W.M.Adams and his book “Green Development. Environment sustainability in a developing world”, Chapter 10 “The politics of preservation”. Moreover there are also neoliberal / market approaches to the nature conservation such as PES schemes.

please check this paper..its an assessment of the first community reserve in India

Article COMMUNITY BASED COASTAL TOURISM: A CASE STUDY OF KADALUNDI V...

The Local community has a responsibility in the management of Natural resources. They have to buy into the management of these resources so as to support the Government's efforts fulfilment of their goals. The Local community provides necessary resources including land, manpower, artifacts, culture etc that indeed forms the natural resources under focus.

On the other hand, the Government has a role in identifying natural resources to be conserved, as well as providing relevant legislation as well as resources.

Thus, there must be a collective responsibility among the Government as well as the Local community in the management of Natural resources.

Thanks everyone for the contributions.

the local community has a great responsibilityin managing natural resources because they directly benefit or are directly affected.