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Mapping the Efforts of Communities in the Conservation and Protection of Commons
A case study in Sadhukonda RF in Chitoor district, AP, India
R.Ravindranath, T.Balachander and Suresh Jones
Foundation for Ecological Security (FES)
Anand – 388 001
Abstract:
The Geographical Information System has been widely applied for the management of natural resources across the world to understand their status, spatial distribution, and to quantify it for the human and ecological needs. This paper talks about an attempt to map the efforts of village communities protecting a Reserve Forest and to understand the supply and demand scenario of the biomass available in the RF as well as in commons and to frame strategies to discuss with the communities in the conservation of the resources. Remote sensing and GIS techniques have been used in the study to enumerate the species, to quantify the above ground phytomass and to understand the extraction patterns by the dependant communities. The dependant villages are randomly selected based on their proximity to the resources, size of the village and their economical status. The findings of the study shows that there is an improvement of the vegetative cover and diversity in the RF due to the community protection. Concerns however have also emerged from the study that despite the improvement in the forest cover current levels of fuelwood extraction, both for self use and for sale, are well above the recommended limits. Thus protecting reserve forests alone without making efforts to increase the fuelwood availability and to create alternate livelihood options may not yield the desired results. The study posits a need for bringing more revenue wastelands under vegetative cover such that it meets the local needs as well as offsets the pressure on the reserve forests. The findings of the remote sensing analysis and the field survey are now forming the inputs for discussions with communities on provision to and appropriation from the forests and common lands.
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