Village Level Actors in Sustainable Forest Management: a Study in Madhya Pradesh

Forests play a very important role in the lives of communities living in and around forests and hence have evolved mechanisms for its sustainable use. But the species composition of forests is not uniform leading to differential NTFP outflow. In an action situation on sustainable forest use by the communities of three different forest types of Madhya Pradesh, the actors identified-households, women, graziers, informal and formal leaderships, plantation watchers, settlers, forest department officials, first purchaser of NTFPs, agents of Bidi industry, wood cutters or poachers, Gram Panchayat functionaries, etc.- are internal or external, individual or composite. Although the study does not show much of variation in actors across the three forest types of the State but the power wielded by these actors vary from village to village. Their roles, as individual or composite actors, also change depending upon the situation.