Microfinance, social capital and natural resource management systems: conceptual issues and empirical evidences

This paper attempts to trace the causes and consequences of natural resources' degradation as stated from various reviews. The paper also attempts to link poverty, environmental degradation and conceptual issues involved in recovery of natural resources through building social capital. This is a review of various papers on microfinance programmes undertaken in natural resource management projects. An attempt is made to understand how the building of social capital enhances the propensity to develop natural capital. It is argued that there is lack of evidence to show that social capital increases the chance of improving natural capital and discusses various issues associated with natural resource management. The paper also stresses the need to adopt an integrated approach to seek evidence of natural resource building efforts through improving social capital.social capital; natural resource management; microfinance; natural capital; common property resource; environmental management; natural resources degradation.

Public private partnerships in watershed management. Evidence from the Himalayan foothills

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Formation and recovery of secondary forests in India: a particular reference to western Ghats in South India

This paper analyses the underlying causes of secondary forest formation and recovery in India, particularly the Western Ghats region of south India, from precolonial times to the present. In the pre colonial period, hunter gatherers, shifting cultivators and settled cultivators were the dominant users of forest land, with some limited timber felling by local chieftains and kings. There was limited secondary forest formation following extractive activities by the communities and the State. The State takeover of forests for commercial timber exploitation during the colonial period, the resulting alienation of local community rights, and the over exploitation of forest products from limited areas accessible to the community were key factors in the large-scale formation of secondary forests. In the post independence period, the diversion of forestland for other purposes and industrial pressures led to deforestation and forest degradation. Currently, forest cover is relatively low and primary forests exist only in hilly tracts. However, forest cover has stabilised in spite of increasing population density. With the passing of the Forest Conservation Act of 1980, which banned forest clearing, forest conversion pressures were reduced. During the last decade, the rehabilitation of degraded secondary forests and the regeneration of secondary forest on degraded land by communities have contributed to the stabilisation of forest cover. The paper hypothesises that joint management of forests by governments and communities, as well as policies to reduce dependence on fuelwood, may have paved the way for this favourable development

Herb layer productivity under different light gaps in the forests of Western Ghats of Karnataka, India

International audienceA productivity estimation of tree, shrub and herb layer biomass wasundertaken in Uttara Kannada, a Western Ghats district in Karnataka indifferentially managed forests. In addition to biomass, light gap in these samplesites was also estimated to understand the relationship between the lightinterception pattern at different canopy layers and their productivity. Thestudies indicate that tree biomass productivity decreases and herb productivityincreases with increasing light gap. However, the herb biomass productivityattains maximum height at 40–60% light gaps than in plots with no trees or100% light gap indicating that highest herb biomass is found in forestsmanaged for leaf manure than in grasslands. This further indicates that partialshading enhances herb layer productivity. Thus, a strategy of undertakingagroforestry in villages to enhance the total biomass productivity to meet theneeds of the villages was suggested