The state has traditionally played a central role in forest management in post-colonial India. Large tracts of forests were nationalized with a view to promote soil and water conservation and maximize revenue from the sale of forest products. However, the record of state stewardship of forests has not been encouraging, both in terms of increasing productivity of forests and sustaining supply of forest products to rural communities. In recent years declining productivity of forest lands and rising costs of forest protection efforts have been a cause of concern at the level of policy making. The June 1, 1990 Circular of the Government of India which laid down norms for the involvement of village communities in management of degraded state forest lands was an acknowledgment by the State of the need to encourage institutional innovations that would promote sustainable forest management practices.

Haryana was the first state in India to bring into effect the provisions of the June 1, 1990 Circular of the Government of India. There were many factors which could explain the urgency with which the state government adopted the 1990 Circular. First, nationalization of forests in the region in total disregard of customary rules had created animosity between the Haryana Forest Department (HFD) and village forest communities. Second, forest degradation had reached alarming levels and was responsible for accentuating soil erosion in the Shiwalik hills. Third, the state of Haryana had achieved positive results in its initial experiments with community forestry prior to 1990. The authors, by being associated with the Tata Energy Research Institute (TERI) have had the opportunity of being a part of this experiment. Since 1991 TERI, with funding from the Ford Foundation has played a catalytic role in creating village level forest protection groups in the Shiwalik hills of Haryana. TERI has also undertaken capacity building exercises for the HFD staff besides undertaking socio-economic and ecological studies to monitor the impact of the community based forest management programme in Haryana.

The initial impetus for community based forest management in Haryana came from the failure of the Forest Department to halt the siltation of the Sukhna lake in Chandigarh. Chandigarh’s Sukhna lake was created in 1950 by building a dam across the Sukhna Choe in the 1950's. By 1974 it was found that 60 percent of the lake’s storage capacity was filled with silt. A study conducted by the Central Soil and Water Conservation Research and Training Institute (CSWCRTI) found that the hills behind the village of Sukhomajiri were highly degraded. Barely 5 percent of the slopes had any vegetative cover and the sedimentation rate was as high as 900 tones per ha annually. The study undertaken by CSWCRTI identified the primary cause behind such high rates of resource degradation to be uncontrolled grazing of cattle and encroachment of hill forests for agriculture.

With the aim of reversing resource degradation in the Sukhna catchment, it was suggested that soil and conservation works be undertaken in the area. The treatment plan included the construction of check dams, silt retention dams and afforestation. But it soon became evident that these measures were ineffective. Local villagers who were hired by the Forest Department to construct water harvesting structures destroyed the same structures at night. They removed the stone edges of the dams to permit free access of their cattle into the forest area. The wooden posts of the brushwood palisades were removed for use as firewood. The attempts of the Forest Department to install four strand barbed wire fences to restrict access to the forest also failed as the villagers destroyed the fences at several points.

The failure of technical measures forced officials of the Haryana Forest Department to seek out other solutions to the problem. It was soon established that the solution to deteriorating forest condition lay in improving the socio-economic condition of the local population in the region. The Gujjars who predominated in the region were a group of professional grazers. The average land holding size of households in a village was about 0.5 ha. The backbone of the economy was subsistence agriculture which was supplemented by livestock rearing. The high rates of silt deposition from the hills had rendered land unfit for cultivation.. The economic insecurity associated with declining agricultural productivity had forced many villagers to clear hill slopes to carry out cultivation. While this practice yielded little in terms of increasing agricultural production, it accentuated the process of soil erosion.

In many respects the state forests of the Shiwalik hills of Haryana state resembled an open-access property regime. Here, although the forest was de-jure state property, uncontrolled grazing and illicit felling of trees had made these forests a de-facto open-access regime. The failure of earlier experiments of the HFD to regulate access to forest areas through purely technical measures served to highlight the importance of institutional issues. In the absence of an attempt to address institutional issues such as usufruct rights and benefit sharing arising from the sale of forest products it was likely that rates of open access forest use would rise to the point of depleting the asset.

The Haryana Forest Department addressed the institutional issue by attempting to replace an open access regime of mutual privilege and no right into a common property regime of mutual right and duty. An integral component of this strategy was the creation of an elaborate structure of incentives. The HFD constructed Water harvesting dams in the hills and the rain water which collected in these structures was used to irrigate low lying agricultural fields. In response to the increased water availability from the dams, Water User’s Associations were formed to ensure that all households in the village received water from the dam. The resultant increase in agricultural yields associated with increased water availability persuaded villagers to regulate grazing of goats and sheep in the hill forests. Further, stall feeding of high milk yielding buffaloes was adopted. Noticing that rates of natural regeneration had improved the Forest Department decided that an institutional mechanism should be established to share the benefits of increased forest productivity with village communities. A Joint Management Unit (JMU) was established with representatives from TERI and the Haryana Forest Department to deliberate on issues related to the management of the community forestry programme. State, Divisional and Range level Working Groups have been established to decide on issues related to pricing of forest products and forest protection. The Water Users Association now took on a bigger role. Renamed as Hill Resource Management Societies (HRMS), these institutions were granted annual leases for fodder grass. Annual leases for harvesting bhabbar grass (used in rope making) and bamboo were also granted to the HRMS. The HRMS was also given the responsibility of repair and maintenance of water harvesting structures in the vicinity of forest areas. It was also envisaged that the HRMS would serve as an institution to channelize benefits that are likely to accrue from the sale of timber from forest areas. The HRMS, therefore, became the focus of the Forest Department’s attempt to reduce the costs of protection and increase the productivity of forests in the Shiwalik hills of Haryana.

A number of studies have been undertaken to evaluate the impact of community based forest management in Haryana. These studies have pointed to an overall improvement in the ecological condition of the forests in the Shiwalik hills. Encouraged by the findings of these studies the Haryana Forest Department has expanded the Community forest management programme. Presently, a total of 65 HRMS’s are actively engaged in the management of approximately 1500 sq kilometers of forest land in the Shiwalik hills of Haryana.

However, despite the overwhelming evidence of improvement in forest condition in the areas managed by the HRMS, there has been a dearth of research on the impact of changes in use and access regulations on rural communities dependant on forest areas. To bridge this information gap a study was undertaken in the Yamunanagar Forest Division of Haryana. Five villages with forests under varying property regimes were selected for the study. One of the study villages has a forest under an open-access regime (village A). The second village has a forest under community forestry programme (village B), the third has a forest under state management (village C), the fourth village has a forest that has been titled and completely sold (village D) and the fifth village has a forest that is part titled and part sold (village E).

The objective of the study was to ascertain the impact of changes in property rights regimes on access to forest products and ecological condition of forests. Finally, a benefit-cost analysis was undertaken to identify the economic viability of forest protection strategies under different rights regimes. The benefit-cost analysis was undertaken under four scenarios to ascertain the costs and associated benefits which accrue to rural communities from adopting different forest management strategies. The study considered three parameters in determining the effectiveness of a property rights regime. They were: I) Access to forest resources; ii) Forest condition and iii) Associated benefits and costs.

The study examined the impact of a change in rights regime on access to forest resources. In particular access conditions relating to fuel wood, fodder, bhabbar grass and water were examined. In the village under the community forestry programme the findings of the household survey indicate that there has been a decline in access to forest resources in the wake of the introduction of the programme. On the other hand, access to forest resources have shown a tendency to increase or to remain constant in the village under regime which exhibits features of both private titling and open access resource use (communal tenure).

The study examined the impact of a change in rights regime on forest condition. In particular, two issues were studied to ascertain the condition of the forest. They were: 1) Standing volume of trees, 2) Girth classes of trees in the forest. The study indicates that compared to the forests under open access and state ownership, forest condition under community forestry and communal tenure were satisfactory. Using the two parameters of standing volume and girth classes of trees, it was established that the condition of the forest in the village under the community forestry project was better than that of the forest under communal tenure. This finding corroborates the findings of earlier studies from Haryana which point to an improvement in forest condition under the community forest management programme.

Based on the analysis of the first two factors of access to forest resources and forest condition, it was established that the forest under community forestry and that under communal tenure were relatively well managed. As a result a benefit-cost analysis was undertaken to ascertain the economic viability of both these property regimes. The analysis which was undertaken from the point of view of the rural community, visualized four different scenarios. They were: 1) dams built by the forest department; 2) dams built by the community; 3) no lease charged by the Forest Department and no dam; 4) Plantation cost borne by the community and rights to timber granted to the community. The results of the benefit-cost analysis when examined in conjunction with the earlier two parameters of access to forest resources and forest condition, suggests that a regime which promotes both general access to and optimum production from certain types of resources (e.g. bhabbar grass) while enjoining on the community the conservation measures necessary to protect these resources from destruction produces optimal social, economic and ecological outcomes.

The findings of the case study reveal that community based forest management initiatives like the one in Haryana, need not always produce optimum results. Although the experiment has produced dramatic improvements in ecological condition of forests, continuing research is required to minimize the economic costs of community based forest management projects. The benefit-cost analysis indicates that the state has crucial role to play in sustaining community based forest management institution through creation of infrastructure like water harvesting dams. Further, the study shows that when titling of forest land results in an outright sale to individuals with no links to the community, the potential for sustainable forest management can be undermined. However, when titling of forest land does not result in a complete exclusion of non-owners from a benefit stream, sustainable management practices may emerge. Therefore, reinforcing some form of communal tenure may provide a viable alternative to community based forest management regimes which in some cases entail higher social and economic costs.