Biodiversity Conservation Network
5. Forest Products from the Forests of the Western Ghats
Location: Biligiri Rangan Temple Sanctuary, Karnataka, India
Partners: University of Massachusetts/Boston (UMB)
Vivekananda Girijana Kalyana Kendra (VGKK)
Tata Energy Research Institute (TERI)BCN Funding: $610,404 Partner Contribution: $75,652 Grant Period: December 15, 1994 - December 31, 1997
What's at Stake?
The Western Ghats are one of the most biologically diverse areas in South Asia. The Biligiri Rangan Hills contain elephants, gaurs, sambars, wild pigs, sloth bears, barking deer and over 900 species of flowering plants. This richness led to the area being declared a Wildlife Sanctuary in 1974. The biodiversity of the sanctuary is threatened however, by human pressures, which possibly include over harvesting of forest products by both local Solig communities and outsiders.
VGKK, a local NGO that has been working with the Soliga communities since 1981, is trying to meet these threats by establishing several new enterprises. Our project is centered around extraction of non-timber forest products (NTFPs) by Soliga tribes. These people have inhabited the Biligiri Rangan (BR) Hills region in South India for millennia. Approximately 4,500 Soligas live in 25 podus, or settlements, scattered throughout and on the fringes of the sanctuary. Traditionally, they engaged in shifting agriculture and hunting, and also collected a wide range of NTFPs. Shifting agriculture has been discouraged since the late 19th century, and was completely banned, along with hunting, with the declaration of much of the area as the Biligiri Ranganswamy Temple (BRT) Wildlife Sanctuary in 1974.
Settled agriculture is practiced by Soligas on the lands allotted to the households, but extraction of non-timber forest products is the major source of income. The Soligas harvest NTFPs and sell these to a cooperative marketing society, the Large-scale Adivasi (tribal) Multi-purpose Societies (LAMPS), which hold the harvesting rights on lease from the Forest Department. The LAMPS were created as vehicles for tribal development, particularly to ensure full return on the collection of NTFPs to which the tribals were given sole rights. Traditionally, NTFPs purchased from the Soliga communities were auctioned by the LAMPS to the highest bidder for processing and subsequent marketing.
Our preliminary studies indicate that more than 50% of the Soliga's total income is derived from NTFPs, yet they derive inadequate returns from the NTFPs due to a lack of value additions at the point of harvest. Furthermore, the Soligas have little control over harvest with respect to amount, location, and timing of the collection.
The BCN project is designed to increase the economic stake of the Soligas in conservation of their biotic resources and to increase their capacity to ensure the ecological sustainability of these resources and the larger ecosystem by strengthening Soliga organizations. We are accomplishing this by creating a Soliga-operated enterprise to process several of the extracted products at the collection site and marketing them directly, in order to capture a greater share of the final value. Sustainability will be achieved, on the one hand, by establishing a community-based biological monitoring and feedback system that would regulate NTFP extraction and ecosystem health and, by assisting the local community to gain better access to and control over biotic resources.
Thus, the enterprise will ultimately include not only the processing-cum-marketing unit but also a) a biological unit to ensure sustainable utilization of the biotic resources, and b) a community outreach unit to ensure broad-based participation of the local communities and an equitable flow of benefits to the community. Specifically, the processing-cum-marketing unit will purchase at least four NTFPs in raw form from the LAMPS: honey, nelli, soapnut, and shikekai; it will then process and market the products so as to capture the highest possible fraction of the final consumer prices. The project was formulated in collaboration with Vivekananda Girijana Kalyana Kendra (VGKK), an NGO in the BR Hills region devoted to Soliga welfare.
Success Stories
We made good progress meeting the project goals in 1997 and reached important milestones in biological monitoring, enterprise management, and formation of another community organization. Below we highlight these accomplishments.
Although some Soligas have been participating in biological monitoring for some time, the participatory resource monitoring began in earnest earlier this year, beginning with nelli and honey. The concept of participatory resource monitoring was first explained to the Soligas during pre-harvest meetings held in the majority of the settlements. These meetings were followed by monitoring of production and extraction levels by the Soligas, assisted by researchers. The success of participatory resource monitoring was evaluated in post harvest meetings. Participatory resource monitoring, which will be continued, was generally successful as indicated by the level of participation and response of the Soligas to questionnaires used to judge the effectiveness of monitoring. The success was primarily due to Soligas' traditional conservation of biological resources. We have also prepared simple manuals for participatory resource monitoring.
Soligas were encouraged by the partners to form another community organization to take over the honey processing and food processing plant, to initiate other enterprises and to eventually participate with VGKK, in participatory resource monitoring and other community outreach activities associated with enterprises, conservation, and environmental education. The organization would obtain income tax exempt status and VGKK will transfer the assets and provide working capital to the new organization, and maintain a close working relationship with it. The organization is broad-based, and its membership is composed of harvesters and other community members from all three regions of the sanctuary.
The honey processing unit and the food processing unit started to function smoothly in 1997. Both units began to generate profits, and the products from both units are being marketed successfully through retail outlets in two principal cities in the area, Mysore and Bangalore. We have established a small shop to directly sell honey, pickles, jams, and squashes in the village itself. Apart from generating revenue, the shop provides employment for an additional household of the Soligas community.
There is good demand for the products, particularly honey. Production of honey is not limited by sales, but by quantities available in the Sanctuary. Soligas have been trained to operate and manage the two units, and they have completely taken them over. The manager regularly reports to a managing committee, which consists of Soliga community representatives.
Challenges
A major challenge emerged midway during the third year when seemingly irreconcilable differences emerged among partner organizations with respect to management of the project and transfer of the enterprises to the Soliga community organization. The differences were resolved when one of the organizations accepted full responsibility for the transfer and appropriate community outreach activities necessary for the successful implementation of the project. Given differences in the background and long-term perspectives of the partner organizations, divergence of opinion in how best to implement the project is not surprising. The general lesson is that such differences are likely to occur, but can be minimized with clarification of goals and objectives of partners, mutual respect for different agendas of partner organizations, and effective communication among partners.
We have made little headway in linking sustainable harvest with conservation. One of the assumptions underlying the project is that economic gains from local biodiversity will provide incentives to extractors to harvest products on a sustainable basis. However, we still do not know the level of sustainable harvest. Even if an arbitrary limit on harvest were to be placed, it is debatable whether the harvester would respect this limit in the absence of direct economic benefits from marketing and processing. Although extractors have strong traditional interests in conservation, success in meeting this challenge may depend upon the extent to which benefits accrue to the harvesters at both the individual and community levels, and the degree to which harvesters and the community can be made aware of the connection between economic gains and conservation.
Third, the herbal medicinal plant unit has continued to suffer losses due to inadequate management and marketing of the products. A new management board has been established. Moreover, efforts are now being made to recruit an experienced manager and develop a marketing strategy.
Author: Kamaljit S. Bawa, Professor of Biology at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. Dr. Bawa first developed an interest in the Biligiri Hills while he was on sabbatical as a Guggenheim Fellow in Bangalore. Some of the initial ground work for the current program was initiated by Dr. Bawa during 1991 with funding from the MacArthur Foundation.
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