Peoples Participation in Social Forestry - Some Propositions

People’s participation in raising and protecting trees on lands outside the government forests is vital for the success of social forestry. This paper identifies four types of participation: process, cognitive, interactive and material. For generating process participation the paper recommends the organization of rural contests inviting villagers plans for social afforestation: students camps for planting trees during summer vacation; and afforestation of areas surrounding the places of workshop. For enlisting cognitive participation the paper recommends efforts to involve railways, matchbox and paper industries. Exercise book and calendar manufacturers, and other groups like Theatre Owners, Advertising Agencies, and the Publishers of Comics. To induce interactive participation the involvement voluntary, social service organizations, editors of regional language periodicals, retired forest personnel, forest department itself, and the agencies of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting are advocated. Under Material participation schemes such as ‘Tree Protection Day’, ‘Own a Tree for your child’, ‘Women’s fuel Cooperatives’. ‘Smrutivans’ etc are proposed. Bus stand plantations in rural areas, and offering tax concessions to business houses to motivate them to take to social forestry are also suggested. The paper concludes by stating that rational, highly persuasive, and constant promotion is the key to achieve people’s participation in social forestry. To do so the extension using of social forestry should be made capable of influencing the organizations identified in this paper.