Managing the Forest Fringes of India: A National Perspective for Meeting Sustainable Development Goals

Abstract

Forest fringes are the outer reach of the forests which witness majority of the extraction pressure from the community living near to it. For a country like India, where most of the lands are rainfed and lack sufficient irrigation facilities for the agricultural activities, the dependence of the communities is significantly high on the forests for meeting their subsistence needs. When compared to the overall area of the forests, the fringe areas are more vulnerable to extraction pressure. Fringe forests safeguard the interior core forests as long as the anthropogenic pressure does not exceed their resilience. However, the phenomenal increase in human and cattle populations over time and lack of effective management interventions is acting as a barrier in meeting the goals of sustainable development. Over-exploitation of the forest resources had led to the diminishing supply of goods and services. A quantitative assessment of the dependence of the fringe communities on forests is essential for formulating the sustainable actions. We present here a national perspective of the current status of fringes in meeting the goals of sustainable development. We emphasise that forest fringes demand an urgent site-specific prioritised intervention to improve livelihood as well as the ecological health for addressing the goals of sustainable development.