Overview
Bastar district in the south of Chhattisgarh state is covered with forests and is home to several tribal communities from central India including Gonds, Halba, Dhurwa, Bhattra, Muria, and Madias. ATREE was invited to work with the Bastar District Administration in 2021 to assist CFRR villages in preparing community forest management plans. Ever since, we have been actively engaged in the district both in the claim-making process as well as in the post-rights forest management process. ATREE currently works with over 27 villages in the district.
Training: At the village and village representative levels, the trainings in Bastar district include:
- Claim-making and mapping
- Dispute resolution
- Community Forest Resource Rights Management Planning
- Need-based training support, e.g., ecotourism planning, gender sensitization
Training is also conducted for district and forest field staff and officers, NGOs, and others focused on community forest claim-making, and community forest rights management planning.
Geospatial Tech: Development of the Aamcho CFR App focused on Bastar district and linking with the WebGIS platform for easing mapping and claim-making process.
Action: The Bastar field coordinators are actively engaged in the processes of mapping, claim-making, and post-rights hand-holding to villages in preparing Community Forest Management Plans. Further need-based assistance is also provided to community-led projects such as plantation, NTFP marketing.
Policy Outreach: Active engagement with Bastar administration for reducing gaps in CFR titles and claimed area under community forest resource rights (CFRR).
Research: Leading studies on NTFP dependence, challenges in NTFP marketing, and identifying ways in which livelihoods in CFRR villages can be improved.
This initiative seeks to empower forest-dependent communities, promote sustainable forest use, and enhance equitable livelihoods through a participatory approach. Simultaneously, it strengthens administrative processes and policy convergence to ensure robust, community-driven forest governance.
Research
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Mapping the potential of Community Forest Resource Rights in central India The article is based on ATREE's work on methodologies to estimate the potential area that could come under CFR rights and the locations of villages with CFR potential in Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, and Maharashtra. -
Community Forest Rights Recognition in Chhattisgarh State: Progress and Challenges Community Rights (CR) and Community Forest Resource Rights (CFRR) provisions of the FRA, when taken together, have the potential to decentralize and deepen democratic forest governance and bring about a transformative change in the economic and social conditions of the local people, and improve the management of the forests.
Training
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Carrying forward learnings on CFRR implementation and management to greater Bastar region In any action research project, how does one balance the need to improve the quality of on-ground interventions with the need to scale-up these interventions to wider geographies? -
Learning From and Carrying Forward CFR Management Planning in Central India How does Community Forest Resource (CFR) management work on the ground? What can we learn from the decade-long history of such management by villages in Maharashtra to build capacities -
Training and Support for Community Forest Rights in Bastar, Chhattisgarh ATREE’s CFR team is training a team of 18 FRA Coordinators chosen from Bastar District to work with Gram Sabhas for claim-making and for developing CFR management plans. -
Trainings on WebGIS for Claiming CFR Rights in Bastar District How do we as researchers help in the implementation of a progressive but complex piece of nature resource legislation? The implementation of the Forest Rights Act of 2006, especially its community rights provisions, has raised this question for us repeatedly. -
Action
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Project: CFR management planning in Bastar villages ATREE planned to assist a selected set of 7 villages (from those that have received CFR titles) as pilot villages in managing CFRs for forest conservation and livelihood enhancement. -
Video: Building capacities for recognising CFR rights in Bastar Date: Oct 16, 2023 -
Video: CFR Rights in Bastar District, Chhattisgarh (Hindi) Date: Dec 18, 2023 -
Carrying forward learnings on CFRR implementation and management to greater Bastar region In any action research project, how does one balance the need to improve the quality of on-ground interventions with the need to scale-up these interventions to wider geographies?
Policy Outreach
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Policy Brief: Convergence of CFRR with NTFP-based livelihoods Under project on Training, Capacity Building and Support for Decision-Making for CFRR Recognition & Management in Bastar District -
Empower communities to fix forest governance Tardy devolution of rights under FRA and issues undermining gram sabhas’ capabilities to exercise these rights wherever recognised need to be addressed -
Community Forest Rights Recognition in Chhattisgarh State: Progress and Challenges Community Rights (CR) and Community Forest Resource Rights (CFRR) provisions of the FRA, when taken together, have the potential to decentralize and deepen democratic forest governance and bring about a transformative change in the economic and social conditions of the local people, and improve the management of the forests.