Impact Evaluation of Joint Forest Management Programme in Jammu Division of Jammu and Kashmir State

Abstract

Joint Forest Management Programme (JFM) has been a major thrust area of forest management over the last two decades. The programme is operating with main objective of forest management and empowerment of local livelihoods through sustainable resource utilization and income generation opportunities. Total recorded forest area of Jammu and Kashmir is 20, 23,000 ha. Out of which 38,736 ha is under JFM. JFM involves sharing of responsibilities and rights of local communities and forest department (FD) as primary stakeholders in forest management system. It is also supposed to invoke active participation of local people and application of their traditional wisdom and knowledge in countering ecological and economic vulnerabilities in the form of soil erosion, drought condition, loss of soil productivity and scarcity of timber, fuel wood, fodder, plant leaves etc. Keeping in view the importance of JFM Programme, a study entitled Impact Evaluation of Joint Forest Management Programme in Jammu Division of Jammu and Kashmir State. was conducted. The present study was conducted purposively in East Circle of Jammu division because of having maximum number of districts. Multistage sampling plan was followed for the selection of respondents. Six ranges from East Circle having maximum number of JFMCs were selected purposively. Twenty four committees, four from each selected ranges of East Circle were selected through random sampling technique. Eight members from each JFMC were selected randomly for the study making the sample size of 192 JFM respondents. Two villages from each range (12 villages in total) were selected through random sampling technique. From each selected village nine non- JFMC members were randomly selected for the study making the sample size of 108 non-JFMC members. Overall sample size consisted of 300 respondents. The result of the study showed that, JFM programme played crucial role in conservation of forest resources. There was good network of JFMC in different forest divisions of Jammu