Santals in a Deforestated World
From: Silent Forests.
by Tone Bleie with Logen Kisku
Culture, environmental degradation and poverty among the Santals of Bangladesh
Chr. Michelsen Institute
Introduction
The present absence of any major continuous forest areas in northwestern Bangladesh (Bangladesh is one of the countries in the world with the lowest forest cover) makes it hard to imagine the pace of decline in the forest cover experienced by the current elderly generation. Perhaps its is even harder for us to understand that the scattered forest patches still around may have some cultural and economic significance for some rural dwellers.
Our own research shows that the final blow to the Santals' mixed forest-farm adaptation occurred first in the late Pakistan period and in the early years after Independence. Our evidence suggests that forest resources, mainly as food supply, medical herbs, grazing grounds and recreational areas, were of great significance to both the livelihoods and the overall well-being of the Santals until fairly recently. The forests have completely vanished in many of the thanas where the Santals predominantly live. In Nawabgonj thana some forest is still there, partly due to the relatively large proportion of Santals-who care deeply for the forest and partly due to the relative abundance of agricultural land in this thana. This absence of extreme pressure (seen nearly everywhere in Bangladesh) for expansion of cultivable land has made it possible for forest officials to prevent the forest from being converted into farm land.
The Sarsha Forest Reserve is currently the largest forest left. This forest has continued to play a role-though a rapidly diminishing one-as a food and medicine source for the Santals who live there...
We will describe below the significant shift from a mixed forest farm economy to a pure rice-farming production system, and implications of this shift for livelihoods as well as for culture, identity and overall well-being.
We have found evidence that during the last 20 to 25 years the biodiversity of this forest has been seriously reduced. Our Village Researchers' investigations into the current uses of the dwindling forest resources show that many species of trees, bushes, creepers, tubers, birds and carnivores have already disappeared completely. However, a sizeable number of highly prized and often very nutritious edibles are available, but very scarce. Even so, these food sources are, as we discussed in the previous chapter, of some importance for the survival of the poorer Santals. As we have shown, wild food plays an important role during the critical "hunger season", the slack season from October to December when many are unemployed, the paddy is still unripe In the field and most families have limited access to loans in kind and cash.
Before we discuss the recent transformations and current use of extremely scare forest resources let us remind ourselves about the history of Santals as forest dwellers and forest users.
Santals as indigenous forest dwellers
The Santals have an oral tradition. Thus we rely on various oral sources if we want to understand the importance of the forests for Santals from a prehistoric past. The stories about the Santals' seminomadic lifestyle in the forest represent one important source. These tales do not depict a fictional past, but bring historical evidence about the Santals' ancient existence in and close by the vast forests in the North Indian continent. The tales vividly describe the Santals' tendency to withdraw and migrate to new forest areas when they entered into too close, competitive contact with other peoples. These stories hint at a cohesiveness of larger bands of people, which might be defined primarily as clans, or perhaps as what we define as an ethnic group.
Another important body of evidence is the comprehensive and sophisticated medical knowledge of the Santals. Santal medicine has attracted considerable scientific interest from pioneers like Bodding (1925), but also from more recent scholars (Carrin-Bouez, 1990). Obviously the overwhelmingly reliance on forest flora and fauna for medical supplies and the large inventory of knowledge about medical properties, modes of processing and application demonstrate an accumulation of indigenous knowledge over a vast number of generations.
Another source of evidence of the Santals' coexistence with a forest environment is the Santals' song and dance tradition. The forest with all its life forms is a recurrent theme and the source of a wide range of metaphors.
The vast Sal-dominated forests have provided numerous generations with Santals with an abundance of wild foods and medical remedies that were available without large labour inputs. The vast, open forests also provided nutritious feed for the domesticated animals and secluded places for lovers. At the same time, the forests could not be experienced as an entirely hospitable domain.
The forests with the diverse wildlife implied numerous risks and challenges for those humans who dared to explore and harvest from their rich abundance. Experiences in the forests nurtured awe, fear and general fascination, experiences which were also sources of inspiration and motivation for collective cultural expressions in religious and social life.
The natural religious experience of this unpredictable and yet potentially extremely generous nature has found its expression in Santali notions of the forest as inhabited by volatile and demanding deities whom the hunters must please and propitiate during the annual hunting festival.
The Baha Festival
Having to live within and depend on the mighty forest habitat, it was natural for the Santals to consider the trees as the abodes of deities and spirits. These spirits needed reverence and propitiation. Any clearing of a new village in the pre-colonial and early colonial period took place in an ocean of forest. When the forests were cleared in the last century, the Santals always ensured that a few of the original and sacred trees of Sal and Mahua would form a sacred grove, Jaher. The gist of Santali cosmology -the organic interdependence between human fertility and prosperity and the awakening of nature every year in March - is revealed in the Baha Festival. Throughout this festival, the ancient coexistence with the living forest is enacted in myths and ritual. On the festival's first day sheaths of Sal branches and thatching grass are put up on the trees in the sacred grove, one for Maran Buru, one for Jaher Era and Moreko Turuiko (the five-six) and one for Gosde Era. The men go for the Baha Hunt enacting the ancient myth of the early Santals existence in the vast forest. The day ends in nightly devotional singing where some are possessed by the spirits. On the festival's second day the flowering forest is celebrated with flowers thrown into the aprons of women.
When the Sal trees are in leaf
on the mountain
How lovely they look
Wealth in the house
A door in the doorway
But without a child
There is no beauty
This song aptly expresses the festival's underlying concern; to propitiate the bongas so they may bless the humans in begetting offspring and thereby ensuring the prosperity of Santal society.
The ancestors of the Santals seem to have combined agriculture and animal herding (in open Sal forests) with foraging and hunting since they settled in the plateaus of Bihar and Orissa some thousand years back.
After several centuries of predominantly peaceful and non expansionist relations with other ethnic groups in Bengal, the Santals and their neighbouring tribes were exposed to the globalizing forces of a British mercantile company, the East India Company. The arrival of the British traders, who were followed first by colonial administrators from the British Crown and later by missionaries" resulted in land reforms and new revenue laws which led to the abolition of the tribal communal land ownership system and then a very rapid process of alienation of tribal land.
The escalating landlessness was the result of pervasive changes in land management systems, revenue laws, weakened community institutions and rapid immigration of foreign moneylenders, merchants and other land-hungry non-tribal settlers. Many of those who found themselves dispossessed and socially disoriented decided to seek their fortune elsewhere. Many adibasis left their ancestral homes in Bihar and Orissa in the hope of a better life away from intrusive foreigners. Ironically, many of those on the move found themselves having to labour under slave-like conditions at tea plantations in Darjeeling, Assam and Sylhet and at railway construction schemes. Other tribals settled on the still mostly forest-covered estates of Bengali zamindars and supplied most of the labour required for clearing agricultural land for monocrop production.
It would thus be a misconception to assume that pauperization is a novel phenomenon, only experienced by the current generation of Santals. The ancestors of the Santals now living in Bangladesh were subjected to a rapid, disruptive and ruthless merchant capitalism from the late 17th century onward. The dismantling of the tribal lifestyle and the extreme hardships they were subjected to gradually provoked violent resistance. While the first phase of tribal movements in and around the 1820s were both a reaction.
The absence of endemic or irregular warfare among the Mundari (Santal, Ho, Munda) does not imply that the relations within the Mundari tribes and between them and non-Mundari tribes in Chota Nagpur were non-hierarchical. There is some evidence that the Santals practised human sacrifice as part of their annual rainmaking sacrifice, and that the victim had to be a Kaharia boy (Carrin-Bouez, p. 36, 1990 op.cit.).
The first efforts to start evangelisation among the Santals by individual missionaries during the first decades of the nineteenth century did not result in the establishment of any mission stations in or around Rajmahal where many Santals lived. William Carey, who moved to the Norwegian-Danish colony Serampur (close to Calcutta), had met sporadically with Santals, but he did not succeed in motivating anyone to settle in their homelands (Nyhagen p. 49, 1990). The Freewill Baptist Mission Society (from the US) established a mission in Orissa in the 1830s. One of their early young missionaries, Jeremiah Phillips, developed the Santali alphabet (with Latin letters) and printed the first small treatise in Santali. Skrefsrud later modified and improved on the alphabet developed by Phillips much earlier (Nyhagen, op.cit.).
Against being absorbed into the caste system and a resistance against oppressive landlords, the second wave of rebellions, started by the Santal Rebellion (1855-1857) and followed later by the Kherwar Rebellion in the 1870s, expressed strong resentment against all oppressive non-tribals (dikiis), both British and local.
With their age-old experience of settling in jungle environments, no other people could contest skills of the Santals - and other adibasis as clearers of jungle for agricultural purposes. The colonial authorities recognized this and used it ruthlessly in their large-scale commercial expansionism: cutting timber for construction of railways and deforestation for conversion of forests into agricultural land.
The Santals' settlement pattern currently in north- western Bangladesh shows in many places a concentration long the railway lines which their ancestors once built. Many Santals own high land with a predominantly red soil, considered less fertile and productive by the rice-cultivating Bengalis. When the Santals settled here, this high land was forest covered. The rapid deforestation changed the humidity of the soil and the light conditions. The jungle residues, a highly valued organic manure, disappeared. All these conditions affect negatively the microecology and fertility of the high land.
This settlement patterns might be explained by two distinct and not necessarily contradictory explanations: preference and late arrival. Which of these two are most important requires further investigation. The preference hypothesis asserts that the Santals would prefer land with soil qualities and at elevations suitable, to the land-use practices they had developed earlier. In Bihar and Santal Parganas, Santals' previous land-use practices were based on the combination of three land-use categories: homestead field (barge), highland field (goda), and rice field (keth). While the lowland was mostly kept for rice, the home field was kept for different varieties of maize and intercropped with hemp, while the highest land was allotted for indigenous varieties of sorghum, which might be one of the most ancient cereals cultivated by the Santals, and locally cultivated and wild varieties of millet. The cereals on the home plots and highland fields were the staple grains in the long months when the rice stores were empty, from March/April to September.
The late arrival hypothesis emphasizes that the settlement pattern reflects the late arrival of Santal settlers. They had therefore to accept less attractive land not already occupied by the earlier settlers.
A Case study of Santal Forest User Rights in Nawabganj Thana
During our early research work in Nawabganj Thana we came to recognize that the thana is one of relatively few in Greater Rajshahi Division where the Santals, even while facing strong pressure, still maintain primary user rights to a relatively large mixed-Sal (Sohrea Robusta) forest.
The current situation in this thana shows, with certain modifications, the state of user pressure and environmental degradation experienced by Santals and other adibasis 20-30 years earlier in many of our other research sites. Our early research in 13 hamlets in Nawabganj focused on livelihoods, food sources and seasonality, land ownership and land loss, skills documentation and current availability of tradition bearers (through cultural resource mapping). Through our early analysis, of the information we had collected on these topics, we gradually came to recognize the importance of the forest for the health, nutrition, cultural identity and well-being of the Santal population. We decided then to give top priority in the last phase of our research documentation to an in-depth case study of Santal forest user rights.
Our team's' methods of investigation included key informant interviews with different stakeholders (Santal villagers, Bengali villagers, Forest Guards/Bit Officers), focus group discussions with primary users and lastly participant observation of users at work in the forest. Our in-depth case-study documentation work was carried out in April and May 1998.
The Sarsa Reserve Forest which we selected for this in-depth investigation consists of 1284.14 acres (519 ha). It forms a continuous forest cover with a smaller Vested Forest of 170.75 acres (69 ha). The forest is located west of the Birampur-Phulbari railway, north of the Birampur-Nawabganj link road, and west of the south-north Nawabganj-Kushdaha feeder road. The northern side of the forest is embraced by the curved shoreline of the Asura Lake.
This lake used to provide rich fishing grounds both for Hindu fishermen (who earlier lived lakeside) and for the resident population. The free access to the lake has recently been stopped, since one national NGO has taken the lake on lease for commercial fishery development. The Sarsa Forest with its beautiful lakeshore is surrounded by human settlements in all directions.
The PRS-team consisted of Logen Kisku (PRS local counterpart), Seberius Mardi (PRS supervisor), Noren Hembrom (village researcher) and James Mondol Murmu, villager and local resource person.
Our team identified (through focus-group discussions) 51 settlements having some residents who irregularly or regularly use resources from this forest. In all these 51 hamlets we can thus find either some secondary or primary users. Our team has estimated, based on interviews and focus-group discussions, that there are 685 Santal households (defined as cooking units) in this locality, 64 Hindu households and 834 Bengali Muslim households.
Our team selected 5 of these hamlets for their in-depth study. Four of them (paras) comprises Golabari Gram. 2 hamlets have purely Santal residents (29 and 21 households respectively), another hamlet (of 23 households) is inhabited by 11 indus only. In the forth hamlet reside 40 Muslim households. Another purely Santal settlement (para) with 23 households was also included by our team to see whether the Santal populations' use of the forest varied. All the selected hamlets lie within a short walking distance of the forest.
The main portion of the forest is defined as Reserve Forest (1284.14 acres). The much smaller part is classified as Vested Forest. Both categories of forest have been managed by the Forest Department (FD) since the end of the colonial period. Some of the Vested Forest is currently owned by the descendants of an earlier large-scale Zamindar and by some resident Santals. The FD - based on the Abolition Act of Zamindars - is managing the forest for a 99-year term. Some of the private owners are involved in a current plantation effort. The owners cannot cut trees in this part of the forest without the permission of the FD. Punishment for breaking the management rules in the Vested Forest is less strict than similar violations of rules in the Reserved Forest. We learnt during our investigations that some other Santals who used to live on cultivated parts of the area now classified as Vested Forests were not able to get their user rights recognized legally in the early 1950s. They seem not to have been aware of the legal provision that settlers who have lived 60 years or more on earlier forest land can claim legal ownership rights.
The Sarsa Reserve Forest is still dominated by Sal trees. There are alse trees and bushes such as
Sirish, Turu, Tindu, Jam, Nim, Ghora Nim, Simul, Indrojol and Kodom. The Vested Forest has been replanted with a number of new species; Eucalyptus, Akasamuni, Minjuri, Segun, Mahogany, Shisu, Belgium, Ipil and Raintree under the national agro-forestry programme.
We have not been able to get assistance from any ethno-botanist or from a botanical lexicon for an identification of the Latin botanical names of all the locally named species. This work deserves the attention of ethno-botanists.
Population movements
Old Santals of this local area told us that the vicinity was first inhabited by Santals, who had settled here at latest during the later part of the 19th century. These statements are not challenged by the local Bengali population. In the 19th century, large tracts of the land now located within the Nawabganj thana was continuous Sal forests mostly owned by Zamindars who lived elsewhere and who extended sub-tenure to tribals who would clear some of dense jungle. We have learnt from our elder informants that there were only sparse clusters of Santal settlements along Asura Lake as late as early in the 20th century.
As the Nawabganj-Ghoraghat area was the home for a fairly strong concentration of adibasi dwellers, the locality became more slowly afforested than most other tracts in this part of East Bengal. Thus as having lots of "virgin" land at very cheap rates - the area has attracted a rather continuous stream of immigrants until current times. After Partition in 1947, a considerable number of Bengali Muslims from West Bengal and Bihar settled here and purchased land. The stream of Biharis and West Bengalis has continued, but more irregularly and at a more moderate pace. Since the rise in communal tensions and violence in India between Muslims and Hindus in the last decade, many orthodox Muslim immigrant families have moved in. Since this locality is not far from the severely flood-prone areas in Gaibandha and Rangpur Zilas, many flood-affected families have arrived in search of land and labour and have settled.
The increasing population pressure, exacerbated by rapid immigration and a generally high fertility level among the Muslim settlers, has been accompanied by a rather fierce competition for cheap land. Our investigations in the area have revealed that many Santals have lost or sold their lands and moved elsewere. Our team found that during the last decade about 190 families have moved out from the rim settlements around the forest (Sarsa, Kantao, Tuskuta, Mondopcand, Horipur, Buri Mondop, Lokhipur and Patnicand). We could not systematically investigate the reasons why these families left.
From focus-group discussions with the remaining villagers indicate that false accusations, land cheating, exorbitant interest claimed by money lenders, and overall deteriorating living conditions have led many Santal families to leave the area for India or other destinations within Bangladesh. We must remark that Riany have interpreted their "bad luck" of losing land and "the unhappy" situation involving social conflicts and widespread sickness as caused by angered deities and ancestors. In Adi Santal families, diviners are consulted to find the reasons for the calamities which have come upon them. If harmony with the supernatural world cannot be restored, people feel compelled to vacate their homes and properties. The departures of some families have often had a "domino effect" in the communities. Those who are left behind become fewer and feel greater vulnerability to pressure. Then new families decide to move out, often anticipating actual troubles. Others have stayed behind, trying to provide each other with some social and economic security, however fragile it may be.
Our land record shows the property situation of those Santals who are still residents. The majority of the 68 households we surveyed have lost land one or more times in the last 25 years for reasons such as indebtedness by mortgage, forgery, harassment, and forceful possession by Bengali residents."
Santals' customary forest user rights
By user rights we mean that people in a locality and/or the forest authorities acknowledge that all or some people in a locality have rights of use and of access. We have investigated what the basis is for such rights; whether it is proximity to forest, occupation, knowledge defined by ethnic affiliation or otherwise, actual use or any other locally acknowledged criteria.
Our team has found that the Santals until currently have maintained the following customary uses of the forest:
- Collection of firewood (dried branches) for own consumption
- Collection of fresh flowers for religious festivals
Our data on the status of landed property in these 68 households located in different hamlets seems to contradict our bleakly painted picture: 7 own no land; 8 own 0.1-0.5 acres, 9 own 0.51-1.0 acres, 10 own 1.1-2.0 acres,18 own 2.1-4.0 acres, 12 own 4.1-8.0 acres and lastly 4 own 8.1 or more acres.
Our investigations show that the majority of these households too have lost substantial amounts of land. In other words: the Santals of this locality have earlier on average been medium and wealthy farmers well above the national average. Currently they are close to the national average, and better off than most Santals elsewhere.
It should also be noted that many of the poorest and most vulnerable households have already felt
compelled to migrate to other areas.
The forest is used for:
Collection of edible roots and tuber
Collection of edible mushrooms
Gathering of honey
Collection of edible creepers
Gathering of fruits and berries
Collection of medicinal herbs by traditional Santal healers
Fishing in marshes inside and on the outskirts of the forest and in the lake
Grazing
We shall return in the next section to our specific findings on trends in free access, restricted access and no access.
The Bengali, whether relative newcomers or long-time residents, recognize the adibasis' uses of the jungle both currently and in the past. The Santals' affiliation with the jungle is considered by many local Bengalis as a proof of primitiveness.
Impoverished Bengali women, men and children, many of them functionally landless, have in the last decade started to search the forest floor in Sarsa Reserve Forest for dried branches and leaf residues. The residues are sold in the local markets at fairly high rates. The Santals in the locality used to collect some dry wood to supplement their own fuel wood needs, while the leaf residues were left fallow to ensure shelter and manure for creepers, herbs and fungi. Santal villagers state that the massive collection of most of the organic residue has reduced the soil cover (with the result that the fungi have disappeared) and the soil quality.
Some impoverished Santals who used to collect dry wood for their own consumption have also started, like the Bengalis, to collect for sale. Currently impoverished Bengalis and Santals compete for dry wood and other residue. The Santals have no legal or other effective sanctions to limit or prevent these new forest users.
According to the staff of the Forest Department (FD), local people sold in 1997 residues worth approximately 300.000 Tk. The incomes gained, the benefit derived form this income, and the degree of conflict and competition between the users deserve further investigation.
The poorest Bengalis have recently started to compete with the Santals and other adibasis as users of organic residue. Otherwise the Santals and the other adibasis remain the primary users of most other forest products. Our key informant interviews and focus groups with primary users revealed that these valued products, have become very scarce over the last decade.
The main reasons for this acute scarcity are:
• The felling of other nearby forests in the last 25 years, with the result that the number of regular primary users of Sarsa Reserve Forest has rapidly increased. This has the outcome of rapid decrease in wild food supply per consumption unit.
• Illegal timber felling by locals for their own consumption and for commercial use. The third-tier canopy has been seriously thinned out, affecting the undergrowth.
• The sivilcultural techniques used by the forest guards destroy the varied second-and first-tier canopy.
• The massive collection of organic residues negatively affects the micro-nutritional condition of the diverse undergrowth of bushes, creepers, trees and fungi.
• Unsustainable collection of herbs by mostly Santali traditional healers (kobiraji and ojhas) because of both general decline in availability (due to the above mentioned reasons) and the collectors' short-term income needs.
Trends in forest user rights
The size of the forest reserve has not decreased since the late British period. However, as described above we have found evidence of a severe degradation of biodiversity, due to the above mentioned reasons.
According to local Santals the thinning, pruning, cutting and replanting activities of the forest officials adversely affect the reproduction of many species of creepers, tubers, trees, bushes and fungi. Considerable illegal logging has occurred over a long time, which destroys the third-level canopy and causes species disappearance and degradation. Many species have become extinct, mainly due to these two reasons, and the users fear that many other species will disappear in the near future.
The livelihood crisis makes the supplement of wild jungle foods important still for the bare survival of many in the most critical hunger months every year.
The illegal logging can mainly be observed by the decreasing tree density. The loggers - often helped by forest guards whom they bribe - immediately dig up the roots and level the ground very neatly. The unfamiliar eye will not even notice the following day that a tree has been cut and uprooted.
Based on three separate focus-group discussions with Santal female and male forest users and follow-up interviews with key we have collected information on trends in changing user rights:
Changes in types of user rights of Santals in Sarsa forest
| FOREST PRODUCTS | | 1988 | 1998 |
| Firewood | RA | RA | RA |
| Wood for cremation | RA | RA | RA |
| Bush branches for religious festivals | RA | RA | RA |
| Timber for construction | NA | NA | NA |
| M-And stones for construction | RA | NA | NA |
| cows, goats etc. | RA | NA | NA |
| cal herbs | RA | NA | NA |
| Edibles creepers | RA | NA | NA |
| Edibles tubers/roots | RA | NA | NA |
| Edibles mushrooms | RA | NA | NA |
| Edible fruits and berries | RA | NA | NA |
| Leaves for matmaking | RA | NA | NA |
| Wood for basket making | RA | NA | NA |
| Wood for agricultural elements | RA | NA | NA |
| leaves and needles | RA | NA | NA |
| Flowers | RA | NA | NA |
| Shikar game | RA | NA | NA |
| Other game | RA | NA | NA |
| Birds | RA | NA | NA |
| Others | | | - |
RA - Restricted access
NA - No access
The Table shows that the forest users until the present Period had formally restricted access to all resources, the exception being timber, where there was no access. As far as we can judge our information the Santals maintained restricted access to all these products, with the exception of edible tubers., creepers and mushrooms where they practiced free access. By the late 1980s the degradation and pressure on the forest was, so serious that the authorities revised the regulations, with the consequence that users were not allowed any access, except for restricted access to Dry Firewood, Wood for Cremation and Fresh Branches for Religious Festivals. Still Santal forest users practiced free access to like tubers, creepers and mushrooms, but the availability had steady declined due to the above mentioned reasons. -The regulations have not been changed in the last decade. Even so the Santals have continued to harvest their most cherished edibles whose availability has declined steadily in the last decade.
Our investigations into trends in availability of forest edibles show that the Post-Independence Period marks a significant change from a situation of moderate and stable availability of the forest products to one of rapid decline during the last decade (1988-1998). The users report a very rapid decrease in availability of virtually all traditionally used resources. We have already discussed the primary and secondary reasons for this dramatic decline.
The dramatic changes in the forest habitat during the life time of the current adult generation of Santals was poetically conveyed to us by one local leader who accompanied our team to the forest:
Santals' current uses of forest edibles
Santals, have from ancient times maintained a very varied, vegetable- and animal-based diet, based on gathering and hunting from forests as well as from marshes, rivers and flooded lands. Flowers, fruits, leafy vegetables, roots, fungi and honey were collected from the forest. Fish and shellfish were caught with indigenous nets and traps' and reptiles and game were hunted with bow and arrow. In Santal Parganas and other areas of Bihar as late as 40-50 years back, forest food was still available in such abundance that it was not only used as supplementary food (as curries and condiments) with rice. The many varieties of wild potatoes also substituted rice in situations of severe crop failure.
In the 1990s the variety of forest foods available to the Santals is limited. Wild honey and edible flowers are no longer available. Fungi have, as already remarked, become a rarity due to the forest degradation. Game is everywhere becoming rare. The main food source available is a couple of varieties of wild potatoes: San, Damru, Arha, Bayang and Kolo. These tubers grow during the rainy season, nurtured by the massive leafy creepers which wind themselves around stems, branches and fences. A solid yield of large tubers of various shapes with wooden looking, sometimes hairy skins can be dug up from a small area. Villagers tell us that currently it takes a couple of hours to search and dig up 2-5 kilos. Before Independence as much as 20-40 kilos (1/2- 1 mound) could be collected with the same time input.
Villagers who partook in our group discussions and interviews related that currently a household will at the most be able to collect 2-5 kilos of wild tubers/potatoes 2-3 times during one season. At the most these tubers provide for curries once or twice weekly during the hunger season from September to December.
Damru is processed by peeling off the skin. Then the tuber is cut into pieces and half-boiled. It is then soaked before final boiling and eaten with molasses and salt. The tuber is considered to have both preventive and curative medicinal properties. It is said to increase blood, ease digestion, and prevent night blindness and gonorrhea. Kolo requires a similar lengthy process of half-boiling and water soaking (for 2-3 days) to extract the intoxicating substances which are used for beer brewing and other purely medicinal substances. Finally it is boiled a last time. Arha demands little time of processing: it is boiled like potatoes or cut and boiled into a curry with oil and spices. Arha is valued for its digestive properties. 48 Besides wild san (Phaselous mungo/radiatus), the Santals have cultivated several varieties of san. Both female and male plants are considered tasty. Kolo is a variety of Dioscorea hispida/Denns. It is one of the ingredients needed for beer brewing.
For a valuable documentation of Santali wild and domesticated edibles and food preparation methods, consult Bodding's article. How the Santals Live, Mem. Royal Asiatic Society, Bengal Vol. 10, No. 3, 1925.
Many from the younger generation now growing up have only irregularly tasted some of these wild potatoes and tubers, other wild edibles disappeared before the current young generation was borne. The youth have only heard from their elders about all the cherished edibles from the wild that can no longer be consumed. We are concerned that the disappearance of wild foods, and the scarcity of those kinds which are still growing in the wild, must affect the youngsters' food preferences drastically. It is our impression, based on discussions both with our young village researchers and other young Santals, that they still cherish the tastes of the dishes prepared from these wild tubers. Many youth are however ignorant about the nutritional and medicinal value of their disappearing wild edibles.
The sale of various snack dishes during our Mela at the Santal Education Center in February 1998 was also an experiment from our side in testing out food preferences. It turned out that the: Santali Food Stall became a very well visited stall. People of all ages gathered, examining the poster drawings (made by researchers) of the wild tubers, discussing dish preparations and buying the snacks. The enthusiastic response to this food' indicates to us that surprisingly many Santals still value their traditional wild potatoes and tubers.
Why do people not experiment with cultivation of earlier wild food?
In view of the Santals' dietary appreciation of their wild forest, foods and declining food security, we would expect that faced with this disappearance and recurrent food shortages, many would experimenting with cultivation of some of these wild potatos in their private lands, such as homestead plots, pond banks, patches of waste land and under fruit trees in the hamlets.
We have found that only very limited attempts have been made. This finding requires an explanation.
We know from a neighbouring country like Nepal that fews have responded by planting timber and fodder trees on their private lands as a response to the declining availability of timber and fodder caused by deforestation. Even in Bangladesh, some social forestry efforts have been relatively successful owing not only to financial incentives for plantation and maintenance, but also to small and marginal farmers' genuine interest in the growth of mixed plantations for meeting their fruit/timber/fuel wood needs. Then why do not Santals respond by trying their own agricultural/agro-forestry innovations ?
In spite of the acute food crisis experienced by the current generation, it seems to us that thousands of years of experience of abundance of wild growing food sources have instilled a deeply held implicit notion of natures' abundance.
It seems that this implicit notion exerts an influence on and prevents motivation for substituting foraging with cultivation of some of the same species. The lack of motivation stiffens any real word practical assessment of how one should possibly start cultivating these wild-growing edibles.
We know that as long as the jungle was intact, huge amounts of wild tubers, fruits, creepers, fungi and game used to be harvested and hunted with intensive but brief labour inputs. Cultivation of, for example, wild potatoes requires the collection of seeds/seed potatoes and storage of the seed potatoes: Moreover, one has to allot some square meters of a suitable plot, to provide some shade (from tree cover or from a bamboo roof) and to time the planting of seeds right after onset of the monsoon. When the seeds are first planted, they will grow, granted the provision of rain, some shade and some support structure for the fast-growing creepers.
Our informants have not expressed any magico-religious belief which demotivates them from growing these crops. Our many discussions with people about the possibilities for growing wild potatoes have to some degree supported our cognitive explanation: the Santals' deep rooted concept of natural abundance. Many point to the wealth they could easily harvest, lament current scarcity, but without expressing any practical schema for how to substitute their wild food sources. Again we are struck by the underlying concept of time: intense but brief labour should instantly produce yield. Most cultivation demands a continuous time-horizon of 4-6 months; and compels the cultivator to provide attention and labour at particular points.
Our cognitive explanation is however in no way a sufficient explanation for the Santals' inertia. Our investigations have brought up another set of more practical and obvious demotivating conditions. It takes between 5-10 years for most multipurpose trees to grow big. Control over the plot must be secure before farmers take the risk of allotting the plot for tree plantation. The plot should also have a location allowing fencing to protect the saplings and young trees from free-grazing animals and human encroachers. Fencing is also essential for protecting root crops from free-grazing pigs who like such tubers. Finally, the cultivators who are frequently in desperate need of cash must resist the temptation to cut the trees prematurely for selling the timber. We know that many Santals' risk perceptions are influenced by these conditions. As we documented in Chapter 3 many live temporarily on homestead plots owned by other individuals or the government (khas). They fear for obvious reasons eviction on short notice.
Currently even the Sacred Groves (Sarna Dhorom) in many Adi Santal villages are without the line of Sal and Mahua trees which should be there in dedication of the major deities (the great Mountain and the Lady of the Grove). In many villages such sacred trees have been felled after considerable heated discussion.
Having focused on our most salient finding - the inertia of most Santals towards innovation of their agricultural practices in an afforested environment - we must also stress that we have found some farming households who cultivate San and Damru. It remains to be further investigated why these farming households cultivate San. If Bodding's documentation (op.cit.) of Santali cultivation practices in the early 20th century is correct, cultivation of San is not at all new. The question remains, why are some doing this with good yields, while most refrain for cultivating San ? San has a high market value since Bengalis also find it attractive for curries. We advise that farmers who already cultivate San should be encouraged to become lead-farmers in experimenting with Santal agro-forestry.
Do the Santals have practices for forest protection?
At first glance the current situation seems to imply that the Santal and Bengali forest users cause a degradation in line with the biologist Hardin's (1968) well-known theory of "the tragedy of the commons". This theory asserts that in the absence of local sanctions, use invariably leads to over-use and therefore to degradation.
While the degradation of Sarsa Reserve Forest is an indisputable fact, our finding that the formal managers of the forest as much as the users have to be blamed for the degradation and that a system of sanctions is to some degree practiced, does not fit the thesis of everybody exploiting an "open access" situation.
First of all, it must be remembered that the Santals' customary user rights are not taken into account at all in the formal, externally imposed management system of the Forest Department.
Santal villagers' presence and their mostly restricted use of the forest is sometimes tolerated, sometimes not by the guards. Whether the Santals' limited use of certain resources on which there is no access is tolerated or not, depends on the vagaries of the Bengali Forest Guards and the Bit Officers.
It seems that most Santali users share an understanding of management through their methods of pruning and cutting minor branches, collecting herbs, restricting animal gazing and avoidance of cutting major fresh wood. However, the FD officials do not understand the value these original forest dwellers attach to creepers, tubers, bushes, trees, grass and fungi, the resources generally lumped together in forestry jargon as "minor forest products", The forestry staff are not aware that the techniques they apply in their pruning, singling, thinning and planting operations exacerbate the degradation, as seen from the point of view of Santals as indigenous forest dwellers and users.
The forest guards have reported to us that the Santals show greater compliance with forest regulations than the Bengalis. The Santals' greater compliance might partly be caused by their fear of the repercussions of violating the forest regulations. Violation of the rules involve a minimum of five years in prison, with or without fines of between 10,000 and 50,000 TK. As a minority, they cannot escape prosecution and choose to comply with public laws and regulations. There might be other equally important explanations for the compliance. One reason would be that they still maintain a collective interest in the sustainable management of the forest, due to their historical dependence on the forest, including their longstanding use of forest edibles.
Relations between forestry officials and users
The management regulations of Sarsa Reserve Forest state that it is illegal to cut fresh branches and trees for own use or sale. There is free access for collecting dead residues. Collection of wild food such as tubers and creepers, berries and honey is forbidden by the management regulations, but the guards usually chose to allow collection.
We have learnt from various local informants about various kinds of gross malpractices, many outrightly illegal, by the forest guards. Guards accept bribes from users, admitting them to take products on which there is no access or restricted access. As far as we have been able to verify, mostly Bengalis voluntarily pay bribes. We have been told several stories about various kinds of harassment, mostly practiced against adibasi forest users. In certain instances users are pressured to pay money to be allowed to collect resources which actually they legally have the right to collect. Also there are instances where users have been physically harassed during legal collection. We have learnt about two recent instances of rape against Santal female forest users.
In certain instances Santal users are also pressured to provide free work like guarding in return for being allowed to continue uninterrupted as regular forest users. As for example one Santal whom our team met currently guards the forest office premises without wages. The only remuneration is being allowed to continue to use the forest, and a little extra in the form of the rejected roots from trees illegally cut with the silent approval from the guards who accept bribes.
The forest officials discussed with our research team the problems of maintaining the management rules and regulations in the forest reserve. They admitted they face serious problems in maintaining the current regulations. The illegal felling of trees and cutting of fresh wood were cited as major problems. Notably, they reported that all detected offenders of the regulations, with one exception over the last two years, were Bengalis. Santals and other adibasi in the area were considered law-abiding.
It is noteworthy that all the local forest officials are Bengalis. Actually there has never been any Santal in any paid position in the FD in this locality.
The failed agro‑forestry programme
The FD has leased out one-acre plots (in the Vested Forest only) to local shareholders, who have been planting fast-growing tree species like Eucalyptus, Akasmuni, Minjuri, Segun, Mahogany, Shisu, Ipil and Raintree against remuneration. The shareholder is free to cultivate crops between the columns of trees. All shareholders can freely keep pruned cut and other residue. They are entitled to share the profit of the timber 50-50 with the FD after a 10-year term.
Our research team found that in most instances the shareholders did not manage to grow much in the plantation. The users claimed that the reason is lack of space and too much shade from the trees. Also many complained that they had not received their promised 50 per cent share after the term was over and the trees were cut. Very few Sandals are involved in the agro-forestry programme. The forest officers have formed mouza wise user committees for the Vested Forest. We found that very few Santals are represented in the user committees in the area which, by the way, are mostly nonfunctioning.
Santals lived in a situation of seemingly unlimited abundance for several centuries. The Santals in Bangladesh could not respond to the rapidly diminishing forest resource base by developing strong management institutions. This weak institutional response is not basically due to cultural factors, such as not being able to realize and respond to a rapid transition from abundance to scarcity. It is rather due to the adibasis' political and institutional marginality in relation to formal forest management institutions. Their marginality in relation to policies yet centrality as cheap labourers in implementing a massive deforestation policy is evident in deforestation policy pursued by the British colonialists, who used adibasis as their front-line clearers of vast forests. The political and institutional marginality of the adibasis has continued since the end of the colonial period through a forest policy based on a coalition between the national governments and local Bengali elites, neither of whom have recognized any political, cultural or environmental arguments for limiting the clearing of the last forests.
The growing global consensus on Sustainable Forest Management
There has in the last 15 years been increasing global concern over deforestation and increasing support for community-based and joint forest management. At the Earth Summit in Rio in 1992, the Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD) was created to implement Agenda 21, including the Forest Principles in Chapter 11, endorsing the role of local communities and indigenous peoples as important stakeholders.
The CSD was mandated to monitor the implementation of the Summit's commitments. In the CSD's third session in 1995 it was decided to form an Intergovernmental Panel on Forestry (IPF) to address and seek global consensus for action supportive of participatory and sustainable forest management. The panel submitted its final report in 1997.
Earlier, in 1993 the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) became an effective legal treaty, which also endorses the rights of indigenous peoples in conservation, benefit-sharing and collaborative management.
Recent experiences in India and Nepal
As late as the 1970 and the 1980s, Indian state forest departments were mostly concerned with large-scale plantation-oriented social forestry projects. The long-standing yet growing community action to protect the dwindling forests was largely ignored or resisted by the state. The exception to this general picture was West Bengal where some foresters, backed by the government's populist policies, supported the formation of local Forest Protection Committees. In Orissa and Bihar, thousands of villages, mostly with considerable tribal populations, started protecting their degenerated Sal forests and waste lands on their own initiative and armed only with bows and arrows.
As local community action increased, the state governments realized the necessity to recognize these efforts. In 1988 and 1989 Orissa and West Bengal passed resolutions that recognized community participation. Then in 1990 the central government passed guidelines acknowledging the rights to the products of local communities who protect public forest lands. And by 1994 another 16 states had passed similar orders.
While the process of formalizing joint collaborative management has been troubled by conflict and mutual distrust between state forest departments and villagers, many forest dependant communities, environmentalists and state officials acknowledge now that there is considerable progress under way in combining conservation with more sustainable uses.
There is in India a correspondence between the areas of concentration of tribal and adibasi forest dependant populations and high incidence of poverty. Among the major 3 forest zones, the Himalayas, the Western Ghats and the central tribal belt, it is the latter which is the homeland for most of the Santals.
There the gains as well as the obstacles of community management could be of direct relevance for our efforts to stake out a course for involving Santals and other adibasis in management for regeneration of forests and also for an appropriate agro‑forestry approach.
In the central belt of sal, teak and acacia forests stretching form Bengal to Gujarat, community-led protection schemes have often been organized around one or a small number of hamlets.
With reestablished local control, the dominant Sal forest ecosystems of the forest eastern part of the belt have in many cases made a surprisingly rapid recovery. In 5-10 years low bush forests and scrubs have
grown into a multi-tiered 7 to 8 meter high closed-canopy Orissa and West secondary forest. For example, research has documented that in one Bengal area in Southern West Bengal, biodiversity has more than doubled after 5 years. Santals in the area used close to 90 per cent of the species for commercial and domestic purposes. In many areas of Orissa, Bihar, West Bengal and Santal Parganas, some villages have successfully started to strengthen or to regain control and restrict ed entry. And as their forests have shown signs of regeneration, neighbouring villages have been encouraged to claim control.
The active support of local forest department staff has helped in legitimizing the protection efforts both to other government officials and to groups in the communities who resisted the new regime.
In Bihar the Forest Department's social forestry programme in the 1980s (funded by Swedish SIDA) did not successfully interact with the increasing community initiatives. This failure was partly due to top-down bureaucratic routines for technical and financial assistance (Poffenberger and McGean p. 32, op cit.). The community-based management efforts also met opposition from timber merchants who collaborated with corrupt forest officials. In other villages, the dire struggle for survival created internal conflicts between those who desperately needed immediate access to forest products and those who supported severely restricted access to ensure regeneration and longer term profit.
In Orissa deforestation has had a negative impact on livelihoods. The 1993 drought and famine that affected perhaps as many as ten million people was partly caused by the a declining water table and also the drastic decline in minor forest products due to both commercial logging and small-scale overuse of fuel wood and grazing areas. Predominantly or fully tribal communities have throughout the late 1970s, the 1980s and 1990s increasingly become involved in community-based management. By late 1993 about 27 per cent of all state forests were under some form of local management (Poffenberger and McGean, p. 35, op-cit.).
It has become almost a truism that the state of the forests in the Himalayan mountains directly affects the flood situation, and thereby the well-being, of many hundreds of millions of people living on the Gangetic plains of northern India and Bangladesh. It is true that the forest cover has been drastically reduced in large areas of both the Indian and Nepali Himalayas. However, the simple and often taken for granted connection between the deforestation, with its accompanying drain of organic and mineral deposits and the siltation problems way down in the plains, have come into serious dispute (Ives and Messerli, 1989). Grass-roots based resistance against state-approved logging in the hills of Uttar Pradesh (Garhwal) in the 1970s and 1980s is well known. The state of UP has however been reluctant and slow in changing to a more community-friendly policy.
The government of Nepal has reformed the management regime much more rapidly and wholeheartedly from a state-controlled one to community forestry, which in its more than ten years of existence has showed rather remarkable ability to learn from earlier failures. The current management policies recognize the diversity of user interests, and thus the potential for conflict, show more willingness to transfer authority to both users and local officials to effectively sanction violations of regulations, and to accept the right of user groups to spend for community development the funds saved by the commercial sale of forest products.
Of interest for our recommendations for policy, planning and implementation is recent recognition of: the need to acknowledge the ethnic/caste-based differences in dependency; differential knowledge about and uses of forest products; the roles of women as the main collectors, users and processors of forest resources; the need for flexibility in defining the boundaries between user groups (not necessarily following administrative boundaries); and lastly the need for experimenting with means of conflict resolution. Nepal's Community Forestry Programme has shown that it is possible to manage the forest commons. However, the programme has effectively challenged any naive and romantic view of local knowledge and management institutions as necessarily having the mechanisms and scale for managing the forest in a sustainable way.
Bangladeshi forest policies and programmes
A rubber plantation project started on an experimental basis in Chittagong Hill Tracts in 1959, and on a commercial basis in 1969. A second major rubber plantation project started in 1987 in Madhupur forest. As global concerns about deforestation grew in the early 1980s, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) funded a Community Forestry Project grounded in the early social forestry concept. This project ran from 1981 to 1989. A follow-up project, the Thana Afforestation and Nursery Project (TANDP), was carried out up to 1996. The project had one component on commercial fuelwood plantation (woodlot) and another on agroforestry plantation. Both components were carried out in Dinajpur and Rajshahi, and also affected the adibasi forest users, including the Santals. As a late response to the Tropical Forest Action Plan (TFAP), a process which aimed at facilitating national plans for sustainable forest utilization was initiated by FAO, the World Bank, UNDP and WRI. The Ministry of Environment and Forests published the Forestry Master Plan in 1993. This plan was to be carried out over a 20-year period, to help protect and restore old forest as well as develop forest resources for consumption and commercial uses.
Echoing the growing global consensus on community participation, including the unique role of forest communities, the following statement is made in the plan: "Preserving the remaining strands, creating new forest reserves on degraded and encroached lands and protecting the forest communities require serious
consideration... .
Bangladesh was an early signatory to the Convention on Biological Diversity and thereby committed itself to promote biodiversity in its afforestation programmes, and to recognize the knowledge and management practices of indigenous groups. The Convention states:
"Practices and innovations developed by indigenous peoples, which contribute to the sustainable use of biological resources and conservation for bio-diversity should be recognized, and rewarded; the state should control or eradicate "alien " species and states should adopt measures for the recovery and rehabilitation of the endangered species and their reintroduction into their natural habitats. "
The Forestry Master Plan highlights the very low ratio of forest cover in the country and the high deforestation rate, arguing that the main cause currently for deforestation is land clearances, principally by shifting cultivation. We question the empirical basis for blaming shifting cultivation which is to put the blame on the tribals of Chittagong Hill Tracts and Madhupur Forests. Of the 3 major investment programmes proposed in the plan - forest production and management, wood-based industries and participatory forestry - the latter aims at making management practices more people-oriented. Involvement of the landless, women and tribals is given high priority". The Master Plan argues more strongly the importance of involving women rather than tribals. In the few places in the Master Plan where tribals are explicitly mentioned, the references are made to tribals of the northeast and the central belt. Even so, the Participatory Forestry Programme, currently running in its first 5-year phase (1993‑1998), opens up some very interesting opportunities for collaborative management initiatives by and for adibasis of the northwest.
5 of the 7 programmes of the running 5-year Action Plan environmental management, participatory forest, non-wood forest products, wood energy conservation and bamboo conservation - are of direct relevance to adibasis, including Santals. Environmental management strategies emphasize improving forest management, and see this as a means of implementing the Convention on Biodiversity. Improved management is also aimed at developing silvicultural systems and practices which eliminate destructive impacts from harvesting and planning activities". The strategy especially mentions the development of programmes which support or positively impact upon special groups - the poor, women and tribals. Similarly, the Participatory Forestry Programme is to be implemented through field programmes in agro-forestry, woodlots, strip plantations, homesteads and field planting. The strategy puts weight on the importance of designing programmes for disadvantaged groups and NGOs". These strategies provide - as we see them -considerable leverage for initiatives that give a particular role to indigenous forest dwellers and forest users in conservation and development.
The execution of forest and agro-forest policies in Bangladesh
The implementation of both commercial forestry and the community forestry in Bangladesh has hardly aroused much, interest among researchers, be they foresters or social scientists There is hardly any published literature on Bangladesh from last two decades, while there is a large volume of studies on ft forestry sector from neighbouring India and Nepal. There seem also to have been relatively few appraisals, reviews or evaluations of the above-mentioned conservation strategy, of production forestry or of social forestry and afforestation projects.
The secondary material we have found is limited. Some of it, the Society for Environment and Human
Development's (SEHP),two recent bookletS57, contains some quite valuable documentation.
Garos on the violation of minority rights and forest degradation Madhupur Forests and in Chittagong Hill
Tracts, but very little bout the situation in the Barind Tract and elsewhere in Rajshahi Division.
These documents have primarily been aimed at national advocacy, and they have quite effectively caught the attention of the international agencies involved in the forestry sector. SEHD's first report documents the situation in Madhupur Forest where the government cut down Sal to plant rubber trees. Local people including the adibasis (Mandis or Garos), were employed as paid workers. The forest land converted into rubber plantations had mostly previously been utilized by Mandis. - The Asian Development Bank (ADB) first considered committing funds for a second development project promoting rubber plantations, but ended the project after early survey and feasibility considerations, which recognized the environmental damage to the natural Sal forests and the resistance from the local population. The documentation by national environmentalist groups like SEBD and others also influenced ABD's decision to discontinue the support.
ADB instead opted to fund the previously described Thana Afforestation and Nursery Project. The planting, along roads, on minor wastelands, of village tree patches and in remaining Sal forests, was done by villagers against payment. Project participants were allowed to grow food on the unutilized parts of the woodlot, blocks and were entitled to get free the by-products of thinning and pruning and around 50 percent of the wood finally harvested. The woodlot plantation in Madhupur also came under criticism for environmental degradation and encroachment on forest land already cultivated and harvested by the local Mandis. Lack of training and awareness along the FD staff about community participation was also criticized.
Forest property rights in Bangladesh
In Bangladesh Forest Law two major categories of forest ownership rights are recognized: private rights to forest and public rights to forest. In addition, traditional forest user rights are recognized.
In a strict sense private forest should not exist according to the law. In section 20 of the SAT, forest is "non-retainable" under private ownership. Nevertheless, both the Forest Act of 1927 and the Private Forest Ordinance of 1959 regulate the management of private forests. Until the creation of the Government Forest Department, the zamindary estates owned large tracts of forests. Many Santals and other adibasis were mobilized to clear parts of the forest against tenurial rights'. The 1959 Ordinance recognizes the user rights to the forest products both by the tenants and neighbouring villagers who can claim customary rights based on long-standing residence and use. This regime was highlighted in our case study of the Vested Forest adjacent to Sarsa Reserve Forest.
All otherwise recorded "forest" is owned by the state on behalf of its citizens. The greater portion of the forest land is managed by the Ministry of Environment and Forest under the Act of 1927. The remaining forests (approx. one-third) are controlled by the Ministry of Lands and District Councils. The recorded forests managed by the Ministry of Lands is administratively Unclassified Land, and the state's khas property.
In terms of existing rights, the Forestry Department is a key stakeholder as the responsible agency for the management of the resource on behalf of society. Rights of access have not been defined on the basis of ethnic affiliation and/or economic specializations.
The Challenge of a Shift to Collaborative Management
We have documented the long history of the Santals and other adibasis in developing a vast and unique body of indigenous knowledge about the Sal forest habitats and of management of a wide range of forest products. As the resources themselves have come under pressure, resulting in massive biogenetic losses, the adibasis' unique system of knowledge is rapidly becoming irrelevant as the conditions for reproduction are being destroyed.
We have also described the role earlier this century of the colonial authorities which are no longer a stakeholder in spite of past sins. In recent times we have found some evidence of damage incurred both by the Forest Department responsible for the management, Santali users whose numbers have swelled due to the disappearance of overused the forest resources, and Bengali illegal loggers.
It is evident to us that only the adibasis in these areas share a collective concern for the disappearance of the forest.
Both forest and agricultural land can be claimed as khas land. Agricultural land on which the owner has not paid all taxes can be claimed as khas land. In this way many Santals, due to ignorance or cheating, have lost land. Khas land can be leased out to peasants or settlers who need homestead plots. We have come across several instances of Santals who live on such land that is very insecure, as the land can be claimed by its original owners if they pay the outstanding taxes.
The question which must be discussed is: Is collaborative management possible in this situation? It could be argued that collaborative management might fail in' this area due to the 'Authorities' inexperience with the concept as discussed above, the fast ecological deterioration and the complex situation in terms of large numbers of , users spread over many hamlets and administrative units. However, it is indeed very difficult to envisage other forms of management that could be more effective than the current situation. The main arguments from our side are again:
- The Santals and other adibasis like the Oraons could only develop this unique knowledge through very long existence in this kind of forest habitat. The Bengalis have in contrast been plains people, specializing in land
clearing and reclamation and intensive rice farming for several centuries.
- Access to the natural resources in regenerated forest areas is of for improving food security and also vital for the production of the cultural heritage of the Santals and other.
- This report can merely propose the selection of some areas for collaborative management. Stromme Memorial Foundation, which has commissioned this study, other NGOs working with and for tribal and indigenous peoples in Bangladesh, and bilateral and multilateral agencies which are engaged in natural resource management are in a position to encourage and support such projects. The eventual policy decision from the Ministry for Environment and Forestry will be followed with site identification.
The different forms of participatory management in practice
PA management has weaker and stronger forms of de facto participation (confer Figure p. 116). Active consultation is a weaker form. Involving the users directly in decision-making and the formulation of agreements - often coined community management - represents a more committed and stronger form of participation. The strong form is when indigenous peoples, upon the recognition that the land is their ancestral domain, are granted full community authority, which indigenous peoples in Canada (British Colombia) have recently been granted.
We advise exploring whether the Santals and other adibasis can be encouraged to become directly involved in decision-making and even sharing authority by having representation in the management body. It should also be explored whether after an initial period they could have some management authority, being accountable to the forest authority thorough approved management plans.
Concluding findings
• The Santali world view is underpinned by a system of knowledge which understands a forested environment as a sacred domain, commanding care and careful harvesting so as not to create disharmonious relations between deities and humans.
• The system entails elaborate knowledge about the living things of the Sal-dominated forest habitat and about modes of harvesting, hunting, processing and consuming edibles having nutritious, preventive and curative properties.
• The Santals and other adibasis in the researched sites are not given any particular recognition as forest users by the management authorities.
Watershed Management
The silvicultural techniques of FD staff are one prime cause for the degradation of biodiversity in the researched site. Bangladesh is a signatory to Agenda 21 (Chapter 26 states the rights of indigenous peoples to involvement in natural resource management) and the Convention on Biodiversity. The Forestry Master plan contains certain strategies and field programmes which are now in an early state of preparation and implementation. These strategies and programmes open up possibilities for particular roles for adibasis in environmental management and collaborative forest management.
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