Indian forests are a source of sustainable livelihood to over 200 million people in our country. Likewise, forests all over the world, including forests in India, provide critical eco-systems, apart from goods and services. Nonetheless, the momentous role of forests in carbon storage and sequestration has increased their importance through manifold and brought them to the centre-stage of climate change mitigation strategies.

Indian forests and tree cover account for about 23.4 per cent of the total geographical area of the country. However, the forest and tree cover in the state of Uttar Pradesh has shrunk to 9.06 per cent, which is below the national average of 23.57 per cent.

Furthermore, it has been observed through the years, that the forests are in a degraded condition and have deteriorated in terms of poor quality since the open forest cover out of the forest area is 57.5 per cent. Perhaps, the forest areas in Uttar Pradesh are mostly located in the southern part of the state and in the Terai region. The local population, including Schedule Castes (SCs) and Schedule Tribes (STs) in these areas depend on forests, partially or fully, for their livelihood. On the other hand, the available forest-based livelihood options are limited in the state, causing degradation of the forests. Subsequently, this reduces the potential of the forests to meet the demands of the local people. Moreover, it is very essential and necessary to improve the alternate livelihood options of the local people in order to reduce poverty.

Climatic changes have contributed a lot in reducing the forest-based livelihood options, but despite this natural progress, there is an urgent need to focus on this issue. Therefore, acting upon this issue, the Government of Uttar Pradesh conceived time-bound intensive interventions in the form of Uttar Pradesh Participatory Forest Management and Poverty Alleviation Project (UPPF MPAP) that empowers forest-dependent communities and also conserves forests.

The UPPFMPAP implemented in 20 forest divisions that are widely spread over 14 districts of Uttar Pradesh:
i) Terai (five districts) 
ii) Bundelkhand (five districts) and 
iii) Vindhyan (four districts)

The project targets to benefit approximately 800 Joint Forest Management Committees (JFMCs) and 140 Education Development Centres (EDCs). The project is funded through a soft loan provided by the Japan International Cooperation Agency, JICA (formerly known as Japan Bank for International Cooperation)

The empowerment is sought to be an achievement by promoting sustainable forest management, including JFM plantation and community development, thereby improving environmental quality and alleviating poverty. The project, though managed by the Uttar Pradesh Forest Department, has certain implementations which involve engagement with diverse stakeholders. Non government organisations (NGOs) are among the prominent stakeholders that the PMU has identified. 

Capacity building of the NSOs and PNGOs that are already identified by the PMU is an important component of the project, as are the trained human resources from these organisations, which in turn would ensure empowerment of the targeted communities in their respective areas.

Therefore, the PMU has identified credible capacity building institutions to undertake these training programmes. For Bundelkhand, the partner is TARA Livelihood Academy. The Training programmes are conducted from TARAgram Orchha. 

An innovative mechanism is developed to train the NGO personnel, who is from diverse fields and experiences. It is a mix of classroom sessions by the subject experts, group exercise and presentations, exposure visits to the related fields etc. Smaller group discussion help participants’ analyse their thoughts and share the same with larger groups, which in turn helps them to get a clear picture and correlate with the concerned field realities. The Topic Theory, which is followed by field visits, gets a lot of importance in terms of utilisation of learning and at the same time attempting the required corrections.

The capacity building of the work force from various NGO partners has helped them in organising the community for the project implementation, preparing annual implementation plan, micro plan and management of Joint Forest Management and Eco-Development Committees and ensuring income generation activities of these groups. This has been realised by not only the work force (NGOs) that are involved in it, but also the quality of the work is visible at the PMU level (while they are reporting). Results can be seen at the implementation level.

Training programmes, which are held for longer durations, say six-ten days depending on the time requirement of the topics come under the category of residential programmes. Due to residential training programmes, participants get a lot of time to interact with each other and share their learning, experiences and challenges in project implementation. Also, longer duration training programmes help participants to analyse the learning aspect and get an opportunity to discuss its effectiveness at the ground level.

This is the first time in the history when large number of NGOs have got involved in a governemnt project, forming the background for JICA to fund the forest department of Government of Uttar Pradesh.

The innovative designs of the project and the involvement of the civil society organisations at a large scale will lead these projects towards success.

Knowledge and skills gained during the project by the NGOs is getting transferred to the local institutions, JFMC or EDC, via different mechanisms in order to strengthen them to ensure livelihood opportunities for the Forest User Group (FUG). It will not only provide them with better livelihood options, but also reduce migration. As capacity building and trainings are an integral part of the project, various alternative measures are being carried out at different levels as per the need.

Excellence is an art won by training and habituation.

We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly.   

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit. 

Aristotle  

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