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Creating Spaces For Conversations On Conservation: A Case Study Of Joint Forest Management In East Sikkim, India., Paulami Banerjee

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Successful community-based natural resource management should include both resource professionals and local communities. Recognizing this fact, my research seeks to encourage more locally adaptive and collaborative forest governance that facilitates sustainable development by enabling grassroots participation. Specifically, I explore opportunities for developing a more sustainable relationship between India's Joint Forest Management (JFM) program and rural forest-dependent communities in Sikkim-a remote, northeastern state of India bordering Nepal to the west, the Tibet Autonomous region of China to the north and northeast, and Bhutan to the southeast. As an instrument for sustainable forestry management, JFM seeks to develop partnerships between forest user …