Implications of Resource Use Paradigm in Sustainable Natural Resource Management : An Assessment of the Ecologic-Economic Linkage of the Natural Resources Use by Tribal Communities in Kerala

Natural resource conservation, management and sustainable development are determined by the resource use decisions of the concerned stakeholders. This is particularly true with respect to the forest ecosystems in Kerala. Kerala with its unique topography, climate and natural wealth, sustains the forests in Western Ghats, which is considered to be a biodiversity hotspot area. The stakeholders of forest ecosystems in Kerala consist mainly of tribes and the non-tribes. While the tribes project a subsistence resources use regime, the non-tribes adopt a more market oriented and commercial resource extraction pattern, which has culminated in the forest degradation in Kerala. With the advent of commercialisation, consumerism and globalisation, the forest resource use paradigm in Kerala projected a transition from subsistence economy to a more lucrative market oriented economy. This transition has impacted all the sectors of economy and culminated in environment degradation creating ecological imbalance. This is reflected in the drying up of rivers, endangered flora and fauna and changing climate with unpredictable and low rainfalls. The data available on forests in Kerala provides a dismal picture of declining trend in area and deterioration of valuable resources. In view of this, the study attempted to capture the linkages between the ecology and economy of the resource use trend among the different stakeholder groups and observed that tribal communities adopt sustainable resource extraction in the forest unlike the non-tribes. There is a very strong linkage between the ecological balances of the forest resources with the existing economy, manifested through commercial markets. The forest dependency of the tribes was higher than the non-tribes but was of a subsistence nature rather than commercialised. The non-wood forest products collected were the main livelihood strategy of the tribes, with a small fraction contributing to self-consumption. One of the major observations was that the opportunity costs of labour for tribes and non-tribes vary considerably even in the same locality. This underscored the fact that tribes are the most economically, socially, politically and culturally weaker sections of the society and have been discriminated in all sectors. The tribal development schemes in Kerala have not achieved the target of their empowerment and economic upliftment. The non-tribes on the other hand indiscriminately exploited the resources, which is evident from the quantum of products extracted and the data available from the traders. The market forces determined the extraction pattern of the non-tribes and unlike tribes it was more of an additional source of income rather than livelihood. It was also observed that the tribes projected a positive attitude towards forest conservation while the non-tribes were against the management and conservation of the forest. The study identifies institutional and policy failures as the major factors responsible for the natural resource degradation and poverty among tribal communities. Sustainable resources use in the context of globalisation can only be achieved if the stakeholders are empowered and provided incentives for reducing resource exploitation. More funds need to be productively diverted for tribal empowerment and upliftment schemes in Kerala