Conflict Management in Joint forest Management and Watershed Development: our Experiences in Tamil Nadu

Any type of change in environmental setup tends to generate conflict. Effective conflict management requires understanding the underlying dynamics of the conflict by higher level managers. Implementation of Tamil Nadu Afforestation Project in Tamil Nadu under JFM, in the recent years, has resulted in several conflicts, e.g. conflicts at formation of VFCs, interests, Panchayat vs VFC, carrying capacity, grazing, species choice and technology, wildlife-human interface and conflicts within the Forest Department etc., which provided new experiences to the foresters. This paper enumerates a few such conflicts and tries to analyse the dynamics from management prospective, with an eye on possible solutions.