Common Property Resources in Mangrove Areas of Sundarban, West Bengal: A Participatory Forest Management Approach

In the management of common property resources, environmental economists are concerned with the ‘tragedy of commons’, i.e., over-exploitation of such resources in practice. Three different schools of thought have emerged as regard institutional changes to avoid the tragedy of commons: the property rights school emphasizes on enforcing property rights; the second school of though believes in regulating the commons by an external agency; and the third school of thought relies on assurance problem approach based on voluntary compliance. However, participatory resource management is viewed as an innovative solution to a number of problems linked to state management of common property resources. To ensure participation of forest dependent population in the management of forest, participatory forest management policy through Joint Forest Management was formulated in 1990. In the context of Sundarban in West Bengal, two committees were formed consecutively, Forest Protection Committees (FPCs) in the fringe areas of forest and Eco-Development Committees (EDCs) in the protected areas of Sundarban. In this backdrop, an attempt has been made in this paper to shed some lights on the common property resource management in the mangrove areas of Sundarban, one of the largest biodiversity reserves in the world. It is evident that the progress in the formation of FPCs is quite satisfactory, while stagnation is observed in the formation of EDCs over the period of analysis.