Forest governance, forest dependency, and deforestation in Boxa Reserve Forest Area, Alipurduhar, North Bengal

About 300 million people live within or adjacent to dense forests and roughly 1.6 billion people depend on forest and forest products like food, fodder, fuelwood, and non-timber forest products. At the same time, high forest dependency harms the environment. The paper attempts to estimate forest dependency and to identify the factors affecting forest dependency. The study is based on primary data collected from the Buxa Forest Reserve Alipurduhar, North Bengal, during 2020-21. In the study, 6 villages and 151 households are selected randomly. The paper has utilized the forest governance index based on the FAOs indicators like the Rule of Law, Transparency, Accountability, Participation, Inclusive and Equitable, and Efficient and Effective. In addition, the paper has employed a beta regression model to estimate the impact of forest governance on forest dependence while the other socio-economic variables are treated as control variables. The forest dependence index and forest governance index of the households were 0.539 and 0.483 respectively. In addition, the study has identified timber broker nexus with forest officials and illegal extraction of forests backed by political intervention are the major sources of deforestation. The study revealed that good forest governance had a positive impact on forest dependency while socioeconomic variables like education and landholdings were negatively associated with forest dependency.