Necessity of Livelihood Improvement Support

Because of diverse investments and opportunities of income generation in HP, there has been a significant reduction in the incidences of poverty in the state in the last two decades (36.8% in 1993-94 to 8.5% in 2011 in the rural areas). Rural electrification and provision of liquefied petroleum gas also reached most of the households in even the remote areas of this state despite the challenging terrain. However, the majority of the rural households in the state still depend on fuelwood and fodder etc. that are extracted from the forest areas and, in this sense, all the households can be considered as users and beneficiaries of ecosystem services from forest area. In the case of nomadic communities/ semi-nomadic communities such as Gaddis and Gujjars, since their major income source is livestock rearing, selling wools or skin, meat, dairy products, the grass and fodder from forest or pasture in forest area is most essential to sustainability of their livelihood. In this context, involvement of these ecosystem services’ users is the key for sustainable forest ecosystem management, as stipulated in HP State Forestry Sector Policy and Strategy (2005).

The community development activities for livelihoods improvement support would be centred around the interventions which would reduce anthropogenic pressure on forest and ecosystems and also would be as incentive for community mobilization for intervention to materialize sustainable 3 usage of ecosystem services. Through the Project, participatory approaches will be adopted to ensure sustainability of the interventions and investments for improving ecosystem services from forest area in HP.

Community Development

• Preparation of CD&LIPs
• Transfer of Funds
• Implementation of CD activities
• Preparation of Guidelines Manuals and Training Programmes for Community Development
• Research: Pilot Project on Hydro Cultural Fodder Production

NTFP based Livelihood Improvement

• Preparatory Works
• NTFP Cluster and Enterprise Development
• NTFP Research & Development
• NTFP Cultivation
• NTFP Market Research and Promotion
• Training and Extension

Non NTFP based Livelihood Improvement

• Preparation of Livelihood Improvement Strategy and Plan
• Preparation of CD&LIP
• Formation/ Reviving CIGs/ SHGs
• Implementation of Household/ Community level livelihood improvement
• Promotion of Cluster based Livelihood Activities
• Training Programmes for Livelihood Improvement
• Capacity Development for CIGs/ SHGs and Cluster Based Organisation