Commonwealth Forests

Chapter 6 Forest Research in the Commonwealth
THE INDIAN SUB-CONTINENT

Future challenges

The challenges facing forest research today are greater than ever before. India is a leader in collaborative management of State Forests in partnership with local people (Joint Forest Management, described in Chapter 2) and in the latter half of the 20^th century was a leader in “Social” forestry undertaken for communities. Many of the subjects for future research relate to changes in forest management, together with dwindling areas of productive forest, notably but by no means exclusively:

1. Optimising the values of non timber forest and tree products and forest services in the rural and national economy

2. Improved technologies for soil and water conservation:

3. Restoration of degraded farmland;

4. Improvement of agroforestry technologies

5. Improved forest productivity, both rain-fed and irrigated