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Community Dependence on Protected Forest Areas: A
Study on Valuation of Non-Wood
Forest Products in a Region of India1
C.S. Shylajan and G.Mythili*
ABSTRACT
With the increasing demand for non-wood forest products for medicinal
purposes and due to its high scope for value addition, these products
are increasingly extracted by local communities not only for
subsistence use but also to generate cash income. This study explores
the factors determining the dependence of local people on a protected
forest area for commercial purposes, from a case study in India. The
findings go along with that of similar studies that alternative income
sources would greatly reduce the dependence on the forest. This paper
computes present value of NTFP using the data from a household survey.
The projected value for the population, which gives the opportunity
cost of prohibiting the use of forest by the local people, would serve
as a good indicator for the policy decision on compensation to be paid
to the local people for relocating them from the forest area
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* The authors
are, respectively, Post Doctoral Research Fellow, Center for
Development and Environment Policy, Indian Institute of Management,
Calcutta and Associate Professor, Madras School of Economics, Gandhi
Mandapam Road, Chennai 600 025- INDIA .
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Shylajan and .Mythili. 2003. Sri
Lankan Journal of
Agricultural Economics. Volume 5 (1). Pp. 97 - 122
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