Tribals & Trees

A large part of the Tribal population across the world lives amid thick forests and plantations. Tribals and trees have a cradle to grave relationship with each dependent on the other for sustenance. While tribals are a rich source of indigenous cultures that have survived over thousands of years, that they comprise of some of the poorest people on this planet is undeniable. Many schemes have been launched to bring them into the mainstream, while thinkers debate about the repercussions of destroying their cultures in doing so. One solution that emerges is to let the tribals be where they belong, help them conserve the forests that comprise their livelihood and somehow augment their incomes to help them lead a better life. We spell out one such solution.

Forest fires are known to be a very real danger to our forest lands and these are detrimental both to the efforts of conservationists as well as to the very existence of the tribals. Forest fires are primarily caused by the dry wood in forests, that catch fire due to natural weather conditions. This dry wood is  used by tribals to cook food, stay warm and such. However, usually tribals only go about collecting just as much as they need and the leftover wood in the forest is prone to cause forest fires. This presents an excellent sustainable model that can prevent forest fires, help protect forests, augment the livelihood of the tribals while also being revenue generating for the state. 

 Our Tribal and Tree model looks like this. 

In this model,  tribals collect drywood from forests nearby and sell the extra wood to a local village body managed wood-depot on quantity basis. This wood can be stored in the stockyard of the village and can be later auctioned to companies using drywood as raw material such as paper and pulp mills. The money generated through the process may be used for village development purposes. In this manner, forest fires can be reduced, tribals can augment their income while doing their daily tasks of collecting firewood for food, village body can use the funds for developmental schemes, paper mills can get raw materials at competitive rates without engaging in environmentally detrimental logging activities, and the State can maintain tribal welfare through a self-sustainable green model.