The socio-economic and biophysical conditions of forest-reliant communities in Ganderbal district of Kashmir

Abstract

The reliance on forests for livelihood security among Himalayan communities necessitates a comprehensive understanding of the underlying socioeconomic and biophysical conditions to navigate the current scenario and anticipate future developments. This study investigated the socioeconomic and biophysical conditions of forest-reliant communities to predict the psychological behaviours driving the forest dependence in the Ganderbal district of Kashmir. The data were collected from 296 sample households drawn from 12 selected villages and four blocks, employing a multi-stage random sampling technique. Descriptive statistics were used to analyze the data. The results indicated that the majority of the respondents were middle-aged (46.95%), low-literate up to middle-level (87.84%), male (86.82%), had no membership in only one organization (83.78%), and belonged to large-sized (56.75%) nuclear (65.54%) families. The size of land holdings among most (93.92%) of the respondents was marginal; they were engaged mainly in cultivation (51.35%), had up to 5 livestock (57.43%), had low wealth status (47.97%), had a labour force of one worker (51.01%), and had a gross annual income between ?150000 and 300000/year (52.96%). A sizable portion of the respondents (50.34%) had proximity to the forests of less than 2.5 km, visited forests very frequently (42.90%), and had access to alternative forest sources often (48.65%), and had urban closeness above 10 km (52.70%). The characterisation of socioeconomic and biophysical conditions of forest-reliant families will be a basis for planning and implementation of forestry programmes for sustainable forest management and livelihood diversification in the Ganderbal district of Kashmir.