Forest policies for sustainable development and poverty alleviation in Pakistan

Local livelihoods and state policies have a dual interface. One, policy changes affect rural livelihood practices, informal local institutions and peoples coping strategies. Two, these changes do affect resource use sustainability since local livelihoods are embedded in the local resource base. Financial constraints, land, and alternative means of livelihood are critical factors forcing many people into unsustainable patterns of natural resource use. Paucity of choices forces the poor to adopt short-term survival strategies. People without any hope for the future have little incentive to manage natural resources well. Until recently, forests were the sole objective of forest policy and people were taken as enemies of the forest. However, now there has been a realization that forestry should be an instrument of the policy rather than its objective, thus leading towards sustainable livelihoods and reducing pressure on the fast dwindling forests. This paper with focus on mainly the case study conducted in NWFP (where 40% of Pakistan\u2019s natural forests are present) emphasizes that legal, institutional and policy reforms alone are not sufficient to achieve sustainable development and poverty alleviation. Good laws and policies are useless without political and administrative will to change. Otherwise, the poor would remain mired in poverty pushing us into a spiral of over exploitation in the wake of all forest policy failures.