Abstract
Being located in the Eastern Himalayan foothill region, Bengal Duars (also named Dooars) is identified as a unique landscape enriched with forest resources and divergent indigenous culture. This region has gone through assorted changes in its natural and socio-economic milieu. With the changes in forest scape, ways of survival of villagers also modified since pre-colonial to after the Independence period. The objective of this study is not only to address all such struggles faced by the forest villagers for their survival in such a landscape but also to explore the influence of socio-economic variables on forest dependency by using the logistic regression model. The study has found that less than 20% of income is coming from non-forest-based activities and they are more involved in agriculture, agro-forestry, livestock rearing, etc. Besides that, the attack of wild animals and the erratic nature of climate deviates people to involve in non-farm sectors to earn their livelihood. The results indicate that age, household size, agricultural dependency, livestock population, and economic status play a significant role in forest dependency. Moreover, less dependency on forests may degrade the sense of protection and their right at the community level that can further cause deforestation.
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Sam, K., Chakma, N. (2023). Forest Dependency and Rural Livelihood: Strategical Survival of People in Himalayan Foothills of Bengal Duars Region. In: Sahu, A.S., Das Chatterjee, N. (eds) Environmental Management and Sustainability in India. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-31399-8_2
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