Forestry & Environment

The Significance

The importance of natural resources in providing livelihoods and securing life support ecological services particularly for the people living in poverty is being recognized across the development sector. While the relationship between development and forestry is complex, given that past development projects have resulted in deforestation through activities conducted in the name of poverty reduction and economic growth, there is now an increased awareness about the non-cash value that forests provide, along with their contribution to priority sectors such as water, energy and health.

International discourse on development has shifted towards tackling issues of how environmental sustainability and afforestation can be added to the development framework.

MART’s Experience

MART has an extensive experience of working on promoting and facilitating forest-based livelihoods in major states in India that have significant forest cover such as OFSDP & OTELP in Odisha, JTDP & JSLPS in Jharkhand, MPDPIP in Madhya Pradesh, GFDC in Gujarat, IEMaC in Karnataka & MP and TBM in Tripura. Through our interventions, we focused on providing incremental income to the forest dwelling communities through a group based approach in the collection of various kinds of Non-timber Forest Produce, their value addition and collective marketing of the products through market linkages with district and state level players.

We have completed many comprehensive assignments for different clients in past in both corporate and government sector. Also our pro-poor value chain development approach in livelihoods sector focuses on sustainable management of NTFPs and other forest resources, wherein we work closely with tribal communities in biodiversity rich areas across India and even beyond borders.

MART’s Commitment

• MART, since its inception, has closely worked with forest dependent tribal communities for sustainable management and collective marketing of forest resources.
• MART has conducted impact assessment and livelihood opportunity analysis studies for clients, recommending remedial measures for identified constraints which are further developed into various project interventions, implemented with our techno-managerial support.
• MART treats forest resources on equal terms with agriculture owing to their role and importance in livelihoods of poor forest dependent communities.
• MART has excellent rapport with a wide network of reputed research and education institutions, government line departments, national and international level consultants for effectively carrying out the assignments.