Introduction - Afforestation, Reforestation and Forest Restoration in Arid and Semi-arid Tropics - page 12

Organisational capability is another severe constraint in taking up large-scale
afforestation programmes. The traditional forest services are preoccupied with man-
agement of the remaining natural forests and protected areas. They are ill-equipped
to undertake a participative programme hand-in-hand with the local communities.
Only a few non-governmental organisations, community service groups, and other
agencies exist who possess the necessary technical skills needed in afforestation and
reforestation programmes, although they do possess the much needed social skills
in the field of community organisation and institution building.
The work capacity of forest services can be increased only if they change their role
from one of implementers to that of facilitators and leave the actual work execution
to the communities. This will save the time of the forest personnel and enable them
to undertake manifold activities, while enabling the community groups to learn the
technical details of afforestation. As communities pick up skills, they will gradually
reduce dependence on the intervention of the forest services. In fact, this process
can be very fast and the forest departments can increase their total work output by
an order of magnitude in a few years. The other alternative of bloating government
bureaucracies by recruiting more people in the forest services is unlikely to deliver
fruits, as has been adequately demonstrated in the past.
Legal provisions regarding ownership of land and the right to forest produce add
another dimension of complication in afforestation and reforestation programmes.
A classic example of this is the simple rule that a farmer may plant a tree in his
field but he cannot harvest it without taking prior permission of the competent public
authority. Such reactionary provisions only make matters worse by discouraging
the planting of trees. National and state governments should reform such archaic
laws to stimulate private enterprise in the field of tree planting. The basic spirit of
policies in this regard should be neither to freeze trees as inviolable in the name of
environment nor to permit indiscriminate harvesting so as to expose soils to erosion
and impoverishment.

1.9 Constraints Specific to Arid and Semiarid Areas

By definition, the arid and semiarid areas pose a problem of moisture scarcity for
growth of plants and hence natural regeneration of vegetation is unsatisfactory. This
topic presumes that areas receiving less than 500 mm of rainfall annually—and hav-
ing fewer than 20 rainy days in a year—are classified as arid. Areas with annual
rainfall from 500 to 800 mm have been classified as semiarid, whereas areas with
rainfall less than 200 mm can be said to be hyperarid. Deforestation in semiarid areas
can in fact lead to reduced rainfall, followed by accelerated degradation and deserti-
fication. About one-third of the total land surface of the earth suffers from moisture
deficiency. An area amounting to 45 million square kilometres spread over 75 coun-
tries can be said to suffer from arid conditions adversely affecting productivity of
the terrestrial ecosystem.