This book on Stakeholder participation in Environmental Governance’ revisits the principles and practices for conserving forest ecosystems. It flows out of much larger discussion on `environmental governance’ that has been an ongoing initiative in LEAD India related to framing the roles and responsibilities of different stakeholders.

Forest Governance is a delicate balancing act made up of sound ecological management, sustainable and equitable forest use and shared responsibility. It is difficult to co-manage conservation with livelihoods and markets when there is a growing demand and diminishing supply. Consequently in practice the balance is often not struck.

In this book we have tried to identify the different elements of forest governance: the concept, the stakeholder interests, the park-people conflict, the community responsibility, the forest department’s policies and programs, etc. This book is designed to get people to dialogue and debate on how to move forward on forest management in a period where the community forestry strategies are not satisfactorily.