The emergence and diffusion of
community-based forest management (CBFM) in India over
the past several decades has been of interest to scholars and
natural resource managers alike. The prevailing view in the
existing academic literature presupposes that CBFM arose
spontaneously in individual villages, evolving into a
grassroots movement that spread across districts and states.
Previous studies of the phenomenon have focused on the
micro-level (individual or community) and macro-level
(national or global) factors that gave rise to CBFM; the role
of meso-level (organizational) conditions in facilitating the
rise and spread of CBFM has garnered significantly less
attention. This study presents the results of structured
interviews with key informants in 345 villages throughout
the district of Boudh in the eastern Indian state of Odisha.
Results suggest that meso-level conditions were vitally
important in the development of CBFM. Nongovernmental
organizations and the Indian Forest Department promoted
CBFM and facilitated networking and sharing across
villages, while informal networks between the villages
expedited the diffusion of the new management model. The
study also discusses the interaction between various meso,
micro, and macro level facilitating conditions and concludes
that the dynamics of CBFM in Odisha and in India more
generally are significantly more complex than has previously
been supposed.