Community-Managed Forests and Their Effectiveness in SDG Implications in the Western Himalayan Region

Across the Himalayan region, the non-sustainable management of resources by local governance bodies, coupled with poor involvement of local communities in resource management, has led to a decline in ecosystem services, thereby, impacting overall human well-being. Moreover, restoring the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs’) importance in the mountainous region particularly, i.e., SDGs 5, 10, 12, 13, and 15, along with the strengthening of local governance and active participation of local communities is essentially required. As the mountainous region, Himalaya is one of the hot spots for a one-tenth fraction of the globe’s population and covers a major percentage of the world’s land surface, and the mountains tend to harbor most of the ecosystem services. In this chapter, the status of SDGs in the mountainous region through the involvement of local village-level governance (Pradhan, head of the village) and forest-level governance (Sarpanch, president of community forest) along with the involvement of the forest department will be explored. The study is focused on developing various indicators for selected SDGs specific to the Western Himalayan region for the overall well-being of the dependent community such as social, economic, health, and environmental well-being on the basis of focused group discussion and questionnaire-based survey. The outcomes of the study are focused on the community’s adoption of climate change-based resilience measures and their coupled relationship with ecosystem services while simultaneously prioritizing human-wellbeing at the local level.