摘要：The success of long-term sustainable management of natural resources depends on localpeople's support. Assessing local people's attitudes, taking into account their needs, and respecting theiropinions should become a management priority. In India, in the last 20 years, community needs andaspirations in forest management were handled through Joint Forest Management with varying degrees ofsuccess. Recently, the Forest Rights Act (2006) was passed to recognize and vest forest rights in forestdwelling communities. This major policy development is still in implementation, but little is known abouthow this devolution process will affect people's attitudes toward forests. In this paper, we analyzeassociations between attitudes toward state controlled forests (Reserved Forests) and (i) awareness aboutthe Forest Right Act, (ii) attitudes toward the State Forest Department, and (iii) participation in forestmanagement groups of mostly tribal forest dwellers in the district of Kodagu (Karnataka). We collectedinformation with a structured questionnaire among 247 villagers living under three different land tenureand management regimes: (1) private coffee plantations, (2) Reserved Forest, and (3) National Park. Theresults of the multivariate analyses show that people are more likely to appreciate Reserved Forests if theyhave more knowledge about the Forest Rights Act and if they have positive attitudes toward the State ForestDepartment. A sobering result in our sample is that participation in formal forest management groups isnegatively associated to attitudes toward Reserved Forests, suggesting the Joint Forest Management modeldoesn't necessarily help the transition from coercion to consent. Increasing local people awareness abouttheir rights and improving their relations with the formal forest stewards remain priorities for sustainableforest management to emerge in India
