Common property forest resources and rural livelihoods: an empirical investigation in the state of Odisha

A vast majority of India's 700 million plus rural population, and most of the 30 million population of Odisha, living in its villages, are critically dependent on Common Property Resources (CPRs) for earning their livelihood. In this backdrop, the paper has made an attempt to study the degree, extent, and determinants of common property forest resource dependency at a household level in the villages of Odisha. The field survey results suggest that income from common property forests constitutes 30.97% of the total average annual household income. For the poorest 10% of the sample households, CPR forest income constitutes 58.70% of their total annual income and for the richest 10% the same has been estimated at 12.88%. Multivariate regression analysis reveals that CPR forest dependency is directly related to household size but inversely related to economic condition and agricultural land holding.