Sustainable forest management has become the necessity for any country to mitigate the environmental consequences and address the local concern. It has been an established fact that the sustainable development can be achieved through sustainable forest management. This country report is an attempt to compile and analyse the relevant data of the country on criteria and indicators of Bhopal-India process, which has semblance with the national working plan code and also with the C&I of ITTO process.

The Indian Institute of Forest Management has taken up a ITTO sponsored project on operationalisation of sustainable forestry development with community participation (following the C&I approach) in eight forest divisions in the states of Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. This document is a pioneer attempt to workout sustainability index based on indicators of forest management units of Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh states.

Sustainable forest management has been recognized as an important aspect of sustainable development during Earth Summit in 1992 at Rio because a large proportion of human population is directly/indirectly dependent on forests and the forests also provide a number of goods and services that are essential for human society.

Sustainable forest management was underscroed as an important aspect of sustainable development at UNCED, Rio in 1992. Following, various international, regional and national processes developed sets of criteria and indicators to monitor and assess the progress towards sustainability of forest resources.

Forest management in India has undergone a sea change as regards the focus of mandate for managing the forests is concerned. This manual is a pioneer attempt in India as regards training of C&I for SFM is concerned.