Protected areas (PAs) are a cornerstone of conservation efforts and now cover nearly 13% of the world’s land surface, with the world’s governments committed to expand this to 17%. However, as biodiversity continues to decline, the effectiveness of PAs in reducing the extinction risk of species remains largely untested.

PES is often touted as win-win with both environmental gains and poverty alleviation. But REDD+ does not neccesarily translate into forest conservation or benefit local communities.

The impact of protection on the ecology and ecosystem services of a fragmented sacred grove of Karnataka in agricultural landscape was studied. Comparative assessment of two time scale data revealed positive influence of protection on vegetation in term of species richness, diversity, endemism and basal area. An increment in above ground biomass indicates groves potential for carbon sequestration. Species level study on carbon storage finds the contribution of young individuals in recent time period.

Although the JFM concept is becoming popular more and more all over India, there is no well defined methodology to evaluate the functioning of JFM. As a result, it is not possible to evaluate JFM functioning and to find out the level of success of JFM. Therefore, an attempt has been made to bring out a concept paper on JFM that enables evaluation of JFM in a systematic manner.