Trees Outside Forests for Poverty Reduction: An Indian Scenario

Abstract

Trees growing outside legally recorded forest boundaries, commonly termed trees outside forests, constitute a substantial and expanding share of India's total tree cover, spanning farm bunds, homesteads, community lands, roadsides, canal banks and urban settings. Although forests inside recorded boundaries dominate policy attention and scientific documentation, a growing body of evidence indicates that trees grown on private and community land outside these boundaries make a distinctive and, in several respects, more immediate contribution to rural income, employment and resilience among poor and land-constrained households. This review synthesises the scientific literature on the pathways through which such trees intersect with poverty reduction in India, drawing on evidence spanning agroforestry economics, non-timber forest product markets, gender relations, remote sensing–based resource assessment, climate mitigation finance and rural employment programmes. The review situates this evidence within India's evolving policy architecture, including social forestry, joint forest management, the National Agroforestry Policy of 2014, the Green India Mission and the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act. It further examines regional variation across poplar-based systems in the north-western plains, homegarden agroforestry in Kerala, non-timber forest product economies in central Indian tribal belts, bamboo-based livelihoods in the north-east and Himalayan agroforestry systems, before considering measurement challenges, institutional constraints and prospects for carbon-linked income streams. The review concludes that trees outside forests offer a genuine, though bounded and unevenly distributed, contribution to poverty reduction, one that depends heavily on secure tenure, simplified regulation, functioning markets and attention to gender and equity considerations rather than on tree planting alone.