Discussion around how best to conserve natural forests that might be on private lands and the demarcation of private forests in Goa began in 1990. The demarcation process has unfolded over multiple rounds—some more successful than others—and has outlasted several state-appointed committees. Thus, while approximately 67 sq km of such forest has been demarcated and notified as ‘deemed forest’ so far, another 36.38 sqkm has been identified but not yet reviewed and confirmed. Formal notification of such forest as ‘deemed forest’ brings it under the ambit of the Forest (Conservation) Act 1980, and thereby prevents unregulated conversion to other land uses. However, there is debate as to whether such forests indeed benefit wider society, and whether tagging them as deemed forest might in fact result in perverse outcomes i.e., rapid deforestation/conversion by the owners to avoid regulatory interference in their plans.

Against this backdrop, the present study investigates the ‘relative social value’ of these private forests and the trajectory in their condition. The first is achieved by combining qualitative and quantitative data, to address the following research objectives: 1) Identify and categorize key provisioning ecosystem services derived from forests in and around the Mhadei Wildlife Sanctuary range, and 2) Map and compare the distribution of these services across private forests, reserve forests, and the sanctuary itself, and to examine the ecological, socio-economic, and land-use factors influencing variation in provisioning services among these forest tenures. Then, to understand whether the owners of such socially valuable forests are actually responding in a perverse manner to the potential for their land to be notified as deemed forest in the future, I analyse 3) land cover changes in the study site and compare these against changes in similar forest types across the state.

Findings related to the first objective include a detailed list of forest-derived species used by respondents, categorized across five provisioning service types: fuel wood, fodder, foraged food, medicinal plants, and others, along with the corresponding forest type from which each resource is collected. The study showed that 40% of the respondents were forest resource collectors, and of these, 35% were dependent on forest resources as their primary income source.

To address the second objective, cross tabs were usedto explore probabilistic relationships between respondents’ main source of livelihood, number of income sources, area of cultivated land, and the type of forest patch accessed for resource collection. The results suggest a greater overall dependence on forest resources, and a slightly higher reliance on private forests (owned by others) among respondents with single income sources, daily wage-based livelihoods, livestock-rearing occupations, and no or limited access to cultivable land.

In the third chapter, tree cover changes are assessed in both study sites – one a private forest and the other a provisional private forest. These results are compared against other plots with the same classification in the state. The analysis is done for two years (2008 when the private forest patch was declared and 2018 when the provisional private forest was demarcated) and compared with recent data from 2022 to understand whether tree cover change could be associated with changes in the legal classification of these forests. The analysis showed that the tree cover in the study site actually remained stable in the provisional private forest and had reduced in the declared private forest patch in Codal. Assessment of tree cover change in other plots within the state showed no appreciable change in tree cover between different forest types.

The final chapter provides a synthesis of the findings from this study.