Explanation:

Joint Forest Management (JFM) is one of the most significant efforts in India to involve local communities in managing degraded forest lands under government control.

• Under joint forest management (JFM), village communities are entrusted with the protection and management of nearby forests. The areas concerned are usually degraded or even deforested areas. The communities are required to organize forest protection committees, village forest committees, village forest conservation and development societies, etc. Each of these bodies has an executive committee that manages its day-to-day affairs.
• In return for their services to the forest, the communities get the benefit of various forest products (e.g., fruits, gum, rubber, medicine, etc.), and thus the forest can be conserved in a sustainable manner.
• Ministry of Environment Forests and Climate Change consolidated the intervention on participatory forest management through the National Forest Policy, 1988, and then through enabling guidelines in 1990 on Joint Forest Management (JFM).
• States followed their own guidelines on the JFM programme.
• The JFM programme got further impetus when the JFM Cell and National Afforestation and EcoDevelopment Board (NAEB) evolved the concept of Forest Development Agencies (FDAs) as an autonomous federation of JFMCs registered under the Societies Act 1860, for empowerment of the local communities for the regeneration of the forests and for livelihood creation activities.
• This provided financial support to JFM programme by the Government of India and facilitated fund flow to the implementing agency (-FDA) to their bank account directly from NAEB.