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STATUS OF FUELWOOD COLLECTION AND UTILIZATION PATTERN IN INDIA

Supreet Kaur*, Dhruba Sharma, Mamtha Devi Ashwin As, Varun Joshi and Swapan Mehra

Globally, more than three billion people are dependent on fuelwood as a primary source of household energy and one-third of them use it for cooking purposes. In India, approximately 77% of fuelwood is consumed at the household level. 49% of the households are dependent on fuelwood as a primary source of energy. Dependency on fuelwood is higher in rural areas as compared to urban. A major portion of the fuelwood is collected from non-forest areas whereas forest contributes about 20%-30% in the total collection. High fuelwood dependency has several hazardous effects on the environment as well as on human health. The major causes of concern are unsustainable harvesting of fuelwood and inefficient energy conversion technologies at the domestic level. One of the major barriers in fuelwood management is the lack of reliable information on its collection and utilization in the country. Therefore, there is an urgent need to develop an information repository at various levels on the fuelwood collection and utilization pattern.