Joint Forest Management (JFM) is an approach wherein state forest departments support local forest dwelling and forest fringe communities to protect and manage forests and share the costs and benefits from the forests with them. The Government of India 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).
This approach attempts to utilize traditional forest conservation knowledge of local rural communities for protecting and managing forests while simultaneously helping these communities to meet their subsistence needs of fuel wood, fodder, other non-timber forest produce, small timber etc. and also generating livelihood through sale of this produce. Local people are organized in form a JFM Committee at the forest/village level for forest management.\