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 purpose. 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. 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 environment as well as on human health. The major causes of concerns are unsustainable harvesting of fuelwood and inefficient energy conversion technologies at 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.

Keywords: Collection, consumption pattern, forest dependency, household, human health.