Just 3% forest area under community governance'
Jayashree Nandi
|
New Delhi:
|
Millions of forest dwellers in the country still do not have rights to conserve forests or access to forest resources. Ten years after the Forest Rights Act was passed by Parliament -a law that secures rights of forest dwellers and empowers them to protect forests -only about 3% of the potential forest area for community governance has been recognised, says a new study .The `Promise and Performance: Ten Years of the Forest Rights Act' to be released on Tuesday finds that the rights to manage, conserve and use forest resources by forest-dwelling tribes could have been recognised over an area of 34.6 million ha -an area larger than Madhya Pradesh -but has only been recognised in little over 1.1 million ha or only 3% of the potential.
The report by Community Forest Rights-Learning and Advocacy (CFR-LA) uses data from Census 2011 to assess total forest area inside and outside village boundaries (34.6 million ha) as the minimum potential area over which community forest resource rights could be recognised. This includes the minimum estimated forest area outside revenue village boundaries under custom ary use. The authors rely on data from the ministry of tribal affairs and state governments to compute the actual area over which rights have been recognised and it is estimated that the law can deliver community forest resource rights to about 200 million tribals and other forest dwellers living in 170,000 villages across the country.
The reason for such poor performance of the act, authors say is a “lack of political will“ and opposition by “forest bureaucracy“ or the ministry of environment and forests in handing over governance rights to the communities.
But why is this law important? Because it transfers decision making powers and forest conservation responsibilities to gram sabhas.The Niyamgiri case in Odisha has already established how gram sabhas can play a powerful role in protecting cultural and resource rights of indigenous communities after gram sabhas unanimously voted against bauxite mining in hills inhabited by the Dongria Kondhs.
The report by Community Forest Rights-Learning and Advocacy (CFR-LA) uses data from Census 2011 to assess total forest area inside and outside village boundaries (34.6 million ha) as the minimum potential area over which community forest resource rights could be recognised. This includes the minimum estimated forest area outside revenue village boundaries under custom ary use. The authors rely on data from the ministry of tribal affairs and state governments to compute the actual area over which rights have been recognised and it is estimated that the law can deliver community forest resource rights to about 200 million tribals and other forest dwellers living in 170,000 villages across the country.
The reason for such poor performance of the act, authors say is a “lack of political will“ and opposition by “forest bureaucracy“ or the ministry of environment and forests in handing over governance rights to the communities.
But why is this law important? Because it transfers decision making powers and forest conservation responsibilities to gram sabhas.The Niyamgiri case in Odisha has already established how gram sabhas can play a powerful role in protecting cultural and resource rights of indigenous communities after gram sabhas unanimously voted against bauxite mining in hills inhabited by the Dongria Kondhs.
Source: Times of India, 13-12-2016
