What are community forest rights, why do they matter?

 The Chhattisgarh government has become only the second state in the country to recognise Community Forest Resource (CFR) rights of a village inside a national park. The CFR rights of tribals living in Gudiyapadar, a hamlet inside the Kanger Ghati National Park in Bastar district, were recognised Wednesday, giving the community power to formulate rules for forest use.

What is a community forest resource?

The community forest resource area is the common forest land that has been traditionally protected and conserved for sustainable use by a particular community. The community uses it to access resources available within the traditional and customary boundary of the village; and for seasonal use of landscape in case of pastoralist communities.

Each CFR area has a customary boundary with identifiable landmarks recognised by the community and its neighboring villages. It may include forest of any category – revenue forest, classified & unclassified forest, deemed forest, DLC land, reserve forest, protected forest, sanctuary and national parks etc.

 What are Community Forest Resource rights?

The Community Forest Resource rights under Section 3(1)(i) of the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act (commonly referred to as the Forest Rights Act or the FRA) provide for recognition of the right to “protect, regenerate or conserve or manage” the community forest resource.

These rights allow the community to formulate rules for forest use by itself and others and thereby discharge its responsibilities under Section 5 of the FRA.

Why is the recognition of CFR rights important?

Aimed at undoing the “historic injustice” meted out to forest-dependent communities due to curtailment of their customary rights over forests, the FRA came into force in 2008.

It is important as it recognises the community’s right to use, manage and conserve forest resources, and to legally hold forest land that these communities have used for cultivation and residence.

It also underlines the integral role that forest dwellers play in sustainability of forests and in conservation of biodiversity.

It is of greater significance inside protected forests like national parks, sanctuaries and tiger reserves as traditional dwellers then become a part of management of the protected forests using their traditional wisdom.

But while CFR rights are an important empowerment tool, getting a consensus amongst various villages about their traditional boundaries often proves a challenge.

How many CFR certificates have been given in Chhattisgarh?

According to state government officials, Chhattisgarh has recognised nearly 4,000 CFR rights in the state.

Kanger Ghati National Park is the second national park, after Simlipal in Odisha, where CFR rights have been recognised.

In the present case, Field Director of Kanger Ghati National Park, Dhammashil Ganvir, visited Gudiyapadar village and joined hands with Ashoka Trust for Research in Environment and Ecology (ATREE) to get the application process rolling. Native Gondi speakers and ATREE representatives Lakshmi Nath and Anubhav Shori worked for weeks with the tribals, increasing awareness and helping the villagers apply for CFRR.

Written by Gargi Verma , 

Source: Indian Express, 27/05/22

Transplanting must not justify removing trees

The draft policy states that transplantation will be undertaken only when more than 10 trees need removal for a construction project.

Struggling to save trees, a major victim of the city’s unending construction spree, the Delhi government last week proposed a tree transplantation policy.

The draft policy, to be finalised after taking comments from citizens, states that transplantation will be undertaken only when more than 10 trees need removal for a construction project. In such cases, at least 80% of local trees will be transplanted and resource-hungry exotic invasive species will be cut. The mandatory compensatory planting of 10 trees for every single one cut or transplanted will continue.

Mass transplantation could be costly at ₹15,000-30,000 per tree, depending on its size, and its success rate is yet unknown. More importantly, finding similar environmental conditions to transplant uprooted trees could be tricky. Delhi’s 1,484 square kilometres has as many as five micro-habitats with different soil types. For example, not all trees that grow near the Yamuna floodplains will survive if transplanted in the ridge.

Land is a premium resource in a crowded country and more so in Delhi. Even for compensatory plantation, authorities struggle to find land and often end up planting in already forested areas and close to the floodplain.

The draft policy promises to make room for transplantation along the arterial roads on “priority”.

But roadside trees are anyway the first to be axed for the widening of roads, construction of flyovers and laying new Metro lines.

Along NH-24, for instance, as many as 2,400 trees were cut to widen the stretch between Sarai Kale Khan and UP Gate and another 1,000 were transplanted near the Yamuna floodplain. While there is still no assessment of how many of these trees have survived, the end-to-end concretisation of the highway has altered the local ecology for good.

The proposed tree policy states that if the government is unable to find land for transplantation, it will be the responsibility of the project developer to find a patch. Before setting this cost-intensive scheme in stone, the policymakers could perhaps re-evaluate the compulsions for tree removal in the first place.

While planning urban development around existing trees may require a paradigm shift in mindset, our building agencies seem to remove trees just because it is convenient. “They have the flimsiest of reasons such as to allow heavy machinery to move freely,” says Prabhakar Rao of Kalpvriksha, an environmental action group. Or proposing to build underground parking lots at the cost of thousands of trees while redeveloping seven South Delhi neighbourhoods.

Successful transplantation is not easy. Experts say old trees that have large canopies and deep root system have a poor chance of surviving. “Most of the trees that are marked out for axing are old, some even 50 years or older,” says CR Babu, professor emeritus at the Centre for Environment Management of Degraded Ecosystems at Delhi University.

Transplanting trees involves heavy lopping of branches so they can be transported to the next site. While the young trees – those below 10 years – usually survive the transplantation shock, older trees stand a slim chance after heavy lopping, he says.

Transplantation also requires trimming of roots. But not all indigenous trees are good at regenerating their root systems, says Babu. While the younger trees of some species — Pongamia and Ficus — can tolerate transplantation, other common native species such as dhok/palash, siris, native wild kikar and arjun cannot.

If a tree loses its canopy, it loses the transpiration function — the process by which it carries moisture from the roots to the leaves — and dries out. A weak, underfed tree cannot perform its ecological function. “If the ability to do this is compromised in transplantation, the purpose of the tree is lost,” Babu adds

The draft policy does mention on-site tree preservation, stating that no tree should be unnecessarily removed and those that can be saved from felling should be identified in the planning stage. But it is up to the construction agencies to appreciate that using what Rao calls “precision engineering” to avoid felling of trees is likely to be more cost effective than expensive transplantations.

Like compensatory plantation, transplantation is also an economic activity and, like all economic activities, has its own incentive. Like plantation, it can also sugar coat decisions to remove trees. Whether compensated ten-for-one or transplanted elsewhere, loss of its last surviving trees is irreversible for every Delhi neighbourhood. However, well-meaning, the draft policy’s real test will lie in its inbuilt ability to safeguard against such eventualities.

Source: Hindustan Times, 4/03/2019

Failing the forest

Both human rights and wildlife rights groups have not used the Forest Rights Act as a conservation tool

On February 13, the Supreme Court ordered the eviction of more than 10 lakh Adivasis and other forest dwellers from forestland across 17 States. The petitioners, mainly wildlife NGOs, had demanded that State governments evict those forest dwellers whose claims over traditional forestland under the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006, known simply as the Forest Rights Act (FRA), had been rejected. On February 28, the court stayed its controversial order and asked the States to submit details on how the claims of the dwellers were decided and the authorities competent to pass final rejection orders.

While the Supreme Court has now made it clear that there will be no forcible eviction, what the order has succeeded in doing is resuscitating a sharp binary between the human rights- and wildlife rights-based groups that have for decades tried to swing public opinion in their favour. The wildlife groups who went to court argue that implementation of the FRA could lead to ‘encroachments’ and fresh clearance of forestland for human dwellings. The human rights groups have argued that the FRA was passed by Parliament and is aimed at correcting historical injustices to traditional forest dwellers who, since colonial times, have been subject to a cycle of evictions. Since colonial times, as governments asserted their control over forests, India’s forest history has become a cycle of evictions from forestland and rebellions by forest dwellers.

A fundamental difference

Now, here’s the problem. Both groups have been so locked in ideological debates — whether in the courtroom or on social media — that they have failed to protect what could potentially have been beneficial to their respective interest groups: the forest. The FRA was meant for forest dwellers, but it could have also been a powerful tool for conservation. Sadly, both sides have propagated misinformation to garner support for themselves.

The first myth that needs to be busted for the wildlife lobby is that when a right is recognised of a forest dweller/Adivasi on a piece of land, it doesn’t mean that he/she will cut down all the trees in that area. This is often the strongest note of dissonance between the two groups — the implication that recognising rights on forestland is the same as clear-felling that forest. Therefore, to argue that the rights of millions of forest dwellers have been recognised through the Act does not mean that the forest is a pie to be divided. On the other hand, when forestland is ‘diverted’ for big development projects, like mining or highways or roads, it is actually clear felled or submerged. If this fundamental difference between ‘recognition of rights’ and ‘diversion’ were accepted, the groups at loggerheads would in fact find grounds for commonality.

It is in fact the Supreme Court that paved the way for this commonality in 2013 when it asked the gram sabhas to take a decision on whether the Vedanta group’s $1.7 billion bauxite mining project in Odisha’s Niyamgiri Hills could go forward or not. It thus affirmed the decision-making power of the village councils of Rayagada and Kalahandi under the FRA. All 12 gram sabhas unanimously rejected mining in the hills.

Again, in 2016, it was the FRA that was invoked by the National Green Tribunal (NGT) when the people of Lippa in Himachal Pradesh were given the powers to decide whether or not they wanted a hydel power project in this area. The project would have led to submergence of forestland and also caused heavy siltation in the river.

When wildlife groups point towards the thousands of ‘bogus claims’ that are being filed and that should be rejected, what should not go unnoticed is that the state in fact is not always keen to recognise the rights of people in forest areas (even if it may get them votes) as it becomes tough to ‘divert’ land for big projects. A case in point is the Mapithel Dam that is under construction in Manipur. Once commissioned, it will submerge 1,215 hectares (ha) of land, 595 ha of which are under forest cover. In 2015, the NGT had asked for the state to seek forest clearance for the project. To obtain forest clearance, the State government would have to prove that the rights of the tribal people and forest dwellers would not be affected. However, the State government refused to recognise the rights of the people living there since it was keen to construct the dam.

There have been hundreds of cases that offered both these divergent groups the opportunity to come together for the cause of the environment and communities. Can the two groups put down their metaphoric swords and use their powers to fight the battle that needs to be fought?

Correcting historical injustice

Likewise, could not the same wildlife NGOs which filed this petition in the Supreme Court have joined hands with the local communities and used the FRA to challenge big development projects coming up on forestland instead? Human rights groups too cannot be absolved of blame. Most of them have been quick to respond when the judiciary steps in, but have been missing when it comes to the tedious groundwork of working with the gram sabhas and ensuring that genuine claims are filed. The same human rights groups did not come forward to fight cases that could have helped conservation as well as the people who live in those areas. Both groups have failed the forest. There is a chance to correct the historical injustice has been inflicted on the people and to India’s forests. And it is through the FRA that India can achieve that aim.

Bahar Dutt is an environment journalist

Source: the Hindu, 4/03/2019

To protect tigers, India needs more better-equipped forest personnel

India is currently the most dangerous country in the world for forest rangers. In 2017, 29 rangers were killed on duty in India; the Democratic Republic of Congo (17) and Thailand (8) made for a distant second and third, says a report of the International Ranger Federation. On January 27, unidentified poachers with weapons hacked to death two guards in the Valmiki Tiger Reserve in Bihar.

At a time when there are almost daily reports of man-animal conflicts across the country, the Indian government’s pledge to protect tiger habitats and tiger corridors is a heartening piece of news. The second part of the promise is of utmost important because, while India’s total tiger population went up from 1,411 in 2006 to 1,706 in 2010 and 2,226 in 2014, the country recorded a 12.6% decline in tiger occupancy in connecting tiger habitats outside tiger reserves between 2006 and 2010, the latest period for which this data is available. This promise to protect tiger habitats and corridors was published on Monday in the fourth edition of the Global Tiger Action Plan.

Unfortunately, the action plan didn’t release data on the decline in the tiger population outside protected areas for 2014. The 2018 tiger census estimations, likely to be released on March 31, may see an increase in overall tiger numbers but may not offer any trends on their numbers in corridors (outside the protected areas) because it follows a different methodology.

Saying that India has changed its approach to tiger conservation to focus on the corridors, The Global Tiger Action Plan adds that now the country prioritises “source-sink dynamics” (how variation in habitat quality may affect the population of tigers) by restoring habitat connectivity. This includes providing incentives to local people for conserving forests along tiger corridors and providing subsidised LPG connections to people to reduce dependence on timber from the forest.

Along with these steps, the Indian State needs to invest heavily in other areas if it is keen to protect tigers, no matter where they are: increase recruitment; improve ground-level infrastructure in forests (vehicles for patrolling, staff quarters with basic facilities); and provide better training and arming of forest guards, the first line of defence against poaching and illegal public intrusion, who at present, operate with outdated guns and little training.

India is currently the most dangerous country in the world for forest rangers. In 2017, 29 rangers were killed on duty in India; the Democratic Republic of Congo (17) and Thailand (8) made for a distant second and third, says a report of the International Ranger Federation. On January 27, unidentified poachers with weapons hacked to death two guards in the Valmiki Tiger Reserve in Bihar.

In January, in an unprecedented incident, more than 50 forest and police personnel were injured when a mob of relocated villagers brutally attacked them at the Melghat Tiger Reserve in Maharashtra.

To save tigers outside reserve areas — a hugely challenging task — the department needs better tiger tracking systems and specially trained teams to keep an eye on big cats moving outside the protected areas.

Source: Hindustan Times, 3/02/2019

Why the latest study on global forest cover must be taken with a pinch of salt

Like the Indian government’s State of Forest report, the study by two US universities also fails to make a distinction between forest cover and tree cover

A new study published in Nature, a multidisciplinary science journal, has said the global tree canopy cover has increased by 2.24 million square kilometres between 1982 and 2016. Using satellite data, researchers from the University of Maryland, State University of New York and NASA Goddard Space Flight Centre found that the gains made in forest area in the temperate, subtropical, and boreal climatic zones are neutralising the decline that is taking place in the tropics. Interestingly, the study adds, forests in mountain regions are expanding as climate-warming enables trees to grow higher up on mountains. The greatest increase in tree canopy has occurred in Europe, including European Russia (35%). A close second was China, where tree canopy gained 34%. In the US, tree canopy increased by 15%. The important finding is that much of the change is nevertheless anthropogenic; climate change induced vegetation growth is a smaller fraction.

The study, however, has the same limitations that exist in the Indian government’s State of Forest reports because it maps “all tree cover” as one category. The Nature study uses three land-cover categories: tree crops; short vegetation cover; and bare ground. The issue with such categorisation is that “tree crops” could be anything: natural forest, teak plantations, eucalyptus plantations or coconut/arecanut/rubber plantations. But tree covers are not forests, and so telling us about “changes in tree cover” is not very useful.

Second, the reported expansion of “tree cover”, according to the new study, is happening in temperate countries, including temperate parts of China but not so much in the tropics or part of the subtropics. While the study published in Nature does not give countrywise figures, the main change reported for south Asia is bare ground becoming short vegetation cover. This is also not new: over the years, the area under agriculture has expanded and intensified in India because of double cropping/irrigated cropping.

Last, but not the least, one must keep in mind what makes a forest. It is not just the number of trees, but the biodiversity that it nurtures, and so one must always be aware of the difference between a forest cover and tree cover. Since 2003, India has lost over 1,000 sq km of dense forest every year, and compensated roughly half of that with plantations. Such additions only look good on paper.

The same is happening in China where the government has launched a massive tree planting exercise in the past two decades. The tree cover is largely single species, not necessarily native to those regions, and coercive in its creation. Unfortunately, these issues or the impact of such single species (which has a cascading effect on the ecosystem), are never captured in global mappings such as the one published recently in Nature.

Source: Hindustan Times, 6/09/2018

India Among Top 10 Nations in Terms of Forest Area

Our Political Bureau

New Delhi: India has increased its forest and tree cover 1% since 2015 to 802,088 square kilometres despite population and livestock pressures.

India State Forest Report 2017, the 15th in the series of biennial reports that officially record the country’s forest and tree cover, shows the country has added 8,021 sq km of forest and tree cover in the past two years. The report, released on Monday, reveals that India now stands 10th in the world in terms of forest area and eighth in terms of annual forest gain. “The total forest cover of the county is 708,273 sq km, which is 21.54% of India’s geographical area. The tree cover of the country is estimated to be 93,815 sq km, which is 2.85%,” the report said.Three states – Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Kerala – have contributed the most to increasing the forest cover, according to the report.

The overall increase in the forest and tree cover notwithstanding, the report has flagged two areas of concerns – decrease in medium dense forest cover and the decreasing forest cover in states in the Northeast. Twelve states and Union territories have seen a dip in their forest cover.

These include Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and six naturally rich states in the Northeast – Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh and Tripura.

The maximum forest cover reduction in the north-eastern states has been reported by Mizoram (531 sq km), Nagaland (450 sq km) and Arunachal Pradesh (190 sq km).

Source: Economic Times, 13-02-2018

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.

Source: Times of India, 13-12-2016

Forest rights and wrongs

Social activists and wildlife groups must acknowledge that no rights can be championed, nor wildlife saved, if the forests at the centre of the tussle vanish

Soon after daybreak, driving through the forests of Sonitpur district in Assam in late 2005 we made a quick U-turn when a herd of around 15-20 elephants, young ones in tow, emerged from the forest to forage right next to the road leading to the fishing camp at the Nameri Tiger Reserve. The night before, we watched as elephants raided paddy stocks in a village near Balipara, unafraid of the mashaals (fire torches), drums and yells of the distressed villagers. Even as we turned, the matriarch followed our vehicle for 20 metres or so, trumpeting protectively from around 30 metres to make sure we got her message loud and clear.

I know this part of India well and before my eyes, I have seen some of India’s most precious forests sacrificed to satiate political expediency using mistaken notions of tribal rights as a fig leaf to exchange land for votes. On a site visit to the same area 10 years later, I found myself speechless at the sheer destruction. In a decade, virtually the entire standing forest on the right bank of the Jiya Bharoli river had vanished. In its place were sparse mustard fields and scattered tree stumps that spoke of once-tall hardwoods whose trunk girth would have been three or four metres at the very least.

Similar stories unfold across vast areas of Sonitpur. We had predicted such disaster when the Forest Rights Bill was being debated way back in 2004-05. We asked, at the very least, a consensus be arrived at that individual rights not be included. A leading NGO, Kalpavriksh, amongst the most vociferous supporters of the flawed FRA, agreed with us in principle but went forward with other groups who threw such suggestions to the wind. Today, much too late, Kalpavriksh agrees that a site-specific amendment to Section 3 (1) of the Forest Rights Act (FRA), 2006, should have been made in Sonitpur to roll back the 2005 cut-off date to 1980, “in consonance with the Forest Conservation Act.” Subsequent to that admission, no further action was taken.

As we have seen happen time and again with urban slum rehabilitation and regularisation schemes, the horse had bolted. The barn door was never shut. What ails the FRA?

To begin with, the Act was intended only for tribal communities, but this was later extended to all forest “dwellers”. Second, individual rights trumped community rights which is evident from the statistics taken from the website of the ministry of tribal affairs from the report on FRA implementation. According to these statistics, people are predictably keen to claim individual rights as this enables them to encash real estate and other financial opportunities. Third, no time limit was definitively set. Had a cut-off date been effectively applied, we would not be in a position where even today “deforest, encroach and claim rights” continue unabated because gram sabhas would have finalised all rights within two years. And the date was 1980 in the first version of the bill.

Here is what the learned Supreme Court judges had to say in an order passed in response to Writ Petition(s)(Civil) No(s) 109/2008 and 50/2008.

“Mr Shyam Divan, learned senior counsel for the petitioner placed before us certain statistical data which indicates that as on September 30, 2015, approximately 44 lakh claims for recognition of the rights under the above-mentioned Act and grant of pattas came to be filed before the authorities competent to deal with those claims in various states out of which some of the claims were accepted and some were rejected. From the information placed before this court by the petitioners, it appears, approximately 20.5 lakh claims were rejected in the above-mentioned 44 lakh claims. Obviously, a claim in the context of the above-mentioned Act is based on an assertion that a claimant has been in possession of a certain parcel of land located in the forest areas. If the claim is found to be not tenable by the competent authority, the result would be that the claimant is not entitled for the grant of any patta or any other right under the Act but such a claimant is also either required to be evicted from that parcel of land or some other action is to be taken in accordance with law.”

Nevertheless, encroachers are not being evicted even after their claims have been rejected. What is more, most lands allotted are unfit for agriculture, condemning claimants to work as landless labour on the properties of richer landholders. The allotment of such lands means that the tribal families have to survive on sustenance farming without access to water, sanitation, health, education and medical facilities.

Even today, the cutting of trees continues. None of the cutting was or is legal. The tribals never had and still do not have title to the land. The elephant herds have vanished, but every once in a while, they return to raid crops. As many as 30 were poisoned in Sonitpur by angry farmers. Neither humans nor elephants are safe any longer. The Kameng-Sonitpur Elephant Reserve (KSER) offers refuge to elephants, in a small measure, but almost daily, as a direct result of human interventions, reports of “wild elephant herds creating havoc in Sonitpur,” appear in the media.

The situation is equally distressful in states such as Maharashtra, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Orissa and Andhra Pradesh. Here, too, in order to grow food on forestlands, locals were encouraged to deforest areas with political patronage. The objective is achieved by burning trees and ground vegetation, then planting food crops on the ash-fertilised remains. But, because the vast bulk of the forest nutrients are quickly washed or blown away, such farms are incapable of offering anything more than borderline livelihoods to farmers. This is precisely what gave rise to “marginal farming”, coined by economists to describe millions condemned to penury. Far from creating self-sufficiency, this has ended up eroding India’s food security, in part because downstream farms find themselves deprived of the flood, drought-control and nutrient-spread gifted by upstream forests.

As I write, the discussion seems Daliesque. The FRA provides a 90-day limit for filing claims. The Act was passed in 2005 (Rules in 2007). Can we seriously be discussing new claims even today? Surely we should collectively agree that no limits be allowed or extended under any circumstances? Remember, that our protected area network barely covers three per cent of our land and acts as an insurance against climate change, floods and droughts. Under no circumstances should such lands be open to the claim of any private rights whatsoever. In fact, it is vital that the long-pending rules to define Critical Wildlife Habitats be framed without further delay and that those deemed to be encroachers vacate such biodiverse lands.

Social activists and wildlife groups must both accept that no rights can be championed, nor wildlife saved, if the forests at the centre of the tussle vanish. Social activists talk of “harmonious co-existence”. But I ask — can 6,000 people live in harmony in 600 sq km with 60 tigers and over 600 elephants with the nearest market for forest produce being six km away? Given that the FRA is a reality and without going into the merits or demerits of the legislation itself, I wonder whether it might be possible for those living next to forests to form cooperatives with the singular purpose of restoring eco-systems back to health on their own lands. This may be easier said than done, but it is possible if a basket of benefits can be channelled to communities that opt for eco-system farming, instead of bajra, wheat or paddy. If this is achieved, the answer to the rhetorical question “Can the Forest Rights and Wildlife (Protection) Acts be friends?” might well be “Yes!”. But I am not holding my breath.

The writer is editor, ‘Sanctuary’ magazine

Source: Indian Express, 15-11-2016

Assured on tribal rights, RS OKs afforestation funds bill

New Delhi: TIMES NEWS NETWORK





A much-awaited bill to unlock an over Rs bill to unlock an over Rs 42,000 crore fund for compensatory afforestation and wildlife protection has been passed by Parliament, with the Rajya Sabha finally approving it on Thursday after the government's assurance that the rules to be framed would safeguard the interests of forest dwellers and tribals.The Lok Sabha had passed the Compensatory Afforestation Fund (CAF) Bill during the Budget session. The bill, once it gets the President's assent, will also create an institutional mechanism for use of fresh accrual of an estimated Rs 6,000 crore per annum (over the Rs 42,000 crore lying unspent till now) that would be collected for diversion of forest land for non-forest use.
Environment minister Anil Dave assured opposition MPs in the Rajya Sabha that the government would take care of their concerns, and not compromise the rights of tribals, with their consent be ing taken for afforestation and related works under the existing law. “The provisions of the Panchayati Raj Act are also powerful enough to ensure that forest rights and consent of gram panchayats are respected,“ said Dave, adding that deficiencies that emerge in future would be addressed after a year.
On Wednesday , Congress MP and former environment minister Jairam Ramesh had raised concerns on behalf of his party with the apprehension that the legislation would ignore the rights of forest dwellers under the Forest Rights Act of 2006.
But disputing this, BJP MP Bhupendra Yadav on Thursday said: “This government wants to ensure that the country's green cover grows and the rights of those living in forests are protected. This fund will be spent in a transparent manner.“
Among the states, Odisha will get the highest amount of Rs 5,996 crore from the Rs 42,000 crore fund, which means that the state has seen the maximum diversion of forest land for non-forest use.
Any user agency that diverts forest land for a nonforest purpose is, at present, required to deposit prescribed amount to an ad-hoc central government body .This amount is supposed to be utilised to mitigate the impact of diversion of forest land. The ad-hoc body , the Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority (CAMPA), is the custodian of the accumulated amount of Rs 42,000 crore as of now.
The bill is also aimed at setting up the National Compensatory Afforestation Fund at the Centre and the State Compensatory Afforestation Funds. About 90% of the collected fund will be spent by the states for afforestation and other related work, including forest regeneration and wildlife protection. It also provides for setting up a national authority at Centre and state-level authority in respective states to monitor the utilisation of the funds.

Source: Times of India, 29-07-2016

‘Draft’ national forest policy: Good riddance to bad rubbish

A week after the ministry of environment and forests (MoEF) put out a document on its website titled ‘National Forest policy, 2016 (Draft): Empowered Communities, Healthy Ecosystems, Happy Nation’, a senior ministry official last week said the document is only a “study” done by Indian Institute of Forest Management (IIFM), Bhopal, and not a draft policy. The preface to the document, however, said it had been prepared “based on village-level focus group discussions, regional and national level consultations, inputs from various stakeholders and analysis of primary and secondary data sets carried out during the years 2015 and 2016”. In fact, nowhere in the document has it been mentioned that the document should be treated as an input for a new forest policy.

What made the ministry suddenly change its stand on the document? Several civil society organisations have been extremely critical of the ‘draft’ mainly because it proposed to dilute the Forests Rights Act (FRA), do away with requirement of having two-third geographical area of mountainous and hill regions under forests, and for allowing industry to have commercial plantations on the forest land. Not only civil society, media reports suggested that even the Union tribal affairs ministry is unhappy with the proposed dilution of the FRA. The criticisms are not entirely misplaced: If a critical policy like the forest policy ignores FRA, combined with the Centre’s other steps — funneling huge amounts of money through Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority to forest officials, bypassing consent for diversion of forest land, instituting forest ‘rules’ to undercut community management, it shows that the aim is to increase the power of the forest bureaucracy and keep local communities out of the decision-making process.

While devising a new policy, the ministry must not only focus on increasing the forest area and bettering the quality of the forests but also ensure that the connection between forest-dependent communities and forests is not lost. The crux of the problem in India’s existing forest policy — the Forest Policy of 1988 — has been that it made the forest department the manager of the forests and the people lost their rights over it. But as the Uttarakhand forest fires showed recently, a few hundred forest officials and a few thousand employees of the department can do nothing when a calamity strikes. They need community support in such emergencies.

Decisions of the people, by the people, for the people

People’s objections, from Chhattisgarh to Odisha, against large development projects have brought out the real power of the Forest Rights Act of 2006.

Democracy is alive and kicking in India. No, I am not referring to the Assembly elections. It is unfortunate that the term democracy has been reduced to the drama of periodic elections and the subsequent reliance of the electorate on politicians and bureaucrats. When these powerful few do not perform, or, worse, indulge in cynical manipulation of power, we grumble and curse and await the next elections for redressal. This is not democracy.

A direct form of democracy
A series of events reported in the last couple of months provides a very different meaning to democracy, one that harks back to its Greek origin (‘demos’ and ‘kratia’, or power of the people). Unlike the representative form that most countries have adopted, these events point more to a direct form in which people on the ground have the primary power of decision-making.

On March 16, five Adivasi villages in Raigarh, Chhattisgarh, unanimously vetoed the plans of South Eastern Coalfields Limited (SECL), a subsidiary of India’s public sector coal mining giant Coal India Limited (CIL), to mine their forests. These villages were Pelma, Jarridih, Sakta, Urba and Maduadumar.

On March 23, the Kamanda gram sabha of Kalta G.P in Koida Tehsil of Sundargarh district in Odisha unanimously decided not to give its land for the Rungta Mines proposed by the Industrial Infrastructure Development Corporation of Odisha Limited (IDCO).

On May 4, the National Green Tribunal directed that before clearance can be given the Kashang hydroelectric project (to be built by the State-owned body Himachal Pradesh Power Corporation Ltd. or HPPCL), the proposal be placed for approval before the Lippa village gram sabha in Kinnaur district of Himachal Pradesh. The 1,200 residents of Lippa have been waging a seven-year struggle against the project.

And then on May 6, the Supreme Court rejected a petition by the Odisha Mining Corporation seeking the reconvening of gram sabhas in the Niyamgiri hills to consider a mining proposal that the sabhas had rejected in 2013. The court observed that the conclusion of the gram sabhas at that time was to reject the mining, and the petitioner would have to approach an appropriate forum if it wanted to challenge this.

What is the implication of these decisions taken at various levels?

The spirit of the 73rd and 74th Amendments to the Constitution was to move towards more direct deémocracy in villages and cities. However, though over two decades old, these have hardly been implemented. Notable exceptions are where communities have taken power into their own hands — some instances of tribal self-rule in central India; the partial measures of State governments like Nagaland with its ‘communitisation’ law, providing greater powers over departmental budgets to village councils; and Kerala with its experiment in peoples’ planning. Generally, the eminent domain status of the government has been used to override local objections. Development decisions are top-down, and communities or citizens have no significant financial and legal powers.

Among the first instances when the power of a community to provide or withhold consent for a development project was recognised was in the case of the Vedanta corporation proposal to mine in the Niyamgiri hills. In its order of April 2013, the Supreme Court directed the government to hold gram sabha meetings to ascertain the opinion of the Dongria Kondh Adivasis living there. All 12 gram sabhas rejected the project, forcing the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) to withdraw permission for mining. Loath to give up a lucrative deal, the State government launched a fresh bid to overturn this by approaching the Supreme Court again in early 2016 (through its Odisha Mining Corporation). It had, meanwhile, done everything possible to scare the Adivasis into submission through regular harassment (including imprisonment and killing of tribal members) by armed police forces. The Adivasis have stood firm in the face of this repression, and the Supreme Court’s recent decision is a vindication of their campaign.

Community’s consent

Some of these decisions have also belatedly brought out the real implications of the Forest Rights Act of 2006, so far poorly implemented in most parts of India. The Act provides for recognition of the rights of communities to govern, use, and conserve forests they have traditionally managed and used, reversing 200 years of colonial and postcolonial history in which the state had taken over control of forests. Logically such a right should mean that any activity in a community-governed forest should be subject to consent by the community, in recognition of which the MoEF issued a circular in 2009, requiring such consent for diversion of forests for development projects. In one way or the other, most of the above assertions or decisions are linked to such powers under the Forest Rights Act, coupled with constitutional guarantees and other laws such as the Panchayats (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act, 1996 or PESA.

The principle of ‘free and prior informed consent’ (FPIC), enshrined in international agreements for some years, was reiterated most strongly in the recent UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. India has not yet brought this into its legislative framework, other than in partial forms such as the circular under the Forest Rights Act and the long-forgotten PESA. The events of March to May provide an occasion for peoples’ movements to press for FPIC to be incorporated as a central tenet of all development and welfare planning. Widespread mobilisation on this is necessary because the Central government is otherwise on an overdrive to dilute hard-fought rights of freedom of speech and dissent, access to information, and decentralised decision-making.

Beyond FPIC, deeper democratic reforms would help ordinary people get political, economic, and legal powers through grass-roots collectives that enable them to take decisions affecting their lives. Such direct or radical democracy needs to be the fulcrum on which more representative institutions at larger scales would operate, downwardly accountable through various mechanisms. Accompanying it would be alternative pathways of human well-being including forms of economic activity that are ecologically sustainable, directly in the control of people rather than the state or corporations, more locally self-reliant and less dependent on fragile global webs of exchange. Many initiatives in India are already proving the viability of such pathways. Such a democracy will look very different from the partial, rather lame, form we have today.

(Ashish Kothari is with Kalpavriksh, Pune.)

Keywords: Forest Rights Act of 2006, Development projects, India, Chhattisgarh, Odisha

Source: The Hindu, 18-05-2016

National body to formulate standards for forest certification

After years of disagreement between the government and non-government stakeholders, the country is a step closer to having its own national forest certification system in place. On March 16, representatives of forest-based industries, non-profits, forest auditors and government forest departments launched a body called Network for Certification & Conservation of Forests (NCCF).  The body will now set standards for certifying India’s forests and their products, with an aim to ensure their sustainable management.

Forest certification is a market-based mechanism which ensures that domestic forest produce commands better price in the global market, while encouraging sustainable harvesting of forests in the country. Over 430 million hectare (ha) forests worldwide have been certified against the internationally recognised standards for sustainable forest management. Regulations from developed countries—which include Lacey Amendment Act, 2008 (USA); European Union Timber Regulation (EUTR); Illegal Logging Prohibition Act, 2011 (Australia)—have put a ban on timber and timber products from unknown sources to avoid illegal felling. Majorly, this has fuelled the need for forest certification in the recent past. Besides, certification leads to better management of forest resources by promoting responsible trade in forestry.

Urgency to protect forests missing
India, however, has made little progress in forest certification. Of the total 78.92 million ha forest and tree cover in the country, only 0.8 million ha of forests has been certified so far. The total supply of certified wood in India is less than 10 per cent of the total demand. The major reason for little progress has been the government’s reluctance to subject the forests managed by it to an independent and third party scrutiny. Unlike in European or Latin American countries where majority of the forests are private or community owned, in India most of the forests are administered by the government.

“The attitude of the Union Ministry of Environment, Forests & Climate Change (MoEF&CC) reflects that the government thinks that forests do not need any certification for their management,” an official in the ministry had told Down To Earth. This is the reason why even a plan to establish a government-sponsored forest certification council, which was about to get through four years ago, has not seen the light of the day till today. “The reason for forest certification not picking up even in private forests in India is that the unified criteria established by the renowned global certification body do not go well with the Indian conditions. Also, the process of getting certified by these bodies is very expensive,” added K K Singh, chairman of NCCF.

To overcome this problem, the non-government actors in forestry have come together to establish India’s own certification standards. The standards will be evaluated and endorsed by the global forest certification body Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC). PEFC, instead of prescribing a single set of standards for sustainable forest management, helps countries build their own specific standards and provides its certification endorsement to the forests based on these standards. For certification, the forests will be evaluated by independent accredited forest auditors. Based on the audit report, the NCCF and PEFC will provide the certification together.

A gap that needs attention
Though MoEF&CC has endorsed the NCCF by putting two of its officials as its board members, it is unlikely that many of the government forests will be subjected to scrutiny for certification. However, NCCF members are hopeful that once the standards are established, at least the private plantations will embrace the certification mechanism. “The price of certification can easily be offset by the premium the producer would get on the certified products. Once there is enough domestic demand for certified products and the government realises the value of certification, I hope even the government forests will be certified in large extent. This will be a major step in combating the climate change,” added the NCCF chairman. 

India’s forest cover up by 5,871 sq km

Of the 5,871 sq km increase in the forest cover of India, West Bengal accounts for nearly 64 per cent of this rise, reveals the latest report of Forest Survey of India.

A study conducted by the Forest Survey of India that was recently published points out that West Bengal’s forest cover has increased by 3,810 sq km, which is followed by Odisha where increase in forest cover has been 1,444 km and Kerala where the increase has been about 622 sq km.

Commenting on the increase in forest cover in West Bengal, Principle Chief Conservator of Forest, West Bengal, Azam Zaidi told The Hindu that along with other steps the State’s joint forest management, which involves the participation of the local people, is one of the reasons for the increase.

“Increase in the forest cover of the State is mainly due to coppice growth (dense growth of small tress) and afforestation inside the forests, growth of commercial plantations and shade trees in tea gardens,” the FSI report states.

West Bengal, a state with high population density, has only 18.93 percent forest cover.

Depletion in north-east

Interestingly States from northeast like Nagaland, Arunanchal Pradesh, Tripura and Manipur, whose forest cover comprises over 75 percent of the State’s area, have shown a decrease in forest cover. “The current assessment shows a decrease in forest cover to the extent of 627 sq km in the north eastern region. The main reason for this is attributed to the biotic pressure and shifting cultivation in the region,” the report says.

In Andhra Pradesh, a State with 16.77 percent of its area covered by forest, there has been a decrease of 273 km of forest area. While the forest cover has decreased by 176 sq km in Madhya Pradesh and 53 km in Chhattishgarh, it has increased by 496 sq km in Jharkhand and 446 sq km in Bihar.

The Satellite based remote sensing data that has been used for estimating the change in forest cover has shown that that there has been an increase of 31 sq km of ‘very dense’ forest cover compared to the last assessment carried two years ago. It has also revealed that ‘moderately dense’ forest has decreased by 1,991 sq km while ‘open forests’ have increased by 7,891 sq km, putting the overall increase at 5,871 sq km.

Keywords: forest cover, West Bengal forest cover, Forest Survey of India

Sep 08 2014 : The Times of India (Delhi)

India loses more foresters than any other country

Sivakumar B

Chennai:





India loses more forest rangers to poachers and attacks by wild animals each year than any other country. As many as 72 forest rangers were killed in India in the past three years. Other forested countries in Asia, Africa and the Americas lost less than 10 rangers in the same period, according to statistics made available to TOI by International Ranger Federation, a nonprofit organization to raise awareness of the work of park rangers.“We’re extremely concerned that rangers continue to face high levels of violence and are being murdered (by poachers) at an alarming pace,” International Ranger Federation president Sean Willmore said. Nearly 60% of rangers killed are in Asia, said the federation’s report.
India lost 34 rangers in 2012, a year in which the United States, which had the second largest number of forester deaths, lost only six.
India recorded 14 forester deaths in 2013 and 24 in 2014, the largest among all countries for both years.
The Philippines and Congo lost nine forest guards each in 2013, Uganda seven, and Kazakhstan and Chad six each. Kenya has recorded 10 forester deaths this year, Thailand six, and Tanzania three. Wild animals and poachers were responsible for most ranger deaths but some have also been claimed by diseases like dengue and malaria, as well as forest fires and road accidents. India's forest establishment must be the largest in the world,“ Wild life Conservation Society director Ullas Karanth told TOI. “We have thousands of forest officials, guards and rangers. Our tiger reserves are manned by thousands of people employed by state and central forest departments. They come in contact with wild animals while patrolling, so often their job involves putting their lives on the line.“
The country , by demarcating protected areas, has been successful in protecting wild animals from hunters but this has also led to officials coming under attack, he said. Armed poachers at times have no compunctions about gunning down forest rangers, Karanth said.
A report by International Ranger Federation, an organisation that works to spread awareness of the work of park rangers, says 72 forest rangers died in the country in the past three years. Other countries lost 10 rangers or fewer in the same period.
Ecologist AJT Johnsingh says in sanctuaries like Kaziranga in Assam rangers poachers of rhinos frequently attack forest officials who get in their way . “These officials take on poachers, who kill rhinos for their horns, and sometimes get killed,“ he said. “Forest officials are also vulnerable while on the trail of tigers or ele phants,“ Johnsingh added.
Wildlife activist and sports journalist Joseph Hoover says visitors to Dandeli Wildlife Sanctuary in Karnataka killed a forest official called Naik two years ago. “Naik refused to give them permission to feed crocodiles meat. After an argument, they attacked him, leaving him in a coma from which he never recovered,“ he said.
“Although the world is slowly awakening to the dangers that forest rangers face, we need to turn this awareness into meaningful action on the ground and make sure that the dangerous work rangers do to protect our valuable wildlife receives the support and respect it deserves,“ Willmore of International Ranger Federation said. “This still remains our challenge.“
The federation has 63 ranger associations from 46 countries as members and collects data about the welfare of the rangers from these associations each year.

Jul 10 2014 : The Times of India (Delhi)

Experts fret about forest survey report

Jayashree.Nandi

New Delhi





Slight Rise In `Open' Category, But Dense Forest Not Increasing

There is little to cheer about Forest Survey of India's report that has revealed a marginal increase of 3.61 square kilometres in the forest cover of the city.A finer reading of the data shows Delhi's forest cover has only increased slightly in the `open forest' category . These are forests of less than 40% canopy density which are most likely to be urban parks, very young plantations or even invasive species having little ecological value. The carbon sequestration and pollution combating capacity of these `forests' is half or a third of that of dense, good quality forests.
What is worrying is that the moderately dense forests--with a canopy density over 40% or, in simpler terms, broad canopy cover--have been decreasing consistently since 2003 when it was 52 sqkm. It measures 49.38 sqkm now. Experts have raised doubts about Delhi's afforestation programmes over the past decades that should have added to the dense or moderately dense categories.
“These open forests could be Prospis juliflora or Vilayati keekar, an invasive species with no ecological value. So there is clearly nothing to cheer about,“ said Pradip Krishen who has authored books on the trees of Delhi.
Very dense forest is also reducing slowly since 2007. Before 2005, there was none in Delhi, according to FSI reports. A study by the Bangalore-based Indian Institute of Science published in Current Science journal recently high lighted that FSI has been `overreporting' forest cover data because of the ambiguous definition of forest that it follows.
FSI defines forest cover to be “all lands more than one hectare, with tree canopy density over 10%, irrespective of ownership and legal status“.
This definition could well mean that manmade forests, monocultures and spots like Lodhi Garden are forests. “The data could mean area under parks is going up in certain parts or that there are young plantations,“ said Prof. N H Ravindranath of IISC. Delhi, with its poor air quality, has 78 sqkm of reserved forests and 7 sqkm of protected forests.
A forest department official denied that dense forests are decreasing. “Most of Delhi's forests are scrub forests.
So they look open,“ he said.

Jul 09 2014 : The Times of India (Delhi)

India's green cover grows 5,871 sq km in 2 yrs

New Delhi:





India recorded an increase of 5,871 sq km in its forest cover in the past two years with West Bengal contributing over 60% of the total rise in green area.Odisha, Kerala, Jharkhand and Bihar were some of the other states which contributed to this marginal increase. Hilly and tribal districts of the country registered an increase in forest cover of 40 sq km and 2,396 sq km, respectively .
The northeastern states, which account for one-fourth of the country's forest cover, recorded a net decline of 627 sq km in 2013 compared to the assessment of green cover in 2011. Among bigger states, Andhra Pradesh lost the maximum 273 sq km of forest cover whereas Madhya Pradesh lost 178 sq km of green patch in two years.
These facts emerged out of the latest `India State of Forest Report' (ISFR), which was released on Tuesday by environment and forests minister Prakash Javadekar.
Though India continues to be far behind its target of having 33% of its geographical area under forest, the marginal increase is a positive sign.
Javadekar said, “Decline of forest cover in our northeastern states is, however, a matter of concern. We should not allow this to happen.“
Assuring that his government would work hard to further increase the forest cover, he said, “We will make it a mass movement where people would come forward to not only protect the existing green cover but also plant more and more trees across the country .“
While there is an increase in total forest cover in the country, there is a decrease in the `growing stock' both inside and outside forest area.
This along with decline in forest cover in northeastern states is also a matter of concern.
The report said even in the `moderately dense' forest section, the net change in forest cover between 2011 and 2013 assessments shows a decline 0.62%.
Forest Survey of India (kFSI) has been assessing the forest and tree resources of the country on a biennial basis since 1987.
The results of the assessment are published in its ISFR. Although survey is primarily based on satellite data and its authenticity is widely debated, the FSI director general Anmol Kumar on Tuesday claimed, “The satellite interpretation is followed by extensive and rigorous ground truthing“.
For the full report, log on to http://www.timesofindia.com