The MoEFCC recently released the draft National Forest Policy 2018. Click here to know more.
The shift in approach and various other provisions in the policy raise some serious ecological and social concerns.
What does forest policy aim at?
The multiple goods and services that forests offer, flowing to different beneficiaries, cannot be simultaneously maximised.
Forest policy, therefore, focusses primarily on which benefits and beneficiaries to prioritise.
Another focus area is to decide when and through what process to allow diversion of forest land for “non-forest” activities.
What was the earlier policy approach?
Forest policy in colonial India focussed on maximising products and revenues for the state.
The imperial forest department functioned as sole owner, protector and manager of the forest estate.
Unfortunately, post-Independence policy too continued this 'state-managed forestry' approach.
Forests were seen as sources of raw material for industry.
On the other hand, local communities were merely treated as labour.
How did 1988 forest policy address this?
In a paradigm shift, the 1988 Forest Policy recognised the multiple roles of forests.
Significantly, it prioritised environmental stability over revenue maximisation.
It acknowledged the rights of forest-dependent communities on forest produce.
Also, the policy emphasised people’s involvement in protecting and regenerating forests.
It thus formally recognised the limitations of state-managed forestry.
What is the post-1988 experience?
Devolution of control - Joint forest management (JFM) was initiated in the 1990s to facilitate people’s involvement.
Foresters created thousands of village forest committees.
But their autonomy and jurisdictions were severely limited.
Donor money was spent on plantations but activities were stopped once funds ran out.
“People’s participation” by executive order was too weak.
What was actually required was substantive devolution of control over forests
Community rights - The Forest Rights Act (FRA) of 2006 created a historic opportunity for such devolution.
Its community forest resource provisions gave communities rights to both access and manage forests.
Forest Diversion - FRA also democratised the forest diversion process.
It mandated community concurrence for forest diversion once community forest rights are recognised.
E.g. the Adivasis of Niyamgiri in Odisha exercised this provision to prevent bauxite mining in their sacred hill tracts.
What are the concerns with the new draft forest policy?
Production forestry - In the past, production forestry has led to replacing
natural oak forests with pine monocultures in the Himalayas
natural sal forests with teak plantations in central India
wet evergreen forests with eucalyptus and acacia in the Western Ghats
All this had significantly affected forest diversity.
It has dried up streams and undermined local livelihoods.
Ecology - The stress on commercially important species like eucalyptus and poplar raises concerns for the ecology.
These species are known to be water-demanding, with deep root systems that deplete groundwater.
Also, poplar and eucalyptus have negative allelopathic properties i.e. they do not encourage vegetative growth under their cover.
Non-indigenous plantation species to meet afforestation targets and timber requirements would be counterproductive to public investments in such initiatives.
Livelihoods - There are about 1.3 lakh villages in and around India’s forests.
An estimated 350-400 million people depend directly on these forests for sustenance, involving in management and protection.
The new policy fails to acknowledge this symbiotic relationship between the tribal people and forests.
Community Participation - There is little about decentralised governance in the draft policy.
Local communities would have challenged the production forestry model if they had had a say in forest governance.
PPP - The 1988 policy clearly states that the requirements of the local communities should not be sacrificed for the sake of forest based industries.
However, the PPPs in the new policy go against this and will entail more forest destruction.
It is a way of granting the private sector access to public resources.
The profits and benefits are also thus likely to end up in corporate hands.
Mechanism - The draft policy talks of “ensuring synergy” between gram sabhas and JFM committees.
But the actual need is to replace JFM committees with statutorily empowered gram sabhas.
Harmonization with other laws like the FRA could certainly leave scope for concern in administrative jurisdictions.
It may put environmentalists and bureaucracy at loggerheads as the former may see it as an attempt to weaken the role of gram sabhas.
In all, the new Policy seems to be falling back to the practice of state-managed forestry of the 1950s as well as shifting focus from community and ecology to industry and raw materials.
