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India’s forests, and the rich wildlife and biodiversity that they harbour, are undoubtedly in crisis. However, the notion that large sum of money in the hands of the forest bureaucracy will help address the environmental crisis is ill founded. This will only lead to further environmental degradation and increased conflict with the local communities. Instead of funding a system that is designed to use it against the people and environment, radical restructuring and democratisation of forest governance is required. Funds funda
First of all let us look at how the released CAMPA funds are generated. The rules framed under the Forest Conservation Act, 1980, require that anyone who is given clearance to destroy forests for non-forest purposes (like mining, large dams and industry) must pay for compensatory afforestation (CA) on double the area of degraded forestland or an equivalent area of non-forest land. The second source of CAMPA funds is the net present value (NPV) of forests that the user agencies are now required to pay, under a Supreme Court order, for the permission to destroy natural forests. The key factor that needs to be realised here is that these massive funds are thus generated actually through the destruction of forests. Let us now look at what this "pay-to- destroy forests" system actually means. Large chunks of the 77.5 million hectares recorded as forests either consist of community lands not owned by the Forest Department, as in most of the North-Eastern states, or of ancestral tribal lands that have been declared state forests without recognising the pre-existing rights of communities as required even by the colonial Indian Forest Act of 1927. It was to rectify this historical injustice to the tribal and other forest-dwelling communities that the UPA government enacted the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006 (FRA for short) during its last tenure. While large parts of these "forests" were originally managed or revered by communities and were even recognised as such by the British, other areas comprised the habitat of diverse agricultural and pre-agricultural tribal communities. Tribals and other forest dwellers were thus turned into encroachers on their own land after it was declared state forest. No wonder then that the tribal forested belt that is littered with impoverished people displaced by development or wildlife conservation projects has become the hotbed of the Left wing militancy. These people have been displaced not once, but three to four times, mostly without compensation or rehabilitation. Path of protest Across the country’s forest areas, while thousands of villages are protecting their forests (often from felling by the Forest Department or timber smugglers backed by it), local people are resisting the government’s efforts to divert forestland for companies without even acknowledging the existence of these communities. The Dongaria Kondhs in Orissa’s Kalahandi district are fighting to stop the mining activity on their sacred forested Niyamgiri mountain. Yet, despite the fact that diverting this land is now completely illegal, and Rahul Gandhi had personally promised to protect Niyamgiri, the Environment Ministry has granted environmental and in principle forest clearance for mining it. Even the Supreme Court chose to ignore the objections raised by Dongaria Kondhs against mining activity in Niyamgiri. The villagers who are cultivating the forestland granted to POSCO for its steel plant are also in the same boat, and are not permitting government or company officials to enter their villages. Similar situation prevails in Jharkhand, Andhra Pradesh and Chhattisgarh where tribal lands are being allocated generously for mining and construction of large dams. It is these very states that have contributed the highest percentage of CAMPA funds at the cost of further impoverishment and displacement of the tribal population. On the other hand another set of people are being displaced from their common lands and habitats to make "space" for tree planting to be undertaken with CAMPA funds. The Environment Ministry now requires that non-forest land used for CA must be notified as a reserved or protected forest and transferred to the Forest Department. As the Act itself has no such provision, this is a legally questionable ploy being used by the forest bureaucracy to expand its "zamindari". Had the exclusive forest department control been effective in protecting forests and wildlife, both would not have been in their present dismal condition. Last month, the Konda Reddis, another vulnerable tribe in the agency area of West Godavari district in Andhra Pradesh, were up in arms against the revenue authorities’ attempt to demarcate 10,000 hectares of their customary land as reserved forest. This was for undertaking compensatory afforestation in lieu of the forestland diverted for coal mining by Singareni Collieries Company Limited in the Khammam district. Large areas of such non-forest land are being allocated for CA and forest reservation without any transparent public process. The simplistic assumption is that planting trees in any non-forest land and handing it over to the forest department is superior to the existing biodiversity and people’s uses of that land. But this is simply untrue; natural grasslands or scrub jungles are ecologically and socially more valuable than tree plantations. Meanwhile, the due legal process for recording rights in the Indian Forest Act is once again being thrown to the winds, leading to a fresh wave of injustice and displacement of predominantly tribal communities that are dependent on or inhabit such lands. The extent of potential loss to biodiversity, environmental damage and alienation of the local communities due to their being deprived of their livelihood resources for such CA for the large number of dams and mines in the pipeline, can be imagined. Instead of fundamentally reviewing the faulty concept of CA and the undemocratic process of granting permission for destroying forests without consulting or respecting the rights of local communities, the Environment Ministry has succumbed to the temptation of accessing the accumulated CAMPA funds. In the process, it has accepted institutionalisation of a highly unjust and destructive process of forest diversion. A Standing Committee of Parliament had recommended that forest diversion be made transparent, accountable and democratic, with the consent of the local people, and instead of handing over funds for CA to the forest bureaucracy, user agencies should be asked to mitigate local environmental damage through programmes approved by the inhabitants of those areas. The Forest Rights Act recognises community rights over their customary community forests and empowers the people to protect and manage these for sustainable use. But instead of implementing the law in its true spirit, Forest Departments across the country are sabotaging the recognition of community rights and are illegally evicting forest dwellers from their cultivated lands for plantations. Clearly there is nothing "environmentally friendly" about handing over huge amounts of money and power to an unaccountable and corrupt bureaucracy. There is little hope for the country’s forests and environment unless democratic control over forests is restored.
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Sunderlal
Bahuguna, who was awarded the Padma Vibhushan this year, is one
of the senior-most activists in the country who has devoted his
life to the protection of forests, propagating conservation
efforts and fighting against any attempt to denude the Himalayas
of their forest cover. For years he has single-handedly fought
against the construction of the Tehri hydroelectric project on
the Bhagirathi.