Public say in forests on cards

The forest department’s exclusive control over Indian forests may end with the government’s acceptance of a key recommendation of a committee to allow people participation in forest management.

Updated on: Jan 3, 2011, 23:27:56 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The forest department’s exclusive control over Indian forests may end with the government’s acceptance of a key recommendation of a committee to allow people participation in forest management.

The National Committee on Forest Rights Act (FRA), headed by National Advisory Council member NC Saxena, has recommended a three-tier forest management system where some part of the forest will be under exclusive control of people living there— some under joint community-government management and remaining with the forest departments.

“No longer we can continue with the government-controlled forest management,” environment minister Jairam Ramesh said after Saxena’s presentation on major findings of the report. “FRA is an opportunity to bring out change in the forest government structure”.

The new structure is being considered following a finding of the 20-member committee constituted in April 2009, that key clause of the act on ensuring community rights has not been implemented.

Of the total 4 crore hectares of forestland, community rights have been granted in only 20,000 hectares. “Except in Orissa and Chhattisgarh, people’s participation in forests is limited,” Saxena said.

This has happened primarily as state governments have failed to understand what community rights mean. As per FRA, community rights means allowing access to minor forest produce to those who have been living on forestland for three generations prior to 2005.

The biggest stumbling blocking in granting community rights has been Indian Forest Act of 1927, which gave powers to the forest department to book anyone accessing forest produce.

As a first step to grant community rights, the environment ministry will introduce an amendment to Indian Forest Act of 1927 to allow forest dwellers and tribals to exercise rights over minor forest produce and resources.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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