REDD alert for India's forest-dwellers

The agreement over Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) — a global regime to protect forests — likely at the climate summit in Cancun may create livelihood issues for Indian tribals and forest-dwellers, experts have warned.

Updated on: Nov 30, 2010, 23:42:54 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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The agreement over Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) — a global regime to protect forests — likely at the climate summit in Cancun may create livelihood issues for Indian tribals and forest-dwellers, experts have warned.

The feared alienation has started in Indonesia, where oil companies have taken over forestland to neutralise emissions from their plants in Russia. "The project is expecting to prevent 75m tonnes of carbon being emitted over 30 years, which could earn the firms $750m at a carbon price of $10 a tonne," a report by NGO Friends of Earth (FOE), released before the summit, said.

The REDD scheme is central to slowing or halting deforestation and is likely to be approved at Cancun. But critics say that the scheme amounts to privatisation of natural resources.

"The REDD is in conflict with the Forest Rights Act (FRA)," said Shankar Gopalakrishnan of NGO Campaign For Survival and Dignity, which has been fighting for rights of tribals.

FRA provides for rights of tribals and forest-dwellers. But under REDD, governments can allow companies to take over forests to sequester their carbon emissions. In return, the government will get paid and part of the money can be shared with forest-dwellers.

BS Kishwan, Additional Director General of Forest in environment ministry, however, said, "REDD is not intended to take away rights of indigenous people but to provide them money to protect forests." But he said lack of definition of forests in India can pose problems in implementation.

The British did not define forests and now Indian governments go by dictionary meaning of forest, as directed by the Supreme Court in 1960s. "It will help the companies to... persuade governments to redefine what constitutes a forest," said the FOE report.

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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