Wildlife, tribal affairs ministries spar over bamboo rule

A new rule that gives preference to forest dwellers over wildlife has sparked off a tiff between two Union ministries.

Updated on: Sep 30, 2012, 16:22:29 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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A new rule that gives preference to forest dwellers over wildlife has sparked off a tiff between two Union ministries.

The forest bureaucracy of the environment ministry has raised the alarm over a new rule notified by the tribal affairs ministry, which allows the gram sabha - a body of villagers - to regulate bamboo harvesting.

The environment ministry has said such a move would sound the death knell for Indian wildlife, including tigers and elephants.

The forest department of the state governments had been regulating harvesting of bamboo since 1927, when the Indian Forest Act was notified. However, the power was transferred to the gram sabha under the new Forest Rights Act in September.

Unlike the Indian Forest Act, which categorised bamboo under timber and therefore stipulated regulation by the government, the new law described it as minor forest produce.

Around 13.96 million hectares - or one-fifth of the country's forest area - accommodates bamboo trees. Besides being a principal source of food for elephants and some ungulates, it provides cover to terrestrial birds, reptiles and small mammals.

The main area of concern of the forest bureaucracy is a new rule that does not provide for any limitation on how much bamboo can be harvested, and talks only of its management plan.

"It is a recipe for ecological disaster," said a senior Indian Forest Service official, adding that it would increase human-animal conflict and reduce green cover for wildlife.

Secretary environment T Chatterjee and Director General of Forests PJ Dalip Kumar had suggested a restriction saying that naturally fallen bamboo should be declared minor forest produce for locals to harvest.

Remaining bamboo should remain under the control of the Forest Departments, they said in an official communication to the environment minister Jayanthi Natarajan.

Many wildlife activists agree with the concern raised by IFS officers. According to them, the extraction of bamboo on such a scale - without a proper scientific analysis of its ecological repercussions - cannot be supported.

They want the rules to be amended to include sufficient safeguards, including the declaration of only pre-harvested bamboo as minor forest produce and not making the rules applicable to 600 protected areas - including tiger and elephant reserves.

The tribal affairs ministry, however, ruled out any change by saying that the new rules have been notified after consultation with various stakeholder ministries. Forest rights activists say that the forest bureaucracy has deprived local forest dwellers of their traditional rights.

"Indian forests have survived because of those living inside them, not because of foresters," said a tribal right activist.

"The time has come to give the poor their due."

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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