The recent Forest Conservation Amendment Bill will leave the Forest (Conservation) Act (FCA) a hollowed-out shell, said Dr. Sharachchandra Lele, distinguished fellow at Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE), Bengaluru.
“We are sitting today here when the amendments to FCA which makes it a hollowed-out shell of what the Supreme Court thought it should be, have been passed in the Lok Sabha. We need to recognise that the developmental lobby and the control of the State through which the lobby implements its developmental agenda are the biggest source of destruction of forests,” said Dr. Lele speaking at the recently held Sinhasi Social Impact Conference.
The controversial bill passed in Lok Sabha in June states that only those lands notified as ‘forest’ under the Indian Forest Act 1927 or recorded as ‘forest’ in government records will be acknowledged as forests. This is in contradiction to a Supreme Court’s judgement in 1996 which said any land that satisfied the dictionary meaning of the word should be counted as a forest even if they were not officially classified as one.
The much-diluted bill also removes the need for clearance permissions and consent of the local community to strip forest lands alongside railway tracks or public roads, or for the construction of defence or public utility projects in ‘Left Wing Extremism (LWE)-affected’ areas.
“FCA combined with Forest Rights Act (FRA) would have given teeth to getting local consent and bringing local voice into the decision making on our forests along with central and state voices. The Centre has abrogated its responsibility. So, we have to fight bottom up once again and the local communities are our allies,” Dr. Lele said.
Democratic conservation
At the event which was conducted in memory of conservationist M.A Partha Sarathy, ecologists like Dr. Lele and Dr. Nitin D. Rai and ethnobotanist Dr. Siddappa Setty emphasized the need for democratic conservation.
Renowned ecologist Madhav Gadgil and herpetologist Romulus Whitaker who founded the Madras Crocodile Bank and Agumbe Rainforest Research Station took part virtually and echoed similar sentiments.
“Nature conservation is unfortunately often an elitist endeavour. And in this country, the elite are alienated from the masses. Those who aspire to have a genuine movement for nature conservation in this country must become one with the common people of the country,” Gadgil said.
Correcting historical injustices
Dr. Lele noted that the twin pillars of FRA are understanding the historic injustices inflicted upon forest dwellers and acknowledging the democratic rights of people living close to forests.
The Forest Rights Act 2008 recognises the forest dweller’s rights over their land and the community’s rights to manage and conserve the forest. The Individual Forest Rights allows any person from a scheduled tribe to claim the rights to live in and cultivate up to four hectares of land if they occupied and depended on it as of 13 December 2005.
The Community Forest Rights (CFR) recognises the rights of the community over the forest land within village boundaries and allows to collect and use of minor forest produce, use of grazing lands and water resources, and protect and regenerate any community resource.
The implementation of CFR, however, has not been effective in many parts of the country. Dr. Lele pointed out that the Biligiri Rangana Hills (BR Hills) sanctuary in Karnataka is one of the first protected areas in the country to recognise the CFR rights of communities.
Dr. Nitin D Rai noted that the conservation mantra for a long time has been about humans and animals living separately when coexistence has been happening in the country for centuries. The Soligas of BR hills forests, for example, have been coexisting with the tigers.
“We have corporates, markets and bankers interested in commodifying landscapes,” he said expressing his reservations against a market-based approach to conservation.
“They are putting a putting monetary value to eco-services and that’s worrisome. ₹1.76 lakhs per hectare per year has been calculated as the average value of tiger reserves across the country. Whereas Soligas’ concept of relationship with the landscape was never monetary,” Dr. Rai said.
The fight of the Soligas
In 1974 BR Hills was declared a wildlife sanctuary, and in 2011, a tiger reserve. Several members of the Soliga tribe were evicted and relocated, and barred from collecting forest produce. The community subsequently approached the court and secured a favourable verdict.
According to the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, India has a network of 53 Tiger Reserves spread across 18 States covering an area of 75,796.83 sq km. As per the ‘Status of Tigers 2022’ report released recently by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the number of tigers in India has gone up from 2,967 in 2018 to 3,682 in 2022. Karnataka has the second-highest number of tigers after Madhya Pradesh, as per the report.
Several experts have noted that the coexistence of Soligas with tigers which are worshipped by the community as ‘Huliverappa’ has helped in increasing the number of the big cats in BR Hills.
Dr. Sidappa Setty, who has been working with the Soliga community for 29 years, noted that the forest department and communities should work together to manage forests, and while developing a scientific approach towards conservation, traditional knowledge should also be taken into consideration.
“We need to listen to the communities, see what traditional knowledge they have to offer and test it out,” he said.
