Lumberjack's Law
Will an effort to define forests open them up to commercial use?
Debarshi Dasgupta
The Union ministry of environment and forests feels defining forests will
help it identify and protect them better. Critics feel limiting the meaning
would free forest land for commercial use.
There is no definition of a forest in Indian law but a Supreme Court order
enables the "dictionary sense" of the word to qualify as one of the parameters
The MoEF wants to do away with this broad criterion. Critics fear that
several forests which have not been notified will be released for commercial
purposes.
The definition is currently being discussed with various states, with some of
them expressing reservation
What is a forest? The UPA government's attempt to frame an answer to this
seemingly innocuous question may severely impact the country's ecological
future. Which is why questions are being raised about the effort of the Union
ministry of environment and forests (MoEF) to provide a legal definition for
forests. The ministry says this will help the government identify and manage
the nation's green cover more effectively. Environmentalists and lawyers,
however, allege any definition will only end up freeing vast stretches of
forest land for commercial use. The MOEF, they say, will be doing more harm
than good.
To be sure, there is no existing definition of a forest. Not even in the
Forest Conservation Act, 1980, that regulates the country's green cover. Three
criteria offered by the Supreme Court in a judgement in December 1996 have
helped identify forest lands so far. These include all statutorily recognised
forests, whether designated as reserved or protected; any area recorded as
forest in any government record; and forests as understood by the dictionary
meaning. These criteria, the court noted, applies irrespective of the nature of
ownership or classification of forests.
The definition being proposed by the MOEF has been formulated at the
government's request by the Bangalore-based Ashoka Trust for Research in
Ecology and the Environment. It defines a forest as "an area notified as such
in any act or recorded as forests in any government record". This excludes
man-made plantations, fruit orchards and agroforestry tree crops on private and
community-owned land. It also does away with the broad classification of
forests as understood by the dictionary meaning.
Ritwick Dutta, coordinator of the Lawyers Initiative for Forest and
Environment, a Delhi-based NGO that lobbies for environmental causes, says this
narrower definition will open forest land to commercial exploitation by
business groups. Says he: "Since this definition limits what a forest
encompasses, it is only going to help industries circumvent the due process of
diverting forest land and paying the required compensation. Then, what about
the many areas that may not be notified as a forest but may still qualify as
one in the dictionary sense?"
The compensation a business house has to pay the government for diverting
forest land, known as Net Present Value or NPV, may range from Rs 5.8 lakh to
Rs 9.2 lakh per hectare. A dam that comes up in the Subansiri Valley of
Arunachal Pradesh, for example, can have an NPV as high as Rs 300 crore. Many
state governments see the diversion of forest land as a good source of revenue.
In fact, across the country, forests are being denuded as development
projects make inroads into them, often with scant regard for environment rules.
Last month, the Supreme Court's central empowered committee blew the whistle on
over 40 private projects that were to come up on forest land. It felt that the
Centre's forest advisory committee had cleared them without adhering to the
guidelines.
It has now recommended that the apex court cancel the approval accorded to
these projectsmostly in the mining and power sectorsthat involve diversion of
more than 500 hectares of forest land.
Even the forest survey of India's State of Forest Report 2003 chronicles how
the country's dense forest coverconsidered the richest repository of flora and
faunahas been dwindling. In 2001, the area under dense forest cover was found
to be 4,16,809 square kilometres but that fell by over 26,000 sq km to 3,90,564
in 2003.
M.K. Ramesh, a professor of environmental law at Bangalore's National Law
School of India University, points out that forests unfortunately are being
seen as a commercial venture.
The supreme court recently blew the lid on over 40 private projects that
were to come up on forest land.
"Conservation, incidentally, is no one's primary objective," says he.
"If one looks at the manuals of the forestry training institutes, they promote
monoculture in the name of forests to produce timber. The essential idea, in
short, is to derive the maximum economic benefit out of forests. Maybe this is
where the urge to define forests comes from."
He dismisses the ministry's latest exercise as unwarranted. "The idea of
coming up with a definition of a forest is indeed a wild goose chase," he says.
According to him, even the argument that a definition would help the government
identify forests and protect them borders on the ridiculous. "Why would the
government want to do something like this when it already has all the right to
acquire any forest land and declare it as protected?" asks Ramesh, also the
founder of the university's Centre for Environmental Law Education, Research
and Advocacy.
The ministry's initiative has also been criticised for its redundancy.
Following the Supreme Court's 1996 ruling on what constitutes a forest, states
were asked to form committees to identify forests. "Many did that. Why does it
have to be done all over again?" asks Dutta. Some also see this MOEF move as a
counter to the Forest Rights Act, 2006, that grants ownership of forest lands
to traditional forest dwellers. The Act has been passed by Parliament but has
not been notified so far.
When contacted by Outlook, the MOEF offered no comments on its initiative. It
maintains that a "definite description has not yet materialised and (that) the
consultative process is on". Also, forests, being on the concurrent list, have
to be discussed with the states. Some of them, it is learnt, have opposed the
definition being proposed by the Centre. However, an MOEF note on the subject
says that applying the Forest Conservation Act to areas with scanty tree growth
is questionable since it delays development of rural areas and that forests
require a clear definition given recent concerns about climate change.
Raj Panjwani, an advocate in the Delhi High Court and an environmental law
expert, feels a definition is of no relevance. "Those areas which are
established to be of ecological importance by a scientific body need to be
preserved irrespective of their ownership. Those that are not important need to
be handed over for development," he says. Critics point out that those who
framed the earlier law had the "foresight and wisdom" not to define a forest in
public interest. It seems the questionwhat is a forestmay best be left
unanswered.
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