Report of the Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel - Part II : Actionable points for the WGEA : 2.5 Forests and Biodiversity

Opinion
       27/11/2018
                1573.

SUB : Report of the Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel - Part II : Actionable points for the WGEA : 2.5 Forests and Biodiversity

REF : 2.5 Forests and Biodiversity

2.5 Forests and Biodiversity

Our nation is evidently at a crossroads today, with grave misgivings on continuing with business as usual. This then is an appropriate juncture at which to undertake a fresh assessment of the forestry–biodiversity sector from a scientific perspective. The spirit of science is captured well in J D Bernal’s (1939) definition that ‚science is an organized enterprise of scepticism‛. Professor Satish Dhawan, who served as Secretary, Space Department of Government of India from 1972–1980 was such a true scientist. He was very skeptical of the claims of the forestry establishment that as much as 23% of the country’s land was under forest cover. So he asked his colleagues in the Space Department to undertake an independent assessment with the help of satellite imagery. Their estimate was far lower at 14%. This stimulated a healthy dispute leading to a so-called reconciliation at
19%. Unfortunately, the sceptical spirit was buried with the handing over of the job of the continuous monitoring of forest cover, with the help of satellite imagery, to the Forest Survey of India, an agency of the forestry establishment itself, and naturally unable to act

Another pithy statement about what constitutes the scientific spirit comes from the mathematician-philosopher Whitehead (1927): ‚Modern science accepts brute facts, whether reasonable or not!‛ One such set of brute facts relates to the existence of paper tigers. When tigers were no more being sighted at Sariska, despite the official claims that many existed, the Prime Minister set up a Tiger Task Force (2005). The Task Force could access information available with the field staff and could put together the following picture (Tiger Task Force 2005)

I. Tiger population estimates in Sariska Tiger Reserve :

Evidently, the establishment was deliberately circulating misleading information. In spite of the Tiger Task Force putting this on record, no action was ever initiated to penalize those responsible for this perjury. There is thus abundant evidence that business as usual will simply not do.

*Issues of Concern :

1. Scientific basis of forestry and biodiversity management :

The British introduced the current system of Forest Management in India some 150 years ago with claims that it was a scientific system that would result in sustainable harvests. Both these claims of scientific basis and of sustainability are of dubious validity. Science must stand on a solid bedrock of empirical facts. An important weakness of so-called scientific forestry is the lack or poor quality of its database, as the two examples cited above make abundantly clear.

In the 1960’s the Forestry establishment decided to abandon the "cautious" approach of conservation forestry and to become ‚aggressive"– clearfell and raise plantations, such as those of exotic tropical pine or Eucalyptus species (Gadgil, Prasad and Ali 1983; FAO, 1984; National Commission on Agriculture, 1976). Regrettably, there was no careful scientific research on which species would succeed and what productivities could be realized. Some of the very best of the Western Ghats natural forest was clearcut, on the supposition that the new plantations of Eucalyptus would annually produce a biomass of between 14 to 28 tonnes per hectare. A significant proportion of these plantations were a dismal failure, especially in the high rainfall tracts due to fungal diseases cutting down their productivity to just 1 to 3 tonnes per hectare (Prasad, 1984). Many steep slopes of the Western Ghats of Kerala and Karnataka were laid waste as the magnificent old stands of evergreens gave way to miserable stands of sickly Eucalyptus.



Similarly, an assessment of bamboo resources of Karnataka on the basis of the data available from the State Forest Resources Survey, paper mills, and extensive field work showed that the stocks were overestimated by a factor of ten (Gadgil and Prasad 1978, Prasad and Gadgil 1981). Scientific management also calls for knowledge of growth patterns to decide on a harvesting regime that will make the most of the growth potential. Yet, a majority of the preservation plots set up in the early 1900s to collect data on girth increments of different tree species under different environmental conditions in the country are either poorly maintained or destroyed (Gupta 1981). Similarly, Karnataka Forest Department’s prescriptions on the number of bamboo culms to be extracted from a clump were flawed because of a failure to appreciate the exponential nature of the growth of a bamboo clump and consequent excessive harvests from smaller-sized clumps (Kadambi 1949). Furthermore, the practices involved cleaning of the thorny covering developing naturally at the base of a bamboo clump. This was supposed to promote better growth of new shoots. In fact, removal of the thorny covering rendered the young shoots readily accessible to grazing by a whole range of animals so that the recruitment of new culms to the clumps remained very poor and the bamboo stocks remained stagnant. In contrast, the local villagers were fully aware of this difficulty attendant on clump cleaning and left the thorny cover intact while harvesting bamboo for their own use (Prasad and Gadgil 1981).

2. Working Plans as hypotheses :

The modern scientific method has been termed the ‚hypothetico-deductive‛ method. Hence, a truly scientific enterprise would treat documents such as ‚Working Plans‛ as scientific documents to be made available for peer review by all interested parties, not as official secrets. The yields expected to be realized, and the stocks expected to be left behind after the harvests, would be treated as hypotheses to be tested. If the yields do not materialize, or the stocks are not sustained, then a scientific enterprise would acknowledge that there are obvious errors of fact or logic, and attempt to look for these and correct them. It would also try to bring on board all interested parties, technical experts, as well as other stakeholders from civil society, in an effort to understand the mistakes and correct them.

In its place, all that happens is occasional remarks on the efficacy of earlier Working Plans when new ones are prepared. To quote one such: ‚In the Yekkambi-Sonda area the A coupes under Edie's plan and replacement felling areas under Garland's plan have resulted in total exploitation of all valuable species<. Most of the overwood of valuable species had been removed under the so-called "uniform system" over large stretches of reserve forest area in the false hope of inducing natural regeneration of teak and other valuable species. ... Garland's replacement fellings under uniform system was a total failure as it failed to induce or establish natural regeneration of teak or other valuable species (Wesley, 1964).‛ But such observations are not shared widely, exposed to scrutiny, and followed up as should routinely happen in any scientific exercise.

3. Non-sustainable forest use :

It is, of course, the responsibility of the Forest Research Institute at Dehra Dun to review the information so generated and build up a consolidated picture. That would have brought out the utter lack of sustainability. But no such exercise has ever been undertaken. An exception is an FAO-sponsored study of the history of Quilon division in Kerala by Dr. C.T.S. Nair (FAO, 1984). The area under investigation was initially divided into a ‚selection circle‛, from which harvests were meant to be organized so as not to eat into the forest capital, and a ‚protection circle‛ encompassing steeper hill slopes, where the forest was expected to be kept intact in perpetuity to serve its watershed functions. The study revealed that the capital

of tree growth in the selection circle had been declining progressively. The response was to convert it into a ‚clearfelling circle‛ and to completely liquidate all tree growth, replacing it by monoculture plantations. At the same time, part of the hill slope ‚protection circle‛ that was supposed to be perpetually left untouched, was brought under the selection circle. As this addition to the selection circle was also overexploited, these steep hill slope areas were also clear felled, and the selection circle was extended to yet steeper slopes. This is a classic example of the process of sequential overexploitation.

4. Sequential overexploitation

Indeed, India’s forest resources have been continually subjected to such a process of sequential overuse. Prasad and Gadgil (1981) illustrate this process of non-sustainable use of pulpwood resources by paper mills along several dimensions. The contractors supplying bamboo rarely adhered to prescriptions. Instead of removing a fraction of culms from all clumps throughout a block, they removed all culms from the clumps most accessible from the road. Next year a fresh road would be made further inside the block and all roadside clumps clearfelled, and so on in a sequence reaching into less and less accessible terrain. Secondly, as the forest areas nearby the mill were depleted, supplies were drawn from further and further away. Thus WCPM (West Coast Paper Mill) in Karnataka first went to neighbouring Andhra and then further afield to Garhwal, to Assam, and finally to Nagaland. Thirdly, as the supplies of bamboo, the most suitable species for paper making, dwindled other harder and harder woods were tapped. Fourthly, the mills moved from reserve forest land, from which they acquired supplies subsidized by the state to the tune of 1.50 rupee per tonne of bamboo (when the market price was 5000 rupees per tonne), to use of bagasse from sugarcane, or to Eucalyptus grown on farm lands (Gadgil, M. and Guha, R.1992 Gadgil,M. and Rao, P.R.S. 1998).

5. Knowledge management :

The system of knowledge management of the forestry establishment is not an open, participatory system in the spirit of science. Rather, it is a system emphasizing monopoly over collection and interpretation of data. Thus the Tiger Task Force (2005) recorded the following statement by Raghunandan Chundawat, a wildlife researcher: ‚Unfortunately in last three decades no system has been created that encourages or institutionalizes access to available professional research in protected areas nor that takes advantage of the growing body of professionals with expertise in relevant areas who work outside the government. We need to change the attitude of our management from a guard protecting jewels to a librarian who is managing library of unexplored knowledge and inviting people for learning. These problems occur now and again because we have failed to create a system, which supports and provides protection to independent research in the country.‛

Just to cite an example of an experience of mine [Madhav Gadgil:MG] from the pre-RTI era, at a meeting in the early 1980s in Kolkata, presided over by the Finance Minister of West Bengal to discuss environment and forest issues, the PCCF asserted that Working Plans are technical documents that must never be made available to the general public. In the early 1980s, MG was informed that a full set of Working Plans for India was not available at any institution in India, including FRI at Dehra Dun. Subsequently, MG could access and study them at the Commonwealth Forestry Institute at Oxford. When the proposal to clearfell large tracts of natural sal forests of Bastar and plant them up with tropical pine was opposed by many tribal groups, MG came to serve on a committee looking into the whole programme. The choice of tropical pine was being pushed on the basis of supposedly high production of a pilot plantation of the species. As a committee we discovered that this pilot plantation lay in ruins, and there were no proper records available of the performance of tropical pine at all. The whole affair was a gigantic fraud (Gadgil, M., Prasad, S.N. and Rauf Ali 1983)
Are forests/wildlife being genuinely protected?

On conquering India, the British described the land as an ocean of trees, teeming with wildlife. This heritage has been liquidated under the so-called scientific management, initiated under colonial rule. The pace of destruction has only accelerated on independence – through liquidation of private forests, through large scale felling as roads connected hitherto inaccessible regions on account of development projects, through decimation of the resource base of forest-based industries that have been practicing excessive, undisciplined harvests. All this served the interests of the ruling classes; it was in no way being driven by the marginalized rural, tribal communities, who were being blamed all the time by the officials.

A classic case of how these groups were victimized was that of the village forests of Uttara Kannada district, earlier a part of Bombay State. The village forests of Chitragi, Muroor-Kallabbe and Halakar were established in 1930 as a rare example of implementation of the provision for handing over reserve forests as village forests in the Indian Forest Act 1927. This was done on the basis of recommendations of a Forest Grievance Enquiry Committee of the district in 1922, which had praised the age-old, excellent community level management of these three villages. They were functioning well till the linguistic reorganization of the state brought Uttara Kannada district into Karnataka. The Karnataka Forest Department promptly served notice on these Village Forest Committees liquidating them on the pretext that the Karnataka Forest Rules had no provision for village forests. Tragically, the Chitragi villagers totally destroyed their dense forests within fifteen days of receiving the notice, while those of Halakar and Muroor-Kallabbe appealed the order. The people of Halakar finally won their court case after 28 years of litigation and have continued to manage their village forest very well to this day.

Some six years ago, a CBI enquiry ordered into the Sariska tigers debacle reached the conclusion that the tigers could not have been poached without official connivance. Nevertheless, no official was ever brought to book, while many local villagers were arrested and beaten up by the police.

Consider also the following recent news item. (Box 4) Box 4: Patch of Shola forest cleared in violation of laws: probe A patch of Shola forest in Kodaikanal has been cleared in violation of forest protection laws and a road was unauthorisedly laid to facilitate construction of a resort, a departmental probe by senior forest officials has revealed. According to Forest department sources, local forest officials cleared a patch in Tiger Shola (evergreen forest) Reserve Forest in Perumalmalai division in Perambukkanal beat in Kodaikanal forest division. A team of officials led by K. Palani, District Forest Officer, Sirumalai Interface Forest Division, Kodaikanal, conducted an inquiry into the incident and submitted a report to the Department. The report submitted by the team led by Mr. Palani said the Dindigul district administration issued orders to cut 3,000 eucalyptus trees on a private land in Adukkam village. Following this, the private land owner laid a new road for a distance of 362 meters with a width of 3.50 meters. Earth-moving equipment was used to lay the road and the obstructing Shola forest trees were uprooted. Rocky patches in the area were destroyed using dynamites. According to the report, the incident came to light on March 24 this year (2011) when the Assistant Conservator of Forests, Kodaikanal, inspected the Tiger Shola Reserve Forests. He immediately intimated the violation to the District Forest Officer, Kodaikanal. A case was registered by the Forest officials, who secured two labourers in this connection. When they were about to be produced before the magistrate one of them escaped. This was the official version of the local Forest officials, the report said. Non-inclusion of real offenders in the case, delayed registration of the case, failure to seize the vehicles used for laying the road, the failure of the Forest Ranger to submit a timely report about laying of road to the District Forest officer were some of the findings of the report. Even after realizing the importance of Shola forests, these were allowed to be destroyed to lay the road in Reserve Forests and the District Forest Officer failed to conduct a field inspection before allowing the cutting of eucalyptus trees. These were some of the major violations found by the special team, which conducted the investigation, the report further said. S. Subashkar, Forest Guard, Perambukkanal beat; D.A.S. Nathan, Forest, Perumalmalai division; N. Musthafa, Forest Ranger, Kodaikanal; M.Chandru, Forester, Hill Area Protection Range, Kodaikanal; R.Paramasivam, Range Officer, Hill Area Protection Range, Kodaikanal; and the District Forest Officer D. Sampath were indicted in the report for failing in their duty. ‚It is condemnable that there was an attempt to show that much of the extent on which the road was laid in Tiger Shola Reserve Forest land belonged to privately-owned patta land, thereby seeking to surrender reserve forest land in favour of private parties,‛ the report said. It estimated that an extent of 20 hectares of forest land was sought to be projected as patta land.

6. Economic efficiency of performance :

All public sector and government operations are notoriously wasteful of India’s limited economic resources. But we have a few careful studies. One such is Somanathan’s work on relative efficiency of State versus Van Panchayat management in the state of Uttarakhand. There is strong evidence from Kumaun that this type of community management is far more cost-effective than state management (Somanathan, Prabhakar et al. 2009). Van Panchayats have been at least as effective at conservation as the state has, and at one-tenth the cost. Another study, currently under review (Baland et al, 2008), strengthens this finding by concluding that tree damage in Van Panchayat forests from the lopping of branches is considerably less than that seen in Reserved Forests, while other measures are not significantly different.

II. Quality of governance :

1. Extortion :

Finally, we need to consider the quality of governance by the forestry and wildlife establishment. That too leaves much to be desired. The forest officials have notoriously used their regulatory powers to harass and extort resources from rural and tribal communities. While all are aware that this has been going on all over the country, there is little proper documentation of the process. So, MG interviewed a number of forest fringe villagers from Nandurbar and Gadchiroli districts of Maharashtra. They report that every such family ends up losing between 1500 to 3000 rupees per year in the form of cash, grain, chicken, liquor or forced labour such as supply of fuelwood as bribes to Forest Department personnel. Similarly some 2 crore families in India live in the forest vicinity. If they pay an average of even Rs. 1000 per year, this amounts to an underground economy of 2 billion rupees, firmly rooted for at least 150 years.

2. Failure to implement official programmes :

In India today it is in the tribal and other forested lands that nature is most bountiful. Sadly, the human communities coexisting with this wealth of nature are afflicted by poverty and malnutrition. Clearly we must transform the system that has created this equation of riches of nature coupled with deprived human communities. Of course, we must conserve, and, indeed, rejuvenate nature; but surely not by treating our own people as enemies. The many different components of our own society and our system of governance are undoubtedly
inflicting wounds on the natural world today. So, all of us must learn to deal with natural resources in a disciplined and prudent manner. But this cannot be achieved merely through imposing restrictions on communities living close to nature. After all, such communities do have a greater stake in the health of the environment. However, it is only in exceptional cases that local people are today taking good care of the natural world. This is because, beginning with the British times, people have been deprived of all rights over natural resources, and these have been dedicated, initially to meeting colonial demands and lately to serving industrial and urban interests. We have made available to the plywood industry for as little as sixty rupees, giant wild mango trees which yielded fruit famous for pickles worth hundreds of rupees every year. Such perverse incentives have destroyed people's motivation for guarding nature.

Fortunately the tide is turning. Joint Forest Management (JFM), Extension of Panchayati Raj to Scheduled Areas (PESA), Protection of Plant Variety and Farmers’ Rights Act (PPVRFA), Biological Diversity Act (BDA) and the Scheduled Tribes and other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Rights over the Forest) Act (FRA) have conferred substantial rights over natural resources to local communities. Along with the rights, of course, comes the duty, the responsibility of using this natural wealth prudently, in a sustainable fashion. At the same time, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme has opened up opportunities to earn a livelihood, while protecting nature, and rejuvenating natural resources. If we employ the provisions of all these various acts in an integrated fashion, it is surely possible to accomplish a great deal.

III. It must be admitted of course that many people have misgivings about these people-oriented acts, especially, FRA. They fear that :

 The rights conferred on tribals and traditional forest dwellers would result in large scale tree felling.

 The implementation of this act will adversely affect wildlife and biodiversity.

 Tribals and forest dwellers would not be in a position to prudently manage Community Forest Resources.

 Outsiders will capture the land of forest dwellers and encroach on lands rich in natural wealth.
But let us ask, what may we expect, if in place of local communities, we give more powers to the state machinery? Will this lead to better protection of the forest cover, of wildlife, and halt encroachment of outsiders? Consider our experience of the last six decades of independence, leaving aside the awful destruction of the continent, which the British described as an ocean of trees on their first arrival, during the colonial period.

 When nearly 11 % of the country's land surface under privately-owned forests was made over to forest authorities, delays and corruption resulted in destruction of the bulk of this tree cover.

 Due to developmental projects whenever roads reached earlier inaccessible forest areas, there ensued large-scale felling of state forests.

 Forest-based industries, to which were made available bamboo, or huge trees for pulpwood at throw away prices, promptly exhausted these resources.

 Forest Development Corporations turned themselves into (in the words of Dr. Salim Ali and Mrs. Indira Gandhi), Forest Destruction Corporations and clear-felled huge tracts of rich natural forest without ensuring its replacement by productive forests.

 Forest departments played a major role in destroying sacred groves under many guises.

 With people viewing forest authorities as their enemies, the notorious criminal Veerappan remained at large for two decades, despite killing several government officials, and devastated the sandal wood trees and tuskers of Karnataka and Tamilnadu.

 All tigers were poached out of the very well funded Sariska Tiger Reserve. Yet the government machinery did nothing beyond disseminating false information on the number of tigers.

 The anti-people policies of forest authorities have landed rich wildlife habitats like the Keoladev Ghana National Park into serious trouble.
Consider, on the other hand, what our people have accomplished, despite the powers that be continually giving them false promises, trying their best to weaken people’s organizations, and trying to co-opt people into the corrupt system.

 All over the country, keystone ecological resources like peepal, banyan, gular trees survive in good numbers.

 Even today we are discovering new flowering plant species like Kuntsleria keralense in sacred groves protected by people in thickly populated coastal Kerala.

 Monkeys and peafowl still survive in many parts of our country.

 Numbers of chinkaras, blackbuck, and nilgai are actually on the increase.

 People play a leading role in arresting poachers of animals like blackbuck.

 In many parts of Rajasthan people are protecting community forest resources such as "Orans".

 In Nagaland many community forests are under good management.

 Many Van Panchayats of Uttaranchal are managing forest recourses prudently.

 Many village communities of the Central Indian belt are managing well forest resources over which they earlier enjoyed nistar rights.

 Villages like Halakar in Karnataka are still preserving village forests well in spite of many attacks by state machinery.

 Peasants of Ratnagiri district have ensured good regeneration of their private forests

 Thousands of self-initiated forest protection committees of Orissa have regenerated forests brought under community protection. One must also emphasize that the excellent present day forest cover of Switzerland has regenerated entirely on community forest lands.

After all it is the local people that benefit truly by sustaining the health of the local ecosystem. It is they that can guard and nurture these ecosystems most effectively. It is also they who possess locality specific knowledge of these ecosystems to manage them in a flexible fashion. Today we have a tremendous opportunity to work with the people and to protect and rejuvenate our natural resources, while at the same time enhancing the quality of people's lives. It is therefore imperative that we strive to implement not only the letter, but also the spirit of pro-people legislations such as Joint Forest Management (JFM), Extension of Panchayati Raj to Scheduled Areas (PESA), Protection of Plant Variety and Farmers’ Rights Act (PPVRFA), Biological Diversity Act (BDA), and the Scheduled Tribes and other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Rights over the Forest) Act (FRA).

IV. Joint Forest Management :

Joint Forest Management programmes, now about twenty years old, were meant to spread the benefits of forestry to disproportionately poor marginalized citizens who live in the vicinity of forests. However, they suffer from several flaws :

 They do not entitle all residents of a village rights in the management and rights to the products of the forests under their control. Many instances where the poorer inhabitants have been excluded from JFM groups have been seen.

 The JFM groups do not have security of tenure since their control may be taken away through an administrative decision of the forest department of the state government at any time. This leads to insufficient incentive to invest in and safeguard forests.

 Too much control to interfere in management is still vested in state forest departments.

There is no provision for transparent monitoring of forest conservation. As a result, we have no systematic data from which to assess the effectiveness of JFM, only large numbers of unrepresentative case studies. A much better model for decentralized management is the Van Panchayat system of Uttarakhand that began in Kumaun in 1930. There is strong evidence from Kumaun that this type of community management is far more cost-effective than state management (Somanathan, Prabhakar et al. 2009). Van Panchayats have been at least as effective at conservation as the state has, and at one-tenth the cost. Another study, (Baland et al, 2008) strengthens this finding by concluding that tree damage in Van Panchayat forests from the lopping of branches is considerably less than that seen in Reserved Forests, while other measures are not significantly different.

The Forest Rights Act of 2006 allows for community management of forests for tribal people and other forest dwellers as a matter of right, but leaves the design and powers of the community management institution unclear. As the work of last year’s Nobel laureate in economics, Elinor Ostrom shows (Ostrom 1990), it is crucial that there be good design of the community management institution so that it provides the incentive for wise use of forests.

It follows that a well-designed community management system should be put in place throughout India wherever there are people living in the vicinity of forests. This would result in savings in expenditure on the administration of Reserved and Protected Forests of the order of 90%, and would greatly contribute to the welfare of people living near forests. These savings will be realized over time as the forest staff employed in administration and policing duties can be reduced in number. Box 5: JFPM – An experience from the Western Ghats Nagarika Seva Trust (NST), Belthangadi, Dakshina Kannada, from the Western Ghats was closely involved in the initial stages (1993) of JFPM in Kundapura division of Karnataka. Two officers of Karnataka Forest Department (KFD) Mr. M.L. Ram Prakash (CCF) and Mr. K.N. Murthy (DCF) were really interested in forming Village Forest Committees (VFCs) so that the people’s participation in the development and protection of forests was ensured in letter and in spirit. The first VFC was formed at Shirlalu village of Belthangady Taluk. NST facilitated formation of 11 VFCs in Venuru Range. There was great resistance by other FD officers to this process because they felt they would lose their power/control. Because of the commitment of these two officers more than 100 VFCs were formed in Kundapura Division. However, the adjacent Mangalore Division formed 25 VFCs under great pressure, ignoring NGOs/NST but involving timber merchants. Subsequently all these VFCs functioned just under FD without any people’s participation. There is no coordination between VFC and Biodiversity Management Committees (BMCs) set up under BDA. The functions and powers of these two bodies are to be clearly defined. BMCs are more democratic and participatory, though they too have not always lived up to expectation. But at least there is scope for people’s participation with Grama Panchayats linked to them. BMC’s scope should be expanded to cover even areas managed by VFCs or VFCs may be merged with BMCs. This will have better result with people’s participation and there will be more accountability.

V. Convert JFM into CFM :

It may be recalled that the National Forest Policy way back in 1988 had recognized the meeting of local needs as an important goal of forest policy, and had explicitly de-prioritized revenue generation as an objective. It gave a clear incentive for participatory forestry, and recommended creating a massive people’s movement with the involvement of women for achieving the objectives of the policy which included conservation of biological diversity, increasing forest/tree cover, increasing productivity of forests etc. One of the immediate impacts of this policy was the 1990 circular from MOEF asking states to initiate Joint Forest Management schemes for regenerating degraded forests.

The JFM experiment has generated many positive outcomes in different locations, but there are limitations also. The ‘jointness’ in JFM is seriously limited in the field, with day-to-day decisions being controlled by the forest official who is usually the ex-officio secretary of the committee. The silvicultural decisions rest with the FDs, and their focus remains on tree planting (often fast-growing exotic species), thereby adversely affecting graziers and not necessarily meeting even firewood or NTFP augmentation goals. Being implemented as part of bilateral/multi-lateral projects, JFM has tended to be funding-driven and therefore funding-dependent, with activities dropping dramatically after the project is over.

A serious problem is that of elite capture, i.e. capture of resources by a few in the village. This problem bedevils all ‘participatory’ government programmes (such as watershed development), not just JFM. But it is particularly problematic in forest management because there is often divergence of interests over how to manage commonly held resources, between women, graziers, firewood headloaders, NTFP collectors, and those looking for profits from commercial timber/softwood production. Consequently, elite capture actively hurts marginalized groups. FDs often find it convenient to allow elite capture, and in fact to actively use the elite to achieve these objectives while bypassing true participation, which is a difficult and messy process.

FRA provides an opportunity to reverse this situation since all JFM areas as well as forests under exclusive village management should be claimed by the community under section 3(1)(i) of the Act and managed as a community resource. To facilitate the process, FD should provide protection and technical support, and be responsible for ensuring compliance with sustainable use and conservation regulations.

In case the gram sabha or the community is not keen to take over management of JFM forests under FRA, or management claims are not accepted under FRA, the government should take suo moto action to place JFMCs under the Gram Sabhas. This will ensure that the members of the JFMCs are democratically elected by the Gram Sabha. We expect government to learn from the past experience, and make JFM more democratic and participatory, giving highest priority to the livelihood needs of the poorest.

Livelihood support through minor forest products (MFPs) :

Even the best of efforts to promote CFM and participatory JFM may still leave out vast tracts of forests where there is substantial use of forests by local communities but neither community management under FRA, nor JFM are in place. In such areas as well as in CFM/JFM areas, as per the 1988 Forest Policy, government should promote such silvicultural practices that maximise the production of NTFPs and gatherable biomass. Legal safeguards of providing ownership over MFPs to communities under PESA and FRA may not be able to prevent deterioration in the quantity and quality of the gathered NTFPs, or incomes therefrom. Some of the processes that may cause this are: deforestation, preference for man-made plantations in place of mixed forests, regulatory framework, diversion of NTFPs and forests to industries, nationalization of NTFPs, and exploitation by government agencies and contractors in the marketing of NTFPs.

VI. Therefore in addition to guaranteeing that FRA is implemented in letter and in spirit, one would have to address three inter-related issues for ensuring that forest dwellers’ livelihoods are supported and enriched by NTFPs :

1. how to increase NTFP production,

2. how to improve access of the poor to NTFPs, and

3. how to maximize their incomes through marketing.

Multiple objectives to maximise outputs from many products will require innovative and experimental silviculture, which must focus more on the management of shrub and herb layers, and on forest floor management to enrich the soil and encourage natural regeneration. For instance, FD’s present management of sal in Andhra Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh seems to be for timber, and hence only one shoot is allowed to grow. Since sal coppices well, degraded forests and hills close to a village should be managed under a coppice or a coppice-with-standards system for fuelwood and sal leaves.

VII. Sensitising the forest service :

Since both FRA and JFM mandate close collaboration between foresters and local forest dwellers, the need for a sensitive and responsive Forest Department cannot be over-emphasized. Unfortunately, the internal culture of the Forest Department has continued to be hierarchical and authoritarian, and not participative. A paradigm shift in its outlook can be achieved by good training modules at the Indira Gandhi National Forest Academy (IGNFA) and refresher/in-service courses at various institutions. This and other policy measures within the department should aim at the following outcomes :

 greater interaction with forest dwellers and ensuring their all-round economic and social development, involving them at all stages of planning and implementation of forestry programmes run by the Department, and supporting their own planning and implementation of community-based forestry programmes,

 increasing emphasis on environmental conservation for strengthening the base for sustained agricultural production and water security,

 increasing role of watershed and landscape approach to forestry requiring integrated land management,

 increasing interaction between agriculture, animal husbandry and forestry,

 greater public awareness about forestry and the demand for people’s participation in forestry programmes,

 greater appreciation of the role of environmentalists in forest management,

 more adaptive, participatory and transparent planning processes, based on robust research that is open to independent expertise and knowledge including from local communities, and

 increasing focus on understanding and managing complex ecosystems, helping sustain their resilience and adaptability in the face of multiple challenges including climate change, conserving a range of native biodiversity rather than only individual megafauna species, and helping revive/sustain threatened species of both plants and animals.

Box 6: Note on FRA Implementation for Kadars, a Primitive Tribal Group, in Vazhachal Forest Division

1. While the Kadars constitute a Primitive Tribal Group (PTG), their community or habitat rights have not been discussed or established.

2. The Forest Rights Committee (FRC) for each settlement was selected without following the rules and not through the gramsabha.

3. There is a minimal level of awareness among the Kadars or tribal promoters supporters or the Tribal Department and the Forest Department on the nuances of the Forest Rights Act and the Rules or its significance and implications.

4. There is lack of co-ordination between the concerned departments regarding effective implementation.

5. Training programs for creating awareness seem to have been either not carried out properly or have not percolated down to the lowest appropriate level.

JH Hutton (1946) stresses the importance of the Kadar tribes in his seminal book , ‘Caste in India: Its Nature, Function and Origin’ thus; ‚Perhaps the most primitive of the South Indian forest tribes is that of the Kadars of the Cochin State, a tribe which shows more traces of a Negrito ancestry than any other, though that is not a great deal, the proto-Australoid element predominating‛.

The significance of the Kadar tribes has been highlighted in many anthropological studies. They are a primitive hunter and food gatherer tribe originally restricted to the forests and hill tracts of the Chalakudy river basin. Census figures show that they are less than 1500 in number. They have been leading a life completely dependent on the forests, small wildlife and the flowing river for fish, collecting tubers, honey and other minor forest produce. After one and a half centuries of constant forced translocation across the river basin due to clearance of forests for plantations and submergence of their settlements due to dam reservoirs, they are more or less stabilized along the main valley of the river.

There are 8 Kadar settlements in the 413 sq. km Vazhachal Forest Division. Two of their settlements, Vazhachal and Pokalapara are within the area projected to be seriously impacted by the proposed Athirappilly Hydroelectric Project. In turn much of their original forest habitat has been destroyed and has become degraded. Presently two of these settlements in the proposed impact area are trying to make a living with the help of Vana Samrakshana Samithi activities under the Kerala Forest Department.

6.The level of awareness of the Kadar tribe about the FRA and its procedures :

Except for very few, most of the Kadars at Pokalapara and Vazhachal Settlements are not aware of the FRA and its implications. The two or three persons within the tribe who know about the Act are only aware that such an Act exists and that it is for recognition, restoring and vesting of their rights. However they were not aware of the different types of forest rights that they are entitled to as per section 3 of Chapter II of the Act based on which claims can be made at the FRC. Hence the basic premise of the rights establishment as claimed by the Tribal Department officials is flawed. Since they are a PTG, they should have been made aware of sections a, c, d, e, i, j, k, and l by the Sub-Divisional Level Committee (SDLC) as per section 6 (k) of the FRA Rules outlining the functions of the SDLC before seeking claims. This has not happened.

The Kadars are not at all aware of their community rights. They were asked to claim 8 to 10 acres of land by the Tribal Department and file their claims accordingly which they obliged without knowing the law.

7. The process of implementation and where it stands now :

As per the evidence gathered from various departments and the Kadar tribes, Forest Rights Committees were formed without involving gramasabhas. In the first meeting itself, the tribal department formed FRCs without taking serious efforts to enlighten the tribes on details of the Act. During the selection of FRC members, they said that there would be training programs for these selected members. However, the Kadars claim that no such training program was conducted for them and for the tribal promoters. Staff from the District Collectorate, tribal department, and Athirappilly grama panchayat visited all tribal settlements, organized meetings and selected the FRC members instead of through the gramsabha process. They never mentioned the community rights that are specified in the law.

They asked the tribes to claim some forest land and they promised to give them that land. In some colonies, FRC members filled the FRA form for the tribals and in most of the colonies, promoters filled the form. As per instructions of the Tribal Department, every family claimed 8 to 10 acres near their settlements. The filled claim forms were submitted in the panchayat and were then transferred to the Tribal Department. The Revenue Department started a survey in each colony without informing the FRC members of the settlements, so that disputes occurred in some colonies while a survey. The Forest Department was not involved in any crucial steps of the implementation process. As per the Act, the gramsabha should be given guidance from the SDLC. The first SDLC meeting was convened only after the selection of FRC members and filing of claim forms in the Vazhachal Division. In this meeting, no tribes and block Panchayat members participated. Hence before forming FRCs, no such meeting at the SDLC seems to have occurred.

The Forest Department was also unaware of the selection of FRC members. The SDLC did not give any information or map to the FRCs before filling the FRA forms. Since the Forest Department is the custodian of forest resources, has micro-plans for each settlement and is aware of the details of the land in which the tribes are settled, how these forms can be filled and forest area be claimed properly without the their involvement remains the larger question.

Kerala Institute of Local Administration (KILA) seems to have provided training for tribal officers and Panchayat Presidents. Unfortunately, the benefits of these training programmes have not reached the tribes.

According to the Athirappilly Gram Panchayat, the gramasabha was conducted. But such gramasabhas or oorukkoottam were never held specifically for discussing the FRA or selecting FRC members. Even after the selection of FRC members, FRA-related matters were never discussed in later gramasabhas

As it stands now, individual rights over the forest land on which the Kadars are presently living in settlements seems to have been somehow established by record. However, as revealed from the above, even this is implemented without following the proper procedure, without creation of awareness amongst the Kadars on the law and without any co-ordination between the Forest and Tribal Department.

Community or habitat rights has not even been discussed amongst the Kadar tribes and is yet to be taken up seriously in the project area as well as in other Kadar settlements in the Division.

VIII : Biodiversity :

Over millennia, Indian society has evolved a variety of biodiversity-friendly practices. Thanks to these traditions, pristine patches of vegetation persist in the form of sacred groves over much of the Western Ghats, a myriad banyan and peepal trees dot the countryside, while thousands of troops of langurs and macaques roam freely in towns and villages. The Indian lion survives in the Gir National Park, protected against heavy odds by the Nawab of Junagarh in what was once a princely hunting preserve. Today India has a well-dispersed network of Wildlife Sanctuaries, National Parks and Biosphere Reserves, covering over 4 percent of the land surface. This is indeed a most creditable performance in an old, densely settled country (Gadgil 1991).

But the current state-sponsored approach to biodiversity conservation is evidently under serious strain (Singh 1995). As a major conservation measure, it has tended to focus on the elimination of subsistence demands of local communities, a focus that has brought in its wake serious conflicts. It has attempted to divorce conservation from development, and is today facing the threat of opening up large tracts of nature reserves to mining and other exploitative development (Nambiar 1993). It has paid little attention to the significant levels of biodiversity in areas outside nature reserves, whether it is in wetlands or on farm bunds. It has completely ignored issues such as in situ conservation of land races of husbanded plants and animals. Finally, it has treated with contempt folk practices like sacred groves, as well as extensive practical ecological knowledge of large numbers of Indians living close to the earth.

1.  Problems of tight control over Protected Areas :

There is a wide-spread belief amongst urban conservation activists, endorsed whole heartedly by the forestry establishment, that it is the local community members and their subsistence requirements that are the main threat to India’s wildlife. The case study of BRT hills brings out how erroneous this line of thinking has been, as does the experience of the Bharatpur wetland. WGEA should therefore focus on promoting proper implementation of the Forest Rights Act which confers on forest dwellers certain rights and responsibilities inside Wildlife Sanctuaries and National Parks also.

Box 7: The tragic blunder of Bharatpur

Unfortunately, even as knowledgeable a scientist as Dr. Salim Ali subscribed to this perspective without examining the issues in depth. The Bharatpur wetland, famous for large heronries in the rainy season and the enormous flocks of migratory birds visiting in winter, was one of the first wildlife sanctuaries to be created after independence at the instance of Dr Salim Ali in the 1950s. He had worked for years at Bharatpur, banding thousands of migratory birds. Bharatpur had been subject to grazing by buffaloes and other uses such as collection of khus grass by the local people for centuries, and had remained a biodiversity-rich habitat. However, Dr Salim Ali felt that the habitat would greatly benefit from a cessation of buffalo grazing and was supported by experts of the International Crane Foundation. These recommendations led to the declaration of the locality as a National Park in 1982. The rigid regulations applicable to a National Park called for total cessation of the livelihood activities of local people, so buffalo grazing was banned without any alternatives being offered. There were protests; seven people were killed in the firing that followed, but the ban was enforced.

This intervention led to a totally unexpected outcome. It turned out that buffaloes were keeping a water-loving grass Paspalum under control. When grazing stopped this grass grew unchecked, rendering the wetland a far worse habitat for waterfowl, the prime objective of the National Park management. The numbers of visiting Siberian cranes also started to decline. Residents of the village Aghapur adjoining the National Park have an intriguing suggestion in this regard. They believe that Siberian cranes earlier had better access to underground corms and tubers, their major food, because the soil used to be loosened while the villagers were digging for khus roots. Since this collection regime was stopped on declaration of the National Park, the soil was compacted reducing the access of the cranes to this food. This is a plausible hypothesis worth further exploration (Gadgil et al 2000).

Box 8: Biligiri Rangaswamy Temple (BRT) hills

While the social impacts of denying rights to forest dwellers are high, there have also been high costs to the conservation of biodiversity that have not been as widely discussed. Centralized systems of forest management have resulted in the production of standardized responses to local ecology and contexts. The application of a single management system (such as bans on fire, shifting cultivation and forest produce harvest) has meant that local understanding and knowledge of tribals on forest history and ecology has been completely ignored, resulting in a collapse of forest function, particularly well documented in the case of the BRT hills in Mysore district of Karnataka. At the same time, local people have constantly argued for the re-introduction of customary practices that protected the forest that is now valued for its biodiversity. Giving rights to the forest and to forest conservation will enable local and contextual management of the forests. The systematic separation of people from the forest, the labeling of historic dwellers as encroachers, and complete denial of rights has resulted in local people becoming antagonistic to wildlife and forests. There have been increasing examples of subversion of state efforts to protect forests. Forest dwellers therefore set fires during the dry season to cause maximum damage, rather than the traditional early season burns that only burnt the understory. To spite the forest department, disenchanted local people align with timber and poaching mafias to gain some reward from the forest, which they have been denied through a draconian forest policy. In the rare cases that conservation has shown any success it has been through the use of state enforcement and not through any willing compliance with laws by local communities. The state has often stifled local protest by increased funding for staff, patrol vehicles and arms. The militarization of conservation is a growing global trend.

2. Using the FRA to slow down diversion of forests :

One of the most beneficial outcomes of the FRA for conservation is that it is slowing down the diversion of forests for development purposes. In 2009 the Ministry of Environment and Forests issued a circular instructing state forest departments to obtain written consent from gram sabhas in areas where forest was being diverted for non-forest purposes. That people live in most forests that are being acquired for mines, dams, and major development projects and therefore require their rights under the FRA to be settled, has posed a huge hurdle to the till now speedy clearance of projects. The environmental clearance process was and continues to be a poorly undertaken effort, but now with the requirement of gram sabha consent and the implementation of FRA, development projects are facing a stiff challenge from an unexpected quarter.

3. Community Forest Rights and conservation :

While much has been written about the FRA, this section will focus on the opportunities in the act for biodiversity conservation by local communities, using the case of Biligiri Rangaswamy Temple Wildlife Sanctuary in the Western Ghats. The FRA is an unprecedented law that aims to provide rights to forest land, forest produce and rights to management and customary practices. The focus of the act is to ensure that forest dwellers whose lives have been impacted by forest policy are now able to secure an existence in forests. It recognizes that individual rights to land are only a small part of livelihoods in forests. The suite of community forest rights that might be claimed are numerous and reflects the dependence of local people on forests, as well as their historical marginalization and denial of rights.

Section 3 (1) of the FRA lists the rights that might be claimed by forest dwellers. Out of the 13 rights listed, two pertain to rights to land (forest land currently being cultivated and in situ or alternative land in case of illegal eviction in the past), and the rest are community rights ranging from forest produce harvest, fishing, to conversion of forest to revenue villages. The biodiversity-related rights are to ‘protect, regenerate, or conserve or manage any community forest resource, which they have been traditionally protecting and conserving for sustainable use’ and ‘right of access to biodiversity and community right to intellectual property and traditional knowledge related to biodiversity and cultural diversity’. Once vested with rights, the act empowers rights holders to ‘constitute Committees for the protection of wildlife, forest and biodiversity’. The act is however silent on the process by which these committees will interact with the forest department and other agencies which have so far had control over wildlife, forest and biodiversity management. This has caused some tension between the forest administration whose responsibilities under the Forest Conservation Act 1980 and the Wildlife Protection Act 1972 continue in forest lands leading to resistance from state forest departments across the country to the vesting of community forest rights.

The FRA provides space for local and contextual flexibility that might be used by gram sabhas and collaborative institutions to evolve their own mechanism for forest management. Some authors have argued that the lack of an institutional structure results in a lack of clarity on the functioning of these committees and on the relationship between the gram sabha and the forest administration (Lele 2008). The FRA does not give a clear road map for the roles of gram sabhas versus the forest department. A committee set up by the Ministry of Environment and Forests tasked with redefining the role of the forest department in the light of the FRA did not succeed in fully accomplishing this effort. Earlier decentralization attempts that laid down detailed institutional structures often resulted in intense bureaucratic control and usurpation of local institutions and efforts. By empowering gram sabhas and not mandating that they manage resources, the FRA gives communities that desire to manage their resources an opportunity to do so. By identifying the gram sabha as the primary institution, the FRA builds on nascent decentralization attempts. The lack of a prescribed institutional structure however means that only those gram sabhas that are politically aware will be in a position to aspire to manage resources on their own. It is not surprising therefore that in the several years since the notification of the act there has been only one instance of a gram sabha claiming and receiving rights to conserve and manage their community forest area, as occurred in Mendha-Lekha gram sabha of Gadchiroli district of Maharashtra. This is as much a result of state resistance as of local reticence, clearly itself a result of long decades of centralized control.

The Council for Social Development (CSD) in its report on the implementation of the FRA noted that ‘all non-land rights in the Act – most of which are community rights – have largely been ignored in implementation. The Central and State governments have treated the Act as if it is a land title distribution scheme.’ As noted above, the barriers to the vesting and exercising of the CFRs have been at the level of the state, gram sabha and civil society. In addition to the reticence of local bodies in claiming CFR, the resistance by the state is based on a outmoded idea that local communities do not have the capacity to manage their resources and that all forms of local use are degrading. This is based on a colonial premise of traditional practices being unscientific and degrading and that expert knowledge is important for the conservation of biodiversity or the management of forests. We might look at a few current examples to show that nothing is farther from the truth. The case study of Biligiri Rangaswamy Temple Wildlife Sanctuary (BRT) in the Karnataka Western Ghats shows that Soligas have nuanced and contextual knowledge of local ecology.

4. Rights, local knowledge and culture in a protected area :

The BRT forest has faced a series of policy changes that have impacted both tribals and the forest. The establishment of the sanctuary in 1975 displaced Soligas from their shifting cultivation sites to settled colonies. This was accompanied by a major change in land-use management. The agricultural practices of Soligas were altered from shifting cultivation to settled agriculture, and their forest management practices ceased abruptly including the use of early season fire that was until then widely used for a variety of purposes. The collection of non-timber forest produce (NTFP) was however allowed for several years until 2005 when following the amendment to the Wildlife Protection Act the collection of NTFP was banned. This had an immense impact on the livelihoods of the Soligas who were heavily dependent on forest produce (Hegde et al 1996, Setty et al 2008, Sandemose 2009). The enactment of the FRA and continued campaigning by Soliga welfare groups resulted in the forest department agreeing to unofficially permit the collection of Phyllanthus spp. (amla) fruits and honey. The FRA has been successful in producing a strong sense among the Soligas that their previous tenuous existence in the sanctuary will be strengthened through rights to forest produce harvest and to cultivable land.

As is obvious to even the most casual visitor to BRT, the forest is smothered by the invasive species Lantana camara. Soligas have for long claimed that the suppression of fire has increased lantana density and coverage due to a lack of management. Soligas customarily managed the habitat using fire, which promoted the growth of tubers and controlled the understory. Fires were set early in the season and maintained the forest in a state of flux. Invasive species were therefore kept in check. ‘Scientific’ forest management and the resulting ban on fires and customary management led to an increased density of lantana. Another observation by the Soligas is regarding the increased spread of hemiparasites on amla trees resulting in the mortality of adult trees. They suggest that hemiparasites which are sensitive to ground fires are no longer controlled by fire and thus have increased. The spread of lantana is truncating the population growth of tree species by preventing seedlings from growing through the dense lantana growth, while hemiparasites are killing adult trees. Soligas have thus highlighted the intricate interactions between fire, hemi-parasites and tree mortality. The cessation of traditional practices has given rise to an entirely avoidable ecological outcome. This is clear demonstration of how local communities have the capacity to manage forests. If the forest department had been open enough to incorporate local understandings into their management plans, the forests of BRT would have been in better condition than they are today. The provision in the FRA about gram sabha committees and their role in forest management could be the appropriate structure for Soligas to apply their knowledge about forest dynamics. They have in the recent times offered their assistance to the forest department in identifying areas that should first be cleared of lantana, and suggesting ways that hemiparasite density could be reduced during amla fruit harvest.

Modern forest management has also erased people from the forests by ignoring their location, history, culture and knowledge. Soligas have demarcated areas of the BRT forest into yelles. Each yelle contains five sacred sites that are specific to a kula and are protected and guided by the presence of gods and spirits. Yelles are cultural spaces that housed the five sacred sites and were subdivided amongst the clans based on requirement for the cultural practice of members of particular clans that did not have a cultural space close to their dwelling. Yelles are thus kula-specific boundaries within which forest areas have been named. making it possible for Soligas to orally demarcate the boundary of each yelle. Mapping has revealed that the entire forest area within the sanctuary is comprised of 46 yelles. The mapping effort in BRT is the first such attempt in India and has generated enormous interest amongst the Soligas. While there was unanimous agreement on the mapping of the sacred sites there were differential perceptions of the mapping of yelle depending on age and role within the community. Soligas who are part of the customary institutions saw the identification of yelle boundaries as an opportunity to rejuvenate the kula system with its traditional office and cultural practice. They hoped to see Soliga customary law reinstated. Soliga elders visualised the yelle as a boundary within which the five elements - devaru, kallugudi, veeru, samadhi and habbi - were present. The younger Soligas, who being aware of the recent legal provisions for claiming rights under the FRA are excited about using the sacred site maps as evidence to reassert local control in the landscape for livelihoods and identity.

5. Implementation of the Forests Rights Act in BRT :

Soon after the notification of the rules for the FRA in 2008, Soligas in BRT began to actively constitute forest rights committees in the forest areas of Chamrajanagar district. A total of 105 committees were constituted in the district. The first claims filed by Soligas were community forest rights under section 3(1)c specifically for NTFP collection and trade within the BRT sanctuary. While across the country the initial claims were for land rights, Soligas chose to first apply for NTFP collection rights as they had been banned from NTFP collection after the amendment to the Wildlife Protection Act which banned NTFP collection from national parks and sanctuaries. The impact of the ban on household income and well being has been severe.

Although the Sub-divisional Level Committee approved the claim for NTFP rights, the District Level Committee has not granted NTFP rights even after three years of intense parleying by Soligas and the officers of the tribal and district administration. The forest department representative on the committee has prevented the granting of community rights citing the WLPA provisions that ban the collection of NTFP. This is a violation of the FRA and the Soligas are planning to appeal this decision with the State-level monitoring committee which is headed by the Chief Secretary of the state.

In 2009, Soliga households in BRT and surrounding areas applied for rights to individual land and by early 2011 a total of 1438 Soliga households were granted individual rights to cultivated land, but not habitation. Nearly half the Soliga households are landless, so the grant of land does not in itself ensure better livelihoods for Soligas. Community forest rights are essential for their livelihoods and poverty alleviation. In addition to claiming rights to NTFP, eight Gram sabhas have applied for rights to fishing, grazing, conservation, and management. The BRT case reflects a country-wide pattern in the vesting of individual rights in forests but a great reluctance to grant community rights of any kind.

6. Tiger reserve status for BRT affects local rights and livelihoods :

To make matters worse for Soliga rights and livelihoods, the Karnataka state government obtained an in-principle approval from the Ministry of Environment and Forests to declare BRT a Tiger Reserve in September 2010 and notified the reserve in January 2011. There were wide spread protests from all quarters when news of the in-principle approval was received. The Soligas wrote to minsters and bureaucrats in the state and central governments, including to the Minister of Environment and Forests and to the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA), many of whose members were against the notification. The declaration was done in haste and without the final approval from the NTCA. This development nullifies the gains under FRA and threatens the Soligas with dislocation, curtailment and loss of livelihoods. Although the FRA is clear that all rights should be vested before any modification of rights can occur, the forest department is continuing to deny Soligas access rights to NTFPs and the forest. The declaration of core and critical tiger habitats within the sanctuary will lead to the eventual relocation of about 10 podus to establish inviolate areas for tiger conservation. This will have an immense impact on the socio-cultural and economic condition of the Soligas. The conflict between the forest department and the Soligas has been increasing over the past decade. The strict enforcement of an exclusionary conservation policy and the denying of rights under the FRA are fueling resentment towards the state forest department, the forests and wildlife.

7. Measures for Mitigation/Improvement :

 Monitoring and strict compliance of existing Acts and Rules, laws and legal measures by Forest and Wildlife, Revenue Departments.

 Participatory approach; JFM activities to be suitably improved to get the desired results; LSGs/NGOs and other self-help groups to be involved in conservation activities, especially in areas outside the PAs

 Promote social security forest plantations as done in Gujarat to provide job security and profit sharing of the local community

 Collaborative inputs from R&D Centres, Universities and other scientific institutions in scientifically managing the forests

 Use the Green Indian Mission effectively by incorporating indigenous, and ecosystem-friendly species

 Promote systems of providing incentives to local people for conservation efforts

 Early detection, identification and rapid management strategies against invasive alien species.

 Strengthening the Rural Development department on issues related to bamboo/reed resource availability/marketing and also of other NTFPs

 Modify suitably the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme to promote and support forest management and NTFP cultivation

 The Forest Rights Act (FRA) 2006 has yet to be implemented in its true spirit and the State Forest Departments to be alerted to the fact that implementation of this act is needed for future forestry governance.

 Improving the quality of the forests and take proactive measures to address the demographic and developmental pressures on forests

8. Action points for Western Ghats Ecological Authority :

Support local-level consultations at Local Self-Government level and a bottom–up approach to achieve acceptance and transparency in the whole process. To improved decision making, goods and services (biodiversity values and ecosystem services) of forests to be valued more accurately and a master plan for biodiversity economics of the Western Ghats to be prepared, under the proposed WGEA.

 Enforce principles of Responsible Forest Management and trade practices.

 Modification/unification of various acts and rules related to forests and wildlife and evolve implementation strategies.

NEXT : 2.6 Organized Industry

JAIHIND

VANDE MATARAM