Forest Advisory Committee

Forest Advisory Committee Okays Scheme to ‘Trade’ Forest Land

The new scheme would allow agencies like private companies to identify land, grow plantations and sell them to industries in need of reforested land.

New Delhi: The Forest Advisory Committee (FAC) of the environment ministry has approved a scheme that could allow “forests” to be traded as a commodity as it would allow the Forest Department to outsource its responsibility of reforesting to non-government agencies, according to a report in The Hindu.

The FAC is an apex body tasked with adjudicating requests by the industry to raze forest land for commercial use.

As it currently stands, industries need to find appropriate non-forest land in lieu of and equal to the forest land that was razed. The industry would also have to pay the State Forest Department the current economic equivalent of the forest land. It is then the responsibility of the Forest Department to restore vegetation in that area, which would over time grow into forests.

Industries claim that is difficult to acquire appropriate non-forest land, which has to be contiguous to existing forest. Over the decades, the funds, which amount to almost Rs 50,000, collected by the Centre have been lying unspent as states were not spending the money on regrowing forests.

After an intervention by the Supreme Court, a new law was introduced with rules about how this fund was to be administered. About Rs 47,000 crore have been disbursed amongst the states until August, but it has not led to any restoration of forests.

The new scheme approved by the Forest Advisory Committee called the ‘Green Credit Scheme’ would allow agencies like private companies and village forest communities to identify land and grow plantations.

Also read: Environment Ministry Says States Can Define What Land Constitutes a Forest

After a period of three years, they would be eligible to be considered as compensatory forest land if they met the criteria set by the Forest Department. An industry in need of forest land could then pay for these patches of forest land, and this would then be transferred to the Forest Department.

Previously, in 2015, a ‘Green Credit Scheme’ for degraded forest land with public-private participation had been recommended, but was shelved when it was not approved by the Union environment ministry.

According to a note in the minutes of the meeting held on December 19, the FAC believed that such a scheme would encourage plantation by individuals outside the traditional forest area and would help meet international commitments such as sustainable development goals.

The Green India Mission, which aims to battle climate change by, amongst other means, adding 30 million hectares in addition to existing forest does not help the core problem of compensatory afforestation.

Kanchi Kohli, who works with the Centre for Policy Research and investigates forest rights, told The Hindu that the new scheme does not “solve the core problems of compensatory afforestation”.

“It creates problems of privatising multi-use forest areas as monoculture plantation plots. Forests are treated as a mere commodity without any social or ecological character,” said Kohli.

J&K: 97 Forest-Land Projects Cleared in 2018, 125 Cleared Since August 2019

In its last meeting alone – before the clearance process shifts to Chandigarh – the FAC cleared 41 projects that will divert forest-land.

The Forest Advisory Committee (FAC) of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) cleared a record 125 projects involving diversion of forest land between August and October 2019.

In its 117th meeting, the FAC cleared 41 projects. This was the body’s last meeting before the forest clearance process will shift to Chandigarh, the regional office of the Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEF&CC), after October 31, when the presidential order reading Article 370 down will come into effect.

“In the 117th meeting held on October 17, 2019, 41 projects were cleared. In the 116th meeting, 54 projects were cleared and in the 115th meeting, 30 projects were cleared by the FAC,” Manoj Kr Dwivedi, the commissioner secretary to the forest, environment and ecology department of the state of J&K, told Down to Earth (DTE). “These clearance recommendations will be sent to the J&K cabinet and then finalised.”

J&K has its own FAC under the Jammu And Kashmir Forest (Conservation) Act, 1997. The committee is headed by the chief secretary of the J&K government as the chairman, with officials of departments like forest, revenue, finance, soil and water conservation as members. The committee makes recommendations that are then accepted by the J&K cabinet.

While Dwivedi declined to share the details of the area of forest land diverted or the nature of projects, media reports said that around 271 hectares of forest land had been diverted in the 117th meeting for various development projects, like laying transmission lines, drilling tube wells, etc.

The number of clearances given in the last three meetings of the FAC is greater than the total number of clearances awarded in 2018. In the eight meetings of the FAC held in 2018, the body approved forest clearance for 97 projects, against the 125 clearances approved in just three meetings since August this year.

Under the provisions of the Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980, any diversion of forest land for non-forestry purposes like building infrastructure or mining has to be pre-approved by the FAC, set up under the MoEF&CC.

In J&K, the law governing diversion of forest land is the J&K Forest (Conservation) Act, 1997. Under this Act, forest land diversion takes place on the resolution of the cabinet, based on the recommendations of the state FAC.

However, objections are being raised to the diversions in the absence of the application of the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006 in the state.

“Diversion of forest land without the consent of local communities and gram sabhas cause violation of their forest rights. This move comes at a time when there is a larger concern among the local communities over withdrawal of the constitutional protection of democratic rights including special protection to their land rights,” Tushar Dash of Community Forest Rights-Learning and Advocacy (CFR-LA), a forest rights advocacy platform of activists and experts, told DTE.

This article was originally published by Down To Earth and has been republished here with permission.

Environment Ministry Says States Can Define What Land Constitutes a Forest

With well-established forest departments, states are better equipped “to understand their own forests and needs”, the Union ministry said.

New Delhi: The Forest Advisory Committee (FAC) of the environment ministry has clarified that states do not need permission from the Centre to define what constitutes unclassified land as forest, according to a report in the Hindu.

While the liberty to define land that has not already been classified as a forest by the Centre has been the prerogative of states since 1996, recent reports over the ministry of environment, forest and climate change’s drafts to evolve a legal definition of forests had cast doubts about the ministry’s efforts. However, the FAC’s clarification has put an end to such speculation.

The FAC, which comprises of independent experts and officials in the Centre’s forestry division, said that with well-established forest departments, states were better equipped than the Union ministry “to understand their own forests and needs, and should frame criteria for their forests… criteria so finalised by a state need not be subject to approval by MoEF&CC”.

The ministry’s meeting records noted that the issue had come up for discussion because the Uttarakhand government had put forth a set of criteria defining forest land and asked the ministry for its opinion.

A Supreme Court judgement in 1996 re-defined the meaning of forests to include all areas with natural forests irrespective of their ownership as well as those that came under the ‘dictionary’ meaning of forest. Under the Godavarman judgement, states were also directed to form expert committees to identify forests as defined and file reports.

Also read: Environment Ministry Defines Forests, Legally

Speaking to the Hindu, Director General of Forests and Special Secretary in the ministry Siddhanta Das said that not all states had submitted the necessary criteria. According to him, forests defined under this criteria constituted about 1% of the country’s forests and once so defined would be known as ‘deemed forests.’

Das also noted that given that almost 16 different types of forests existed across the country, an all-encompassing definition of forests wasn’t viable.

Additionally, given that states tend to claim helplessness in preventing encroachment on a patch of land on the grounds that it hadn’t been classified as a forest – as in the case of the felling of trees in Mumbai’s Aarey Colony – the decision to lay the onus of defining forests with the states is significant

Sushant Agarwal has previously noted that the Union environment ministry had attempted to distance itself from the 2016 draft of the National Forest Policy that had floated the concept of a National Community Forest Management (CFM) Mission.

The 2018 draft then, in reference to community conserved areas, mentioned the northeast and had stated that, “the State Forest Departments will also play proactive role in preparation of working plan and working schemes and management plans of protected areas in the North-East in totality.”

A close examination of the State of Forests Report 2017 showed that by counting plantations, which are no substitute for natural forests, as “forest cover” and calling it a net gain in India’s forest cover, the government was attempting to mask the extensive deforestation that had taken place.

Also read: The Centre’s Exclusionist View of Conservation Is Increasingly Counterproductive

Under these parameters, states like Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, Odisha and Telangana recorded a net increase in forest cover. The report further signalled that the increase in forest cover could be attributed to the conservation measures taken up by the government and technological advancement in satellite imaging technology. An improvement in technological advancement in mapping technology, however, does not entail an increase in forest cover, but merely that the government is able to more accurately map the existing forest cover.

Modi Government Says It Has No Deadline to Implement Long Pending Forest Policy

The forest policy has been in limbo for over four years, while the government has continued to clear some coal blocks that fall into a deeply pruned list of inviolate areas on a piecemeal basis.

Representative image. Credit: IndoMet in the Heart of Borneo/Flickr (CC BY 2.0)

The government has no deadline by which it will implement the long-pending inviolate forest policy. The policy, awaiting a final approval for more than four years now, requires the government to sequester good forests and biodiverse areas from all kinds of mining, including coal.

In its last assessment, the government’s Forest Survey of India had recommended under the policy that over 40% of the country’s existing forest cover should be kept safe from mining of all sorts. This recommendation came in a report submitted in August. This would require denying mining rights in 285,853 square kilometres of forests lands out of 701,672 square kilometres.

The fact that the government has no specific deadline to impose this policy was revealed through a response to an RTI application in February. While the policy has been kept in limbo, the NDA government has continued to give clearance to some of the coal blocks that fall into a deeply pruned list of inviolate areas on a piecemeal basis.

The policy was initiated during the UPA era by then environment minister Jairam Ramesh in 2011. It was then called the ‘Go, No-Go’ policy. At that time, it was meant to protect good forest areas only from coal mining. But it faced opposition from within the UPA cabinet itself leading Ramesh to relatively prune down the list of coal blocks to be denied permissions. Even this diluted down version faced opposition from within the government as Jayanthi Natarajan took charge in place of Ramesh. She was asked to let clearances be given on a piecemeal basis and get the draft policy revised using better scientific methods.

A committee of experts set up within the environment ministry did so and in 2013 in its report detailed the parameters by which rich forest areas could be identified to be kept safe not only from coal but all kinds of mining activities. This came to be known as the inviolate forest area policy.

But, instead of implementing the policy, towards its last days, the UPA government began a process of reviewing and diluting its application after Natarajan was removed as the environment minister. When the NDA government took over, this process of dilution continued. The environment ministry consulted the coal ministry and its institutions on repeated times to see how different tweaking to the criteria for selecting inviolate patches would impact coal blocks and coal-bearing areas. Documents accessed through the RTI show that the coal ministry repeatedly asked for dilution of the inviolate forest area parameters and in several cases the environment ministry relented.

As early as mid-2015, the Forest Survey of India (FSI), a government agency that maps country’s forest resources, told the ministry that out of the total 835 coal blocks it assessed, 49 were found to be totally in the inviolate zone. Originally 206 blocks had been identified as inviolate. The FSI pointed out in its 2015 correspondence that another 417 blocks would also face partial restrictions if the inviolate policy was imposed using all the recommended parameters. The FSI informed the government that four operational coal blocks fell totally within inviolate forest areas and another 117 operational coal blocks would be impacted if the government also tried to protect first order rivers that are critical for the good forests from coal mining. This hydrological parameter had also been recommended by the government experts as one of the several parameters for delineating rich forest areas but the coal ministry has objected to using this criterion and suggested severe dilution to it as it could potentially impact a large number of forests.

The FSI then also undertook an assessment of how much total forest area needed to be protected from all kinds of mining and not just coal. This report was submitted to the government in August 2016. The FSI recommended protecting a bit more than 40% of India’s forests from all kind of mining.

The environment ministry’s Forest Advisory Committee, which recommends whether forests should be given over for mining and other activities, has begun using this data to make its recommendations at least in some cases, public records of the ministry show. But a universal blanket application of the policy to sequester rich forests as a default has not been taken because the government has not approved the policy.

By arrangement with Business Standard.