#dnaEdit: Policy rush

The ministry of environment and forests (MoEF) has rightly distanced itself from the draft national forest policy prepared by the ministry’s research arm, the Indian Institute of Forest Management (IIFM). Though the ministry sought to play down the draft as a mere study, the document is clearly framed as a policy statement and the IIFM claims that the task was entrusted to it by the MoEF with financial support from the UNDP. The draft claims to have performed village-level focus-group discussions and regional and national level consultations, collected inputs from various stakeholders, and analysed primary and secondary datasets. However, the outrage that has ensued after the draft was uploaded on the MoEF website indicates that these consultations were not broad-based enough. The draft upholds the long-term objective of bringing one-third of the geographical area of the country under forest and tree cover but drops the goal for maintaining two-third of hilly and mountainous areas under forest cover. The new draft sought to update the earlier national forest policy of 1988 and does cover subsequent developments like climate change, but it trips up in not factoring the major change in forest management brought about by the Forest Rights Act of 2005.

While the 2005 Act envisaged that forest communities would get complete management control over their traditional forests and greatly curtailed the control of the forest department over these lands, the draft policy proposes a Community Forest Management Mission, which will subsume the present participatory forest management institutions. The inclusion of a new administrative structure in the policy has been viewed as an attempt by the forest bureaucracy to claw back and retain the clout that was lost after the 2005 Act. More importantly, the policy’s silence on the Forest Rights Act undermines the status of communities, though it claims to lays stress on “conserving forests by empowering communities”. The suggestion to acquire non-forest land in the vicinity of forests to establish wildlife corridors and act as a buffer zone has also been interpreted as an attempt to undermine the rights of local communities to forest produce and management. It is a fact that the Forest Rights Act has come in the way of many industry friendly measures that the present and previous government have conceived. 

At present, the government is giving finishing touches to proposals to allow private companies manage forests and undertake afforestation activities. However, there is uncertainty over how this will militate against the rights of forest communities and their access to forests. The draft makes another interesting shift in policy from regulating wood consumption towards promoting the use of wood. The document notes that wood has a lower carbon footprint than many of the wood-substitutes which consume fossil fuels in their production. However, this shift can be undertaken only when agroforestry and farm-forestry are sufficiently capable of sustaining afforestation activities at a rate higher than the consumption of wood. Recently, Prime Minister Modi had also pointed to the importance of agroforestry and timber products as a way for farmers to enhance incomes. But forest-based industries are still at an incipient stage. In recent times, the government has erred on multiple occasions by putting out half-baked policy documents seeking  comments from the public. There is no doubt that even while the government claims to be increasing forest and tree cover every year, forests are being continually degraded. The consumption needs of local communities, diversion of forest land by governments, and illegal encroachments have all equally contributed to the problem. The IIFM has proposed a bureaucratic and technocratic approach to managing the problem without factoring in the deep suspicion that has set in among local communities. The government should not rush to formulate a policy without meaningful consultations with conservationists, state governments and tribal groups.