Trading forests for trees

Source: The post is based on the article “Trading forests for trees” published in The Indian Express on 6^th April 2023.

Syllabus: GS 2/3 – Governance, Environment

Relevance: concerns associated with the Forest (Conservation) Amendment Bill, 2023.

News: The government has introduced The Forest (Conservation) Amendment Bill, 2023 to make changes in The Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980.

What are the objectives of the bill?

The bill aims to build forest carbon stock by raising plantations. It also aims to provide developers with land so they can fulfil their legal duty to plant trees as compensation for diverting forest land for development projects.

The bill tries to achieve these objectives by restricting the applicability of the FC Act, and by freeing up unrecorded forests land.

What are the concerns with the Bill?

Limited Application: The SC in 1996, ruled that the FC Act would apply to all land parcels that were either recorded as forest or resembled the dictionary meaning of forest. This order checked rampant deforestation on land not recorded as forest.

However, the bill seeks to limit the applicability of the FC Act only to land recorded as ‘forest’.

This might affect millions of hectares of land (roughly the size of Gujarat) that have the characteristics of forests, but are not notified as such.

Clearance for the Projects: Restricting the scope of the FC Act will make fewer projects to obtain forest clearance. 

One important requirement for forest clearance is that a developer must plant trees as compensation on an area of equivalent non-forest land or, in the absence of such land, plant trees on degraded forest land twice the forest area diverted.

However, the amendment in Forest Conservation Rules in June 2022, allowed developers to raise plantations over land on which the FC Act is not applicable and to exchange such areas for future needs for compensatory afforestation.

Since the bill limits the scope of FC Act only to the forest areas, non-forest lands may be used to promote the development of private plantations, to gain forest clearance.

This will generate two problems such as losing unrecorded forests to plantations which will subsequently help to divert recorded forests for projects.

Expanding Exemptions: The Bill proposes to expand the exemptions and make them part of the Act itself.

The Bill seeks to exempt all strategic projects of national importance and concerning national security within 100 km of international borders, the LAC, and the Line of Control (LoC).

This bill proposed to extend the construction of defence related projects or a camp for paramilitary forces requiring more than 5 hectares of forest land in a Left-Wing Extremism affected area, as specified by the Central Government.

It also seeks to exempt security-related infrastructure requiring up to 10 hectares of forest land, without defining its scope.

Forest Communities: The Bill talks about keeping up with dynamic changes in the ecological, strategic and economic aspirations of the country and improvement of livelihoods for forest-dependent communities.

However, the consent of forest communities on the diversion of forest land for development projects has been diminishing even after the enactment of the Forest Rights Act, 2006.

Now, with these amendments in the FC Act, they may have no say on the extensive plantations done on land on which they depend as communities.