Where communities plant trees

Source: The post is based on an article “Where communities plant trees” published in The Business Standard on 3^rd October 2022.

Syllabus: GS 3- Forest Rights

Relevance: Community Forest right and benefits of forests

News: Women in Kodalpali, a village in Nayagarh district (tribal district) of Odisha have been protecting their forests for the past three decades.

They take the responsibility to walk and to ensure that nobody falls trees there. They fight with intruders and they also seize their axes and bicycles.

What are the reasons for protecting forests by the tribal community in Kodalpali?

According to villagers, forests provide all needs from firewood to building material to tubers and medicinal plants.

Even during the period of Covid-19 nobody in the village fell ill. Forest is the source of life and so they protect it.

However, the tribal community has set some rules to access the forest. For example, fuelwood is to be collected only on Sundays, green trees are not to be felled, no grazing during the monsoon, etc.

Their efforts have helped them in getting community forest rights.

What are community forest rights?

Community forest rights is a provision of the Forest Rights Act, 2006.

This gives villages the right to patches of government forests that they have been traditionally using for exclusive use of resources and protection.

According to the data of the Union Ministry of Tribal Affairs, community rights have been granted over some 4.5 million ha of forestland. It is approximately 8 per cent of land under forest cover under government control.

The ministry counts in this all-community rights including rights granted to the use of waterbodies or minor forest produce and not only forestland rights.

The villages of Odisha mainly Kodalpali and Sinduria now have the right to collect, process, use and sell minor forest produce.

This also includes the right to value addition, storage and transportation of products within and outside village boundaries.

What can be further course of action for those villages in Odisha?

Villages now need a plan for the management of this tree-diverse area.

It can help them to earn profit not just from timber but also from all the other richness that forest wealth provides.

Trees in forests survive only when village communities are given control in forest management. They can also help in moving India towards a wood-based economy.