New Delhi: Conservationists, environmental experts, as well as former and sitting forest officers have decried the government’s proposal to change the application of a key law protecting India’s forests, arguing it will “open the floodgates” to unchecked mining and commercial activity.
Several experts have submitted their objections to a Joint Parliamentary Committee, which is reviewing the proposed changes.
Earlier this year, environment minister Bhupender Yadav had introduced the Forest (Conservation) Amendment Bill — which carries the proposed changes — in Parliament amid loud protests.
The Bill seeks to loosen the rigidity of the prevailing Forest (Conservation) Act — which bans non-forest activity within forests without clearance from the central government — in order to “fast track strategic and security-related projects of national importance”. ThePrint had detailed the proposed changes in this report.
But several publicly available submissions made to the joint committee point out that projects of national and strategic importance have already been granted clearances and exemptions in the past, and that changing the existing law could have wide ranging impacts on wildlife and biodiversity conservation.
Apart from exempting projects of “strategic importance,” that fall within 100 kilometers of international borders, the Bill also exempts tracts of land along railway lines, zoos/safaris and ecotourism activities, while restricting which forests the law would apply to.
“In its present form the Bill will be a death knell for India’s forests,” conservationist Prerna Singh Bindra and Kerala’s Chief Conservator of Forests, Prakriti Srivastava, wrote in their 60-page submission, adding, “In limiting the scope and ambit of the original Forest (Conservation) Act, the proposed Bill removes crucial safeguards from a vast majority of India’s biodiverse rich forests.”
The Joint Parliamentary Committee, comprising 19 Lok Sabha members and 10 Rajya Sabha members, is expected to submit its report to Parliament within the first week of the next session.
‘Undermining’ Supreme Court
The Bill seeks to “remove ambiguities and bring clarity” to the current law by defining which forests are afforded protection, and which aren’t.
In 1996, the Supreme Court declared in a landmark judgment that the Forest Conservation Act (FCA) would apply to any forest land resembling its “dictionary meaning”, as well as forests found in government records regardless of ownership. This includes unclassed forests that haven’t been officially notified as “reserved forests” or “protected forests” under the Indian Forest Act of 1927.
In its amendment, the government proposes limiting this wide-ranging protection to only those forests which are recorded as so “on or after” 25 October, 1980, when the FCA kicked in.
“This will have the effect of removing legal protection under the FC Act from millions of hectares of land that have the characteristics of forests but are not notified as such,” Bindra and Srivastava wrote in their submission, pointing out that the ecosystems in the Aravallis, in the Western and Eastern Ghats, and mangroves “will no longer be considered ‘forest’ and can potentially be sold, diverted, cleared, felled, utilised, exploited without any regulatory oversight, if the bill is passed.”
Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy’s 18-member High Level Working Group says in its 44-page submission, that “acknowledging the importance of lands recorded as ‘forest’ in government records before 25th October 1980 is critical in protecting the existing forests as many of them are recorded as ‘unclassed forest’.”
According to the 2021 State of India Forest Report, unclassed forests account for 15 per cent of India’s forest cover. Several states have a large proportion of unclassed forests. “There is a concern that most of such lands may be exempted from the FCA as they are recorded as forests much before 1980,” says the high-level working group, which includes researchers, former forest officers, and conservationists.
By removing such large tracts of land from the protection under the FCA, the government “is making commercial use of forests easier,” independent environment researcher Meenakshi Kapoor and lawyer Krithika A. Dinesh warned in their joint submission.
The Bill’s statement of objects said it was being introduced “to keep its provisions in tandem with the dynamic changes in the ecological, strategic and economic aspirations of the country.”
Earlier this year, the government revealed in Parliament that over 80,000 hectares of forest land had been diverted for projects over the past five years. Over 12,000 environmental clearances — including for forest land — had been granted in 2022 alone, the highest ever.
‘Glorifying’ plantations
The Bill also introduces a ‘preamble’ to the law, which emphasises India’s commitment to achieving net zero emissions by 2070, the need to enhance carbon stocks, improving tree cover, conserving India’s biodiversity, and enhancing forest dwellers livelihoods. Yadav also stated that another purpose of the bill is to “encourage plantations on non-forest land.”
Experts see the preamble as unnecessary and as going against the spirit of the original Act, whose primary objective is the conservation and protection of forests.
“The emphasis in the preamble on achievement of Net Zero Emission by 2070 through increase in tree cover goes against the purpose of the original Act,” Kapoor and Dinesh wrote.
According to Vidhi’s High Level Working Group, the preamble is in “contradiction” with the rest of the proposed changes. The proposed amendments “undermine the need to protect and conserve old-growth forests and glorify the artificial plantations as a carbon sink,” they wrote.
“The Preamble also sets a target of increasing forest cover to one-third of the country’s land area. However, the proposed amendments instead of halting fragmentation and loss of forests, only promote non-forest uses of commercial nature by exempting a large tract of natural old-growth,” Vidhi’s group wrote.
Previously, project developers had to ‘compensate’ for the forest land diverted by raising an equal amount of afforestation on non-forest land. In 2022, the government notified the new Forest Conservation Rules, in which project developers would be allowed to purchase minimum five-year-old plantations of an equal size to ‘compensate’ for the forest land lost. They also allow for diversion in one state to be compensated for in another in certain cases.
Notably, over 8 lakh trees from the virgin rainforests in Great Nicobar island will be cut to make way for a port and other infrastructure projects, while compensatory afforestation will be raised in Madhya Pradesh and Haryana.
Haryana’s forest cover is the lowest in the country on account of its arid climate.
Several studies show that afforested plantations do not provide the same ecological services as native forests do, and that spending on them can be a wasteful exercise. A 2022 investigation by news website Scroll.in also found compensatory afforested land was not properly maintained, creating “ghost” plantations.
Issues of carbon neutrality and carbon sequestration and raising plantations should find place in site specific plans “and not in an act proposed for forest conservation,” said Bindra and Srivastava in their submission. “Conserving old growth forests, upcoming natural forests along with their biodiversity including wildlife is the most impactful, cost-effective way for addressing issues of carbon sequestration and achieving carbon neutrality.”
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Scope for govt to make amendments
The Bill seeks to give the central government powers to decide whether the law applies to surveys and “scoping studies” in forest areas or not. It also allows the central government to make exceptions for non-forest activities for “any other like purposes, which the Central Government may specify.”
Opening up forests to surveys and investigations “will open the floodgates for conducting surveys for purely commercial activities like mining,” Vidhi said in its submission.
Other experts agreed. Bindra and Srivastava wrote that in allowing this, the government would “open vast tracts of wildlife rich forests — tiger areas, elephant habitats, biodiversity hotspots across the country for scoping, prospecting and surveys for coal, iron ore, diamond, lithium and other mining, as well as for oil.”
Kapoor and Dinesh note that in giving itself discretionary powers over the application of the law, the government reduces public participation and “diminishes the need for tabling the Bill in the parliament for future changes.”
Other changes
Experts have also urged the government to drop the exemption in FCA about eco-tourism, zoos, and safaris within forests as well as the clause exempting projects for security and defense purposes falling within 100 kilometers of the Line of Control or Line of Actual Control.
Kapoor and Dinesh point to multiple guidelines of the Forest Conservation Act that have already exempted road construction within 100 km of the LoC/LoAC from within its purview, as well as approval for critical defense infrastructure of up to 1 hectare and public utilities of up to 5 hectares.
Bindra and Srivastava say the land subsidence in Joshimath should be a “wake up call” for the importance of environmental safeguards in ecologically sensitive areas. In late December last year, the town of Joshimath in the Himalayas experienced accelerated subsidence on account of unchecked development on unstable landslide debris.
“These borderlands are fragile, important ecosystems harbouring a spectrum of India’s endangered, critically endangered and endemic species,” write Bindra and Srivastava, adding, “Unchecked construction on such seismically and geologically sensitive landscapes not just threatens rare wildlife and the country’s water security but also renders these regions vulnerable to earthquakes and landslides.”
Some of the rare species inhabiting these areas include great Indian bustards, elephants, tigers, red pandas, snow leopards, hoolock gibbons, wild ass, wolves, black-necked cranes, pangolins, and bears.
The Bill also makes no mention of the rights of forest dwellers over forest land, enshrined in the Forest Rights Act (FRA) and The Panchayats (Extension to The Scheduled Areas) Act (PESA).
The proposed amendments “effectively eliminates the requirement of obtaining consent from the Gram Sabha for diversion of that (forest) land,” which could strip forest dwelling communities of their agency over the land use, Vidhi’s High Level Working Group writes.
“Forest dwellers, including tribal communities, are integral to the survival and sustainability of forest ecosystems and biodiversity,” they write, adding, “it is crucial to ensure that any development or conservation efforts consider forest dwellers’ rights, participation, and consent, respecting their intimate connection with the forests and their sustainable practices.”
(Edited by Zinnia Ray Chaudhuri)
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