Formulating a robust forest law

On October 2, the Union government released a consultation paper on amending the Forest Conservation Act (FCA), 1980. The amendments propose to bring significant changes to how forest land is managed in India, facilitating private plantations and the extraction of oil and natural gas from forests. The document is open to public comment till October 17.

While the decision to invite public consultation is a positive move, there are criticisms of the proposals and the consultation process. First, stakeholders should have been allowed reasonable time to analyse the paper; second, the consultation process could have been made more democratic by making translations of the paper available; third, there is no acknowledgement of the Forests Rights Act or the Biodiversity Act, which are integral to any debate on forests, in the paper. Fourth, experts allege that the document shows that the government plans to use a central statute to dilute many state laws that stall deforestation. Fifth, if destruction of forests is allowed in, say, border areas in the Himalayan region, it could impact water availability since most rivers originate there. And last but not least, the document does not consider that commercial tree plantations are much poorer at storing carbon than natural forests. The desire to push commercial forestry is further proof, activists claim, that the State is facilitating the takeover of forest land and making it cheaper for corporations to use it for commercial gains. These are serious criticisms, and for formulating a robust forest law, the government must address them before moving ahead.