Forest Gumption
* The Union ministry of environment and forests feels defining forests will help it identify and protect them better. Critics feel limiting the meaning would free forest land for commercial use.
* There is no definition of a forest in Indian law but a Supreme Court order enables the "dictionary sense" of the word to qualify as one of the parameters
* The MoEF wants to do away with this broad criterion. Critics fear that several forests which have not been notified will be released for commercial purposes.
* The definition is currently being discussed with various states, with some of them expressing reservation
***
What is a forest? The UPA government's attempt to frame an answer to this seemingly innocuous question may severely impact the country's ecological future. Which is why questions are being raised about the effort of the Union ministry of environment and forests (MoEF) to provide a legal definition for forests. The ministry says this will help the government identify and manage the nation's green cover more effectively. Environmentalists and lawyers, however, allege any definition will only end up freeing vast stretches of forest land for commercial use. The MOEF, they say, will be doing more harm than good.
To be sure, there is no existing definition of a forest. Not even in the Forest Conservation Act, 1980, that regulates the country's green cover. Three criteria offered by the Supreme Court in a judgement in December 1996 have helped identify forest lands so far. These include all statutorily recognised forests, whether designated as reserved or protected; any area recorded as forest in any government record; and forests as understood by the dictionary meaning. These criteria, the court noted, applies irrespective of the nature of ownership or classification of forests.
The definition being proposed by the MOEF has been formulated at the government's request by the Bangalore-based Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment. It defines a forest as "an area notified as such in any act or recorded as forests in any government record". This excludes man-made plantations, fruit orchards and agroforestry tree crops on private and community-owned land. It also does away with the broad classification of forests as understood by the dictionary meaning.
Ritwick Dutta, coordinator of the Lawyers Initiative for Forest and Environment, a Delhi-based NGO that lobbies for environmental causes, says this narrower definition will open forest land to commercial exploitation by business groups. Says he: "Since this definition limits what a forest encompasses, it is only going to help industries circumvent the due process of diverting forest land and paying the required compensation. Then, what about the many areas that may not be notified as a forest but may still qualify as one in the dictionary sense?"
The compensation a business house has to pay the government for diverting forest land, known as Net Present Value or NPV, may range from Rs 5.8 lakh to Rs 9.2 lakh per hectare. A dam that comes up in the Subansiri Valley of Arunachal Pradesh, for example, can have an NPV as high as Rs 300 crore. Many state governments see the diversion of forest land as a good source of revenue.
In fact, across the country, forests are being denuded as development projects make inroads into them, often with scant regard for environment rules. Last month, the Supreme Court's central empowered committee blew the whistle on over 40 private projects that were to come up on forest land. It felt that the Centre's forest advisory committee had cleared them without adhering to the guidelines.
http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20071217&fname=Forest+(F)&sid=1