Himraj Dang: The real conservation crisis

India is facing an acute conservation crisis. On the one hand, the showpiece of the country's long-standing conservation efforts managed by the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF), Project Tiger, has been undermined by the latest epidemic of tiger poaching.

On the other, another agency of government, the Ministry of Tribal Affairs (MTA), has just come up with an outlandish scheme to actually take over forest lands with resident tribal populations.

This latter scheme, as articulated by the Scheduled Tribes and Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Bill, threatens to destroy India's unitary forestry system, which does not partition forests, by caste or community. It is moot whether this gargantuan take-over and settlement of forested public lands will actually help tribals, or elect and enrich those who speak for them in Delhi.

The crisis
The recent tiger crisis has been a wake-up call to the conservation community, used to being furnished healthy census figures by Project Tiger. Investigations after the Sariska expose have uncovered a growing and undiminished trade in animal parts through Tibet. The tiger story in 28 small parks, constituting just over 1 per cent of the country's land mass, is but one indicator of a larger crisis.

The saga of the destruction of India's forests since Independence is long and varied, and has been chronicled elsewhere. The forests that remain, saved more by geography than the custodial care of the politically-vulnerable state forest departments, are reeling under severe human and livestock pressure. All this goes on, while state government even divert the salaries paid by the much-vaunted Project Tiger; some parks have salary arrears of over a year!

In the absence of political will, last identified with Indira Gandhi, who passed the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972, and the Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980, the forest department is unable to stem the rot. Today, the forest department has lost custodial control of protected areas (PAs) like Indravati, Palamau, Kaimur, Valmikinagar, Hastinapur, Orang and Chandraprabha, what to speak of reserve forest (RF) lands.

Despite the fantastic claims of activists, protected forests, community forests, and panchayat forests, are virtually non-existent. Only alienation from resource use has saved existing RFs and PAs. This is the ground reality.

The bizarre Bill
It is these very last exclusionary forests, saved from human pressure by continuous protection since 1864, that are now the target of the justly controversial Bill. The Bill aims at diverting a staggering 15 per cent of India's forest area, or nearly 3 per cent of the country's land mass (500,000 sq km), from the control of the MoEF to the MTA.

The MTA would offer these forest lands to government agencies for developmental projects such as schools, dispensaries, power substations, police establishments, drinking water schemes, and irrigation canals. An unexceptionable list eminently designed for public benefit, how can anyone complain?

This laundry list of noble intentions begs the question as to whether the same government agencies, which have failed to deliver precisely these developmental facilities outside forests, will now do so inside forests.

What has changed, since, as usual, there is no commitment to outcomes? Only the ability to now alienate forest land wholesale from the state and its competent agency, the MoEF! Ergo, that's precisely why this Bill has been pushed by the MTA, to be able auction large chunks of India's forest lands!

What a novel tool for patronage with immense vote-gathering ability. As tribal populations grow, another 15 per cent of India's forests could be distributed as political largesse in as many years. And why limit these unexceptionable developmental benefits to tribals only? Shouldn't the Ministry of Social Justice claim land on behalf of SCs/OBCs? And the Ministry of Agriculture for sundry poor cultivators?

How about a religious claim to make this a familiar Indian potpourri? Don't we also have an obligation to "tribal" settlers from our eastern neighbour, who aren't quite satisfied with occupying a quarter of Assam's forests? This exercise in competitive populism makes a caricature of sustainable development, and must be seen for its moral, legal, developmental, and ecological bankruptcy.

With safeguards like these...
The Bill disingenuously tries to balance the interests of development and forestry, and as such includes many "safeguards". These include directions to the user (government) agency to fell no more than 50 trees, to plant and maintain twice the number of trees felled on substitute land, and such trees to be indigenous species. The user agency will be responsible (for lack of a better word!) for any loss to flora and fauna in the surrounding areas.

Touching. However, the MTA has no experience in forestry. The track record of government agencies in preserving forests has been abysmal. The transfer of management of vast forest resources to patently unsuited agencies is obviously designed to destroy forests. With even the forest department losing control in notionally protected areas, who is going to limit tree felling at 50 trees, or take responsibility for loss of wildlife?

The plantation of indigenous species is an endearing sop and moves me to reach for my handkerchief. If there was substitute land for plantation in the first place, why couldn't villages be resettled closer to existing amenities? Does it matter what the views of field foresters are, once we have decided to help tribals government-style, full of bombast and promise, but empty on delivery and integrity, and violative of existing legislation?

Most of our PAs have not even been notified, that is, village rights not yet settled/extinguished. Sariska natural park, for example, has not been notified after 20 years of its proposal. As such, the Bill is likely to apply even to existing (un-notified) PAs. There is no way to ring-fence the damage this Bill will create as a precedent.

The solution
Instead of clearing forests to pay for the failure of rural and tribal development, we should influence the government to conduct the long-overdue forest settlement of India. By means of this, forest villages would be systematically, transparently, and voluntarily resettled outside forest areas.

Degraded forest lands and those forests that cannot possible be saved would be surrendered for such resettlement. In this manner, development could reach disenfranchised and remote forest-dwelling communities "" specifically those that actually want it.

This has eminently successful precedents from Melghat, Kuno-Palpur, Panna, Kanha, and now, Chilla. Villagers across the country are willing to be resettled, provided they get to design a better deal and execute it with the help of the courts and non-governmental organisations (NGOs).

The Centre could initially budget a nationwide scheme of Rs 500 crore annually, which should suffice to resettle approximately 200 forest villages. The MTA would be ideally suited to manage this programme, along with a collegium of relevant government agencies, the forest department, and responsible NGOs.

Norms for resettlement could follow those proposed in the draft tribal policy, such as providing equivalent amounts of land, and the identical developmental facilities envisioned under the Bill, preferably under the ambit of a Right to Information provision.

Conclusion
The passage of the pernicious Bill is taking place precisely at a time when the current tiger crisis indicates that the small and fragmenting PAs we have are unable to protect sensitive animals like the tiger. A new approach of conservation is needed, which protects whole ecosystems "" the Aravallis, the Vindhyas, the Satpuras, the western terai, the eastern dooars, the Western Ghats, the Andamans and the north-east rain forests, and so on.

Coupled with generous and participatory resettlement, the ecosystem approach, protecting a smaller number of larger parks, could also help build new rural lives spared of remoteness, man-animal conflict, and the deficit of development. The passage of this Bill, on the other hand, would irreversibly Mandalize and then marketise public forest lands using the excuse of our long-suffering tribals.

The author has just written a book on S,ariska National Park (Indus Publishing)