<b>Sunita Narain:</b> The wealth of forests

Forests have been blacked out in the economic assessment of the country. The Economic Survey does not even list forestry as a sector, for which accounts are prepared. Instead, it is lumped together with agriculture and fisheries. In other words, there are no estimates of the productivity of this sector, which encompasses more than 20 per cent of the country's land area.

This is because the focus of forest managers is on conservation and forest productivity is nobody's business. The forest survey report says forest cover in the country is stable, but growing stock of forests has decreased between 2005 and 2009. Currently, we import more and more forest produce, from pulp to timber. It is for this reason that revenues from forests are declining in state budgets - hence the pressure for their diversion to more productive uses.
 

This is clearly untenable. We need forests to be used for productive purposes. But we need to ensure that this time, unlike in the past, it does not lead to rampant deforestation and over-extraction. We need to reposition forests as being integral to economic growth of the state. But this means we need to learn to plant trees, to cut and then replant them. We need, quite literally, to make money from our forest wealth. But we need to learn how to make money without destroying our forests.

Before 1980, until the advent of the forest-environment conservation era, the emphasis was on extraction. The country lost large areas of forests to commercial interests - the pulp and paper industry was given forests at throwaway rates; timber logging was rampant; the locals' needs for firewood and grazing put pressure on forests. In the mid-1980s, the first remote-sensing exercise on green cover shocked the country, since it showed large areas of forests had been lost to development and subsistence pressures. At this time, the only concern was conservation and protection.

So, in this period, the Forest (Conservation) Act was enacted to centralise all decisions on forest diversion for non-forestry projects such as dams or mining. In the mid-1990s, the Supreme Court issued strict directives on tree felling in forest areas. The court followed it up with orders that defined "forests" based on their "dictionary meaning" irrespective of the ownership of the land. In other words, any land area with tree cover would be classified as forests and brought within the ambit of legislation for forest protection in the country. In addition, the forest departments of different states had made it virtually impossible to get permission to cut or transport felled trees - even if these were privately grown. In fact, it has now become so difficult to cut trees on individual-owned land that people would prefer not to grow trees at all.

All this has meant that we have been able to stem the rate of deforestation. There is no doubt about this. But this is only half right. The fact is that forests in India are still under huge pressure and shrinking over time.

Firstly, the rate of forest land diverted towards development projects has been unprecedented in the past five years. But this diversion also happens because there is no value seen in forests - other than the cost that has to be paid for diversion of land by the project proponent. Instead, there is value in the dam, road or mine for which the land is needed. So, this pressure on forest land is bound to increase. We must also note that forests are the last remaining public lands in the country and the acquisition of private land will become even more expensive and contentious in future.

Secondly, forests are under pressure to meet local needs and for illegal extraction. Today, it is an inconvenient truth that the poorest people in India live in the country's richest forests. The management of this green wealth has not brought any benefits to the locals. Amid all this, while deforestation and forest diversion will grow, we do not have any viable strategies for re-greening these lands. Thus, we will lose bit by bit.

So how do we change this? One, we need to urgently value the economic, ecological and livelihood potential of forests and to incorporate this into national accounts. We need a robust methodology to bring the tangible (what we can measure) and intangible costs together. Though there is much talk about green accounting, the methodology is weak. For instance, there is no real assessment of minor (non-timber) forest produce. Other assessment of the contribution of forests to livestock or the hydropower sector is inflated or non-existent.

Two, we need to use this methodology to pay for standing forests. The 12th and 13th Finance Commissions allocated funds for standing forests, but this is a pittance. We, then, need states to transfer payment for standing forests - protected for biodiversity, watershed or other purposes - to local custodians. This will build local economies and local support for forest protection.

We need to use robust accounting methodology to increase the productivity of the remaining forest land. But we know that the business of cutting and planting trees that survive cannot be successful without people who live in the forest. So this becomes the new opportunity for employment and economic growth. The way ahead is to build inclusive economies using green wealth.