Climate and Environmental implications of the New Forest Conservation Rules 

The Forest Conservation (FC) Rules, 2022 was notified on June 28 by the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change (MoEF&CC) under the Forest Conservation Act, 1980. It will replace the Rules of 2003 and subsequent amendments to it in 2004, 2014, and 2017. It is likely to be tabled in the ongoing Monsoon Session of Parliament as the Forest (Conservation) Amendment Bill, 2022. 

While the Union Government has claimed that the introduction of the new rules will contribute to the ‘ease of doing business in the country by streamlining the approval process, the opposition, as well as many experts, have criticized the new rules saying that it will violate an essential provision of the Forest Rights Act, 2006 by allowing private developers to divert forest lands without the prior consent of forest dwellers or gram sabhas. 

What does the Forest Rights Act, 2006 with respect to diversion of forest land say?

As per the Forest Rights Act, 2006, the Government has to seek free, prior, and informed consent of forest dwellers before any project is allowed on their land. The Act further empowers the Gram Sabha to have a ‘decisive say’ making it responsible for the conservation and protection of forest land. 

The Act “enjoins upon the Gram Sabha and rights holders the responsibility of conservation and protection of biodiversity, wildlife, forests, adjoining catchment areas, water sources, and other ecologically sensitive areas as well as to stop any destructive practices affecting these resources or cultural and natural heritage of the tribals. The Gram Sabha is also a highly empowered body under the Act, enabling the tribal population to have a decisive say in the determination of local policies and schemes impacting them.”

In 2009, the Environment Ministry passed an order stating that forest diversion proposals should meet Forest Rights Act requirements and have NOC from the gram sabha to be eligible for clearance consideration. This was later included as part of the Forest Conservation Rules in 2015. 

In 2013, the Supreme Court asked for Gram Sabha’s consent on the Vedanta’s group billion-dollar bauxite mining project in Odisha’s Niyamgiri Hills following which all 12-gram sabhas unanimously rejected the proposal. This affirmed the decision-making power of the village councils under the Forest Rights Act. 

What is different in the new Forest Conservation Rules?

Under the new rules, the responsibility of obtaining the consent of the forest dwellers now rests on the State governments rather than on the Centre like the norm earlier. Also, as per the new rules, the legal requirement of seeking the consent of gram sabhas before diverting forest land is non-existent. 

Earlier a project developer applying for forest diversion had to offer land not notified as forest. The developer also had to bear the cost of raising compensatory afforestation over the land he was offering. Now, according to a Hindustan Times report, project developers can buy privately cultivated plantations to meet compensatory afforestation targets. 

The new rules will let the Centre permit the clearing of a forest before even consulting the forest dwellers. The Union Government can collect payment from compensatory afforestation even before State Government gets consent from the forest dwellers which makes the ‘consent’ part almost insignificant, according to a report published in Newslaundry. 

The report further stated that the state government then will have to handle matters like settling the forest rights of the dwellers and rehabilitating them for compliance. The Union government after receiving the compliance report may accord the final approval under section 2 of the Forest Conservation Act. 

“This change only makes things worse by making the forest clearance almost a fait accompli. We cannot imagine a collector doing due diligence on FRA rights after the forest clearance has already been approved by the Union government,” Sharachchandra Lele, a distinguished fellow at the Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment, said to Newslaundry.

Climate and Environment Implications

Afforestation is the establishment of a forest in a place that earlier was without any tree cover. This is increasingly becoming one of the most popular methods in terms of climate change mitigation across the world. Since trees absorb carbon, a forest full of trees can act as a carbon sink. 

Afforestation can be broadly divided into two types- naturally regenerated forests and plantation forests. In India, plantation forests are mainly established in the form of compensatory afforestation when the diversion of forest land is done for non-forest usage. 

According to experts, natural forests are far more effective at absorbing carbon than plantation forests which are in general of the same age and the same species. Experts have found that a monoculture plantation (mostly done in the case of compensatory afforestation) is never able to compensate for the complex biodiversity of an old-growth forest in terms of a carbon accounting perspective. So, long-term environmental and climate implications of large-scale forest diversion only to be compensated by afforestation needs to be looked at. 

According to a 2019 study of ‘Compensatory Afforestation in India’ by the World Rainforest Movement, ‘compensatory afforestation is a method of licensing deforestation in one place by claiming to be able to ‘compensate’ for it elsewhere.’ The study found that compensatory afforestation ‘is accelerating the invasion of forests in India by big corporations, continuing and extending an earlier process of licensing deforestation (forest diversion) institutionalized under the Forest (Conservation) Act of 1980.’ The study concluded that ‘communities should be the ones who decide whether any forests need to be diverted at all. If and when a community decides on diversion, it should also be in control of any mitigation exercises, with an eye to maintaining access and use necessary for livelihood.’

Also, the Union government not only plans to introduce the Forest (Conservation) Amendment Bill, 2022 which seems to have serious implications in terms of the environment but also plans to amend three laws connected with the protection of the environment – the Environment (Protection) Act, 1986, Water (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act, 1974 and Air (Prevention and Control of Pollution) Act, 1981. Offenders will no longer face imprisonment but a payout in terms of large monetary fines has been provisioned which experts believe will encourage a ‘pollute-and-pay’ attitude which can never be good for the environment. 

In India, the diversion of forest land to industrial and infrastructural projects has been continuously happening although the country has pledged “to create an additional (cumulative) carbon sink of 2.5-3 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent through additional forest and tree cover by 2030” in the Intended Nationally Determined Contribution (INDC) submission made in October 2016 to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (Paris Agreement 2015).