How India’s new Forest Bill puts the country’s forests at risk

The Lok Sabha approved the Forest (Conservation) Amendment Bill 2023 on July 26 and this happened without much debate. Despite dissenting opinions from committee members and states that said the Bill undermines the goal of conserving and maintaining existing forests, the government’s recommendations were last week unanimously approved by a Joint Parliamentary Committee report which accepted all of the government’s revisions. The report made no recommendations in terms of the unresolved problems with the law’s applicability. The Ministry had advised earlier that the Forest (Conservation) Act be changed in 2021 to add a provision to safeguard pristine forests, but the Bill does not mention this.

What changes is the bill proposing to make?

On March 29, the Forest (Conservation) Amendment Bill 2023 (FCAB) was tabled in the Lok Sabha to amend the FCA. Instead of being forwarded to one of the eight committees of the Rajya Sabha, the Standing Committee on Science, Technology, Environment, and Forests, it was sent to the Joint Committee of the Parliament. Before the Parliament’s monsoon session, the Joint Committee was supposed to present its report and recommendations.

India’s forest law is proposed to undergo significant revisions via the Forest Conservation (Amendment) Bill. The Bill aims to start over with the broader definition of “forest” that the Supreme Court offered on December 12th, 1996. It downplays the significance of forest clearance processes and the requirement to confirm forest rights before project sanctioning. In simple terms, this means that the bill permits the diversion of vast areas of forestland for building without requiring any permits. Additionally, it will conflict with other existing forest legislation. Twenty-eight per cent of the forestlands that have been protected by the Forest Conservation Act of 1980 are about to lose their protective cover due to the Bill’s narrowing of the definition of what defines a forest. 

The Bill highlights the complicated difficulties in striking a balance between industrial expansion and forest preservation. The Forest (Conservation) Act of 1980 has been the cornerstone law that has authorized the state to control this and impose fines on such industrial exploitation, even if industrialization invariably implies usurping more extensive forest land and ecosystems. 

The bill will weaken the environmental safeguards for India’s forests

Last week, the JPC delivered to Parliament its report on the Forest (Conservation) Amendment Bill 2023, in which it debated on each of the government’s proposed revisions clause by clause. Over 1,300 responses with complaints and recommendations to the Bill were received. While the report includes numerous of these complaints and the Environment Ministry’s Reaction to them, it does not include the Committee’s thoughts and conclusions. The Bill was passed in the Lok Sabha despite the Opposition’s continued demonstrations over the violence in Manipur, with only a few MPs participating in the debate. A majority of the House of Representatives approved it.

Meenakshi Kapoor, a freelance environmental researcher who specializes in ecological clearance procedures, says that “On the one hand, the rules let the forest clearance procedure sideline the need for ensuring forest rights before a project gets approved. On the other hand, the Bill proposes to make certain projects exempt from the procedure entirely.”

“This opens up vast tracts of forest for diversion without any permissions and has the potential to conflict with other forest laws”, she added. 

According to several specialists who submitted comments, their issues were either not appropriately addressed or were utterly disregarded. “None of the concerns, criticisms or recommendations have been taken on board, or even given due consideration by the Committee and Ministry, undermining the democratic process. The whole exercise of inviting comments seems pointless,” said Prerna Singh Bindra, PhD scholar and wildlife conservationist who, along with IFS officer Prakriti Srivastava, made a submission to the Committee urging that the Bill be scrapped. “Even if the concerns are cited in the report, they’ve been dismissed without due application of mind.”

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).

References:

1. https://indiankanoon.org/doc/298957
2. https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/editorials/express-view-on-forest-conservation-act-amendments-missing-the-woods-8864256/
3. https://fsi.nic.in/forest-report-2021-details
4. https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/editorial/green-washing-the-hindu-editorial-on-amendments-and-the-forest-conservation-amendment-bill-2023/article67067924.ece
5. https://www.indiatimes.com/news/north-east/the-forest-conservation-amendment-bill-proposes-radical-changes-this-is-why-the-northeast-is-protesting-610553.html
6. https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/other-states/houses-and-buses-burnt-in-separate-incidents-of-violence-in-manipur/article67122312.ece
7. https://india.mongabay.com/2023/07/controversial-forest-amendment-bill-passed-in-lok-sabha-but-key-questions-remain-unanswered/
8. https://twitter.com/prernabindra/status/1686284925270413313?s=20
9. https://thewire.in/government/despite-criticism-forest-conservation-amendment-bill-gets-jpc-nod

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