Will Forest Rights Become a Swing Issue in the Uttarakhand Polls? – The Wire Science

A view of a forested landscape from Pilkholi, Uttarakhand. Photo: Sanjay Koranga/Unsplash

It has been 15 years since India enacted the Forest Rights Act (FRA) a transformative law that promised to undo the injustices meted out to Adivasis and forest-dwellers by colonial and post-colonial forest policies.

The government is implementing the law at scale in states like Maharashtra, Odisha and Chhattisgarh but in others, like Uttarakhand, which has a ratio of forest land to forest-dweller population, it isnt being implemented at all. The issue of forest rights also appears to be missing from the campaigns of political parties for the upcoming assembly elections.

This is surprising given that over 70% of Uttarakhand is classified as forest land and almost half of the states population consists of forest dwellers, at least as under the FRA, who depend to a great degree on forests for their economic and subsistence needs.

Uttarakhand has had a long tradition of mobilisation on forest rights, as illustrated by famous forest uprisings in the early 20th century and the Chipko movement. The people forced the British to give in to their demands in the early 1920s and create the institution of vana panchayat a forest governance model that turned out to be very successful and inspired the FRA. However, today, these panchayats have been diluted and diminished through bureaucratic control.

Some of the best forests in Uttarakhand can still be found in vana panchayats protected by forest-dwelling communities. And properly implementing the FRA, particularly its Community Rights and Community Forest Resource (CFR) rights, will help revitalise this model of forest governance by shifting responsibilities to the gram sabhas.

One reason for the lack of political interest in implementing the FRA is a lack of understanding among Uttarakhands political class about the Acts potentially transformative impact on the development and well-being of Uttarakhands rural communities. The states political leadership has also been unaware of the large number of people who could benefit from a properly implemented FRA.

We seek to highlight the potential of forest rights to impact Uttarakhands electoral politics and to help develop it. Our analysis, based on Census data and geo-spatial data of forests and villages, and informed by the FRA itself, found that close to 10,000 villages (66%) are eligible for recognition of rights, particularly CFR rights, under the FRA.

The distribution and location of these villages is visible in the map below: all villages in orange are eligible.

In fact, we estimate that nearly half the population of Uttarakhand should be classified forest dwellers to get benefits under the FRA.

The CFR rights provision recognizes the collective rights of the gram sabhas over forests and empowers them to govern these forests. We estimate that if the FRA is implemented completely, the control and management of nearly half of Uttarakhands forest land will become governable by the gram sabhas, allowing the latter them to reap the environmental and economic benefits.

This has significant development, conservation and political implications. If the experience from Uttarakhands vana panchayats, as well as from other states where CFR rights have been recognised, is any indication, rural communities are better stewards and managers of forests, and recognising their CFR rights will lead to better income and development in villages.

In Uttarakhand, recognising collective forest rights under the Acts CFR provision can have large multiplier effects on incomes, poverty alleviation and development in rural areas.

Development implications

Uttarakhand is rich in natural resources, particularly forests. These forests in turn have great potential to support the development of rural communities through incomes from the forest-produce value chain and by providing ecosystem services (carbon sequestration, eco-tourism, etc.). Currently, the rural population and forest-dwellers get few income benefits from the forests.

Again, we believe that if the government fully implements the FRA, the minimum flow of annual income from the sale of forest produce, based on a low estimate of Rs 3,000 per hectare per year, to the communities will be at least Rs 500 crore or Rs 5 lakh per village on average.

Proper forest management, development of the value chain and better marketing can increase these figures manifold. In addition, potential incomes from payment for ecosystem services and carbon sequestered in forests can generate at least another Rs 500-1,000 crores per annum for gram sabhas.

The Government of India also transfers hundreds of crores to Uttarakhand for afforestation and forest management at least half of which will go to gram sabhas governing the CFRs. One can add to this the potential revenue generated through ecotourism and wildlife tourism in the CFRs as well.

Overall, we estimate that the effective support for, recognition of and proper governance of CFRs can contribute at least Rs 2,000-3,000 crore in income per year to the states rural communities. This infusion of wealth can lead to more sustainable development as well as more employment in the states remote forest and hill regions, and will also help empower the women, who share the closest relationships with the forests. A sense of ownership by local communities will in turn lead to better protection and conservation.

Note here that the Governments of Maharashtra and Rajasthan have allocated budgets directly to gram sabhas, under the FRA. Such initiatives are part of a larger effort to ensure that post-COVID economic recovery and the restoration of ecological infrastructure are aligned. They can be easily replicated in Uttarakhand to support a forest economy-based post-COVID recovery.

Can FRA swing the elections?

On the political implication of the FRA: we estimate that the number of eligible voters who can benefit by having forest rights recognised in Uttarakhand is at least 24 lakh, which is 32% of the total registered voters and 48% of actual votes cast in the 2017 elections.

We have found that in 54 assembly constituencies, more than 10,000 voters can benefit, and more than 50,000 voters in 19 constituencies. Significantly, the total number of FRA voters today is higher than the margins of victory in almost all 54 constituencies in 2017.

The map below shows the importance of the FRA for the elections, shaded by the percentage of villages within each constituency that is eligible to have its CFR rights recognised under the FRA.

For these reasons, the FRA could be a key political issue, and the government should ensure its proper implementation. Successive Uttarakhand governments have made no efforts to implement this crucial law and continue to ignore the legal rights of forest-dwellers. This has led to a groundswell of resentment and despair around the issue of forest rights in the state.

As Heera Janpangi, a member of Mahila Kisan Adhikar Manch, or MAKAAM, Uttarakhand, said:

The government in Uttarakhand neither entirely implements FRA nor does it take steps to stop harassment of community members and women when they venture into the forests to collect forest produce for their sustenance. The COVID 19 pandemic has made sustenance very difficult, we need a solution soon.

So, will political parties pick up on this swing issue and make it part of their electoral campaigns?

Kundan Kumar is an international expert in land rights, conservation and climate change based in Canada. Vandana Dhoop is an independent research consultant based in Kolkata.

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Will Forest Rights Become a Swing Issue in the Uttarakhand Polls? - The Wire Science