Punjab environment activists voice concern over green light to Forest law amendments

“Soon after the Bill was passed in Lok Sabha, we asked the Rajya Sabha members of Punjab to articulate our concerns in the House as the amendments have the potential to reduce the forest cover drastically. But we got a lukewarm response from them. However, we won’t remain quiet, we will chalk out a plan to tackle this issue in in future,” said Jaskirat Singh, an environment activist and a member of Punjab Action committee ( PAC) which raises environment-related issues in Punjab.

He added, “Around 25% of forests in India have lost their legal protection as the definition of forest has been changed by the new ‘law’. These areas are forests but not notified as such in revenue records. The Supreme Court in the famous T N Godavarman forest case judgment of 1996 had given these areas protection of the Forest Conservation Act as ‘deemed forests’. That has now been removed and huge tracts of forests in India will now be open to commercial plunder.”

Kuldeep Singh Khaira, another environment activist, said, “The new ‘legislation’ gives the green light to clear forests and alter biodiverse and geologically sensitive regions near our borders. Lands ‘situated within a distance of 100 km along international borders or Line of Control or Line of Actual Control’ and proposed to be used for the construction of strategic linear projects for national security are exempted from obtaining forest clearance. Such a blanket permission to destroy our forests without any checks by removing such large territories of the country from the protection of the law will have a detrimental effect on our forests and biodiversity.”

Amandeep Bains from the PAC said, “These amendments are a retrograde step in the name of ‘vikas’ (development), indeed very unfortunate and a recipe for disaster. This is also totally out of tune with the times when climate change is wreaking havoc on our planet.”

Jaskirat said, “After the Bill was passed in Lok Sabha, we had taken up the matter with all the Rajya Sabha members of Punjab, but unfortunately they too didn’t voice our concerns. Even the state government didn’t issue any statement on the matter which shows its lack of concern about environment issues.”

A few organisations had even approached Rajya Sabha member and environmentalist Balbir Singh Seechewal, but his response too was lukewarm.

“The forest cover in Punjab is just around 3%. Such amendments in the name of developing strategically important projects will further cut down the forests. But this will not deter us from taking up the cause in future,” said Bains.

Jaskirat said that in 1950, India’s forest cover was 23.06% which was reduced to 19.13% in 1970. Since the enactment of the Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980, the forest cover increased to 20.34% in 2000 and 21.71% in 2021. Instead of halting the forest fragmentation, these amendments promote the use of forest land for commercial purpose by exempting large tracts of land from the ambit of forest conservation laws, he added.