Opinion Express View on Forest Conservation Act amendments: Missing the woods
It requires extensive discussion. Rajya Sabha should take all concerns on board.
The country's security is non-negotiable. But concerns over the de-regulation proposed in the Bill to fast-track military projects require wide-ranging deliberations, especially because most frontier zones of the country are also amongst its most ecologically fragile. 
The Bill to amend India’s Forest Conservation Act (FCA) rightly draws attention to the country’s global warming mitigation targets. Its “Statement of Objectives” underlines the “necessity to broaden the horizon of the Act to… increase the forest cover for creation of carbon sink of additional 2.5 to 3 billion tonnes of carbon equivalent by 2030”. But this tone of ecological appreciation does not resonate in large parts of the legislation that was passed by a voice vote in the Lok Sabha on Wednesday. Diversion of forests for the “construction of roads, railway lines or projects of strategic nature near the country’s international borders” would not require clearance once the Bill becomes law. The country’s security is non-negotiable. But concerns over the de-regulation proposed in the Bill to fast-track military projects require wide-ranging deliberations, especially because most frontier zones of the country are also amongst its most ecologically fragile.
The FCA, passed in 1980, extended protection to all lands classified as forests in government records. In 1996, a landmark ruling of the Supreme Court in the Godavarman case extended the Act’s ambit to all lands that satisfied “the dictionary definition of a forest”. The Court’s ruling prevented the deforestation of tracts that government surveys had not marked as forestland. But it also came in the way of removing lands that were no longer forests from the Act’s purview. Despite their stated intent of making the FCA consistent with the “social and economic” realities of the country, the new amendments do not attempt to correct this anomaly. Instead, they go back to the FCA’s original remit. Conservationists fear that this could invalidate the protection accorded by the SC to large tracts of land that have the characteristics of forests but are not notified as such in government records. The Forest Survey of India’s data indicate that about 28 per cent of the country’s forests could lose protection if the Bill becomes law. The legislation proposes to compensate for such losses with clauses that enable plantations. This is a positive intervention from an agro-forestry perspective. Plantations can also sequester carbon to an extent. But they are no substitute for the large gamut of ecological services offered by natural forests.
The Bill was placed before the Lok Sabha in March. It was referred to a Joint Committee of Parliament, which endorsed the legislation without any changes. Six Opposition members in the panel, however, dissented. They pitched for environmental audits and suggested that state governments be consulted before forest diversion orders are issued in the geologically-sensitive Himalayan and northeastern regions. Four hundred scientists and academicians and more than 100 former civil servants also expressed concerns about the process being followed in passing the Bill. They reasoned that the overwhelming majority of the BJP in the Joint Committee made the agency’s examination partisan, and requested the scrutiny of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Science and Technology, Environment, Forests and Climate Change. Such concerns have been ignored. And now, the Lok Sabha has passed the Bill without a meaningful debate. The Rajya Sabha should do better, take all concerns on board.
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