· The Supreme Court stayed its order on the eviction of lakhs of Adivasis and other forest dwellers whose claims were rejected under the Scheduled Tribes and other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006 (FRA).
· The court has asked State governments for a detailed report on whether due process was followed by gram sabhas and authorities under the FRA before claims were rejected.
· There are reports about deforestation and fragmentation of land after the implementation of FRA but there is a lack of peer-reviewed studies that quantify the extent of deforestation caused by marginalised communities in comparison to large industrial and infrastructural projects.
· Objections to the FRA are often framed as an issue of wildlife conservation versus people’s rights, with no mention of these bigger players who might benefit from this framing.
· This is not to claim that forest dwellers have no impact on forests, but the FRA provides for that through critical wildlife habitats (CWH), spaces that can be demarcated to be inviolate as long as people’s rights are settled elsewhere.
· The petitioners in the FRA case express concern about the lack of progress in demarcating CWHs.
· However, for conservation to truly be effective in the long run, conservation actions must be based on the same principles as social justice. The court’s original eviction order had the potential to perpetrate such injustice.
· There are serious concerns about the rejection process, unfamiliarity with the language of the FRA, and outdated forest maps.
· Large animals share areas with people outside Protected Areas too. We are not ready to handle the failure of shared spaces as a country, when only 5% of area is protected for wildlife and there is rampant land reallocation for non-forestry uses in other areas.
Source : The Hindu
07.03.2019