National Forest Policy, 2018 draft

Seeking to replace the country’s 30-year-old national forest policy, the Centre has come out with a new draft policy which calls for promoting urban greens, public private partnership models for afforestation, strengthening forest fire prevention measures and plantations in catchment areas to rejuvenate water bodies among many proposals to protect India’s green cover.

Need for fresh policy:
Though the NFP of 1988 had been instrumental in increasing forest and tree cover and also in reducing diversion of forest for other land uses despite compelling demands from the increasing population, a new policy is needed to face new challenges of climate change, human-wildlife conflict, intensifying water crisis, increasing air and water pollution and deteriorating environment.

Objective:
The overall objective and goal of the present policy is to safeguard the ecological and livelihood security of people, of the present and future generations, based on sustainable management of the forests for the flow of ecosystem services.

Salient features:
1. Public private participation for afforestation in degraded forest areas
2. Promoting urban greens
3. Measures to safeguard ecosystems from forest fire (map the vulnerable areas; develop and strengthen early warning systems)
4. National Community Forest Management Mission for participatory forest management
5. Afforestation in catchment areas for river rejuvenation and water recycling
6. Economic valuation of forests
7. Forest certification to provide premium on forest produce
8. Integration of climate change concerns in forest management
9. Promote agro-forestry and farm forestry
10. Management of north-eastern forests

It seeks to sync it with the country’s forestry-related ‘Nationally Determined Contribution’ targets under the Paris Agreement where India has promised to rapidly increase its forest cover so that an additional carbon sink of 2.5 to 3 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent is created by the year 2030.The draft policy also talks about the need to stimulate growth in the forest based industry sector. It says, “This sector being labour intensive can help in increasing green jobs. Forest corporations and industrial units need to step up growing of industrial plantations for meeting the demand of raw materials.” Pitching for appropriate laws, rules and regulations for effective implementation of the new policy, the draft also asks for setting up a ‘National Board of Forestry’ headed by environment and forest minister and ‘State Boards of Forestry’ headed by state minister in-charge of forests for conflict resolution and periodic review.

Criticism:
The draft NFP 2018 mentions major forestry issues ailing the forest sector, but it doesn’t provide answers to them as to how these objectives will be achieved considering the competitive demands for forestlands. It’s worth noting here that most of the objectives mentioned in earlier 1988 policy have not been met so far. The policy still does not address the issue of forest rights of forest dwelling tribal communities. Though the draft recognises role of forests as climate change mitigation factor, it remains vague on the issue of forests rights for forest dwelling communities. It, however, proposes launching of a national community forest management mission for the community resource management under Forest Rights Act (FRA).

By: Dr. Vivek Rana