Issues in balancing forests and development

Akham Bonbirdhwaja Singh *

A participatory nursery of NAP Kamu Lairok village at Thoubal Division :: Pix - A.K. Rana

"Socialism collapsed because it did not allow market to tell economic truth, the capitalism may collapse because it does not allow market to tell the ecological truth" - Oystein Dahle

Let me open with a small story. A few months back, in Amity, Noida, we had a lecture from an expert from Coal India, Shri R.K. Garg. He squarely blamed the foresters for being too conservative and holding on to open forests which are degrading more and more, from where they can extract coal which is a national energy source. By the afternoon, the same day, we had another expert from The Energy and Resources Institute (formerly, Tata Energy Research Institute), Dr. Smriti Das. She was a conservationists, and she was against the foresters for being too lenient towards development, be it mining or hydel projects.

These two personalities represent two different sides in our society, may be both are right in their own rights. Between two powerful lobbies, not having too many well wishers in the power corridors too, it is not very enviable position for land resource managers, I suppose. We are trying to go full throttle without bothering about the ecology and environmental balance. We all are pretending to blind about the ecological truth.

Of course, it must be difficult for the policy makers to withstand the pressure of population and development. But we always have the choice. Pressure or not we have to make the choice, this will be how the future will see us. We all know that forest is the best and only means of ameliorating and balancing climate. On one side, we are talking so much of safeguards against diversion, on the other the potential of forests for mitigating the climate is so depleted due to overriding rights and privileges.

Globally, we have to feed six billion mouths, here, back home, we have to support 17% of world's population over only 2% land area. It must be a big dilemma with the natural resource managers. It is lucky that we have the Supreme Court with us and movement of judicial activism on forests and environment. We have National Green Tribunal, a novelty. Of course it is not healthy to always depend on the Supreme Court to protect foresters and forests from the onslaught from various quarters. How long we are going have this war, sometimes with favourable government, safeguards are stringently followed, but sometimes not.

India is a huge economy. After the recent recess, the economy is picking up. The economic muscle and prowess of India cannot be underrated. The infrastructure need of burgeoning population demands huge constructions. The economic growth percent was tremendous at eight plus a few years back, now after eurozone crisis and world recession, it is still around five. With huge NRI remittances and workforce overseas, the size of India's economy is one of the largest. With the new dispensation at the centre, the economy is likely to grow more and more and more infrastructures are expected to be developed. So now, we have to take the decision, for how much of modern comfort, how much of climate safety can be sacrificed? We have already seen the signs of imbalance.

Demographic Pressure

As we all know, sustainability requires a proper relationship between the Forests and the people (Development). By the time of independence, we had a reasonable size of population within sustainable limit, but since then, it has grown exponentially. The population is still growing, the fastest population growth, fast outgrowing that of China. In terms of total population too, India is going to overtake the population of China. India's population is 127 crores in 2014 (121crores in 2011 census) crores, pretty close to that of China's 134 crores. We have seen that the number of villages have increased many fold during last five years. The national population growth is at 17.64% decadel growth, but is much more in rural areas (Manipur 18%).

The population density of India is 382 persons per sq.km. Against 51 of the world average (Manipur-122 persons per sqkm as per 2011 census).

The per capita forest land of the world is 0.60 ha and of the country is 0.06 ha (Manipur-0.63). While, the per capita forests of country are just one tenth of world average, it is pretty low. If it continues at this rate, one day we may be left without any forests. The tribals of course shall be hit hard. The tribals have been mostly in forest areas due to geographic location and isolation, and to me it has not been by choice. The urbanised tribals of North East are coping up very well with development.

Secondly, now with the need of more food and need for more money to meet the requirement of modern lifestyle, the pressure is very heavy on forests. In addition, the mode of jhuming, hunting and setting of forests on fire are not very helpful in conservation, but still persisting. In the past, when the population were very less, the impact of such activities was not visibly felt, but with so much of population, the fact of the matter is crystal clear. People are swarming the forests.

Development Pressure

Forests have been the first victim of development. Development always has ecological conflicts as we all understand. Development requires materials to be extracted, stone mining, sand mining, coal mining extraction of oil and other minerals. The new constructions and infrastructures are eating up the forest land and natural resources. The market pull is so strong that the last remaining resources are coming to the market. Further, there is no place for more infrastructure needs for such a huge population. Already, our crop fields are used to the maximum, with high yielding varieties and using fertilisers beyond permissible limits of human safety. So, more lands are required and therefore, forest lands are being sacrificed. Our energy needs are mostly met from hydel projects, which again eat up huge forests land being submerged once for all.

There has been diversion of forest land for various purposes. During sixties and seventies. There has been huge diversion of forests for agriculture and hydel project and till 1980 (till passing of Forest Conservation Act, 1980), the extent of diversion has been up tp the tune of 4.328 million hectares. The breakup of the same can be seen below:

Trend of Forest Diversion in Pre 1980(Prior to FCA)
Sl. No    Purpose    Extent    (in Million ha)
1    Agricultural Activities    2.623
2    Submergence due to river valley/ hydel projects    0.502
3    Industries and Townships    0.134
4    Transmission Lines, Roads etc.    0.061
5    Miscellaneous uses    1.008
6    Total    4.328

Source: TERI

Since the passing of the FCA, 1980, the diversion of forest land has slowed down quite a bit, but during last decade, it is picking up again and there has been serious blame on foresters for stalling the development projects and all. Nevertheless, it can be seen from the following table that the diversion of forest land has been in a regulated manner, the diversion has gone down to 1.1 million hectares after the Act only against the 4.3 million hectares prior to the Act.

Forest Land Diversion after 1980 (till 2008)
Sl No    Purpose Area in million ha     %
1    Defense     0.12496660     10.91
2    Dispensary/Hospital     0.00010580     0.01
3    Drinking water     0.00180082     0.16
4    Forest village Conversion     0.04098681     3.58
5    Hydel     0.11125745     9.71
6    Irrigation     0.11083540     9.68
7     Mining     0.11291873     9.86
8    Others     0.18533101     16.18
9     Railway     0.00704242     0.61
10     Rehabilitation     0.017058.41     1.49
11     Road     0.02803834     2.45
12     School     0.00253991     0.22
13     Thermal     0.00449174     0.39
14     Transmission Line     0.02773498     2.42
15     Village Electrification     0.00017259     0.02
16     Wind Power     0.00160151     0.14
Total: 0.77688252
17     Encroachment     0.36841498     32.17
Total     1.14529750     100

Source: TERI

There is extreme pressure on forest land from all sides, for domestic homestead land, urbanisation, mining, infrastructure, hydel projects etc. at national and state level. It is now increasing day by day. With better financial position, it is difficult to resist the pressure. The Act has already earned a name and is quite infamous. In the meantime, slowly and slowly, the pressures are showing, signs of yielding to pressures are visible. With acquiring of land next to impossible under the new land acquisition law, more pressure will fall on public land, there is already a long line of various projects requiring more and more land, both at national and state level. So, more relaxation in the provision of FC Act therefore is likely to take away the utility of the Act.

Carrying capacity of land resources

Our resources have limits. The natural reserves are limited. The productivity of land in spite of best practices is limited. It cannot go beyond certain level. In the meantime, the increase in population is having no sign of slowing down. It is increasing without any limit. In the meantime, with civilisation, our consumption habits are changing, we are consuming more and more. We have the details about the world's coal reserve, petroleum reserves and how long they are going to last. For energy, we may even go for renewable resources, but the climate and environment mitigating functions of forests cannot be replaced. Even with Plan B Model Energy of Lester Brown, requirement of any population above six billion will be beyond the earth's carrying capacity.

The National Forest Policy envisaged that one third (33.33%) of land mass should be under forest cover in the plain areas and two third (66.66%) in the hilly terrain. This clearly shows that, we need a certain extent of forest land to make it sustainable. We are supposed to have about 43% of GA as forest considering the plains and hills ratio, but at the moment, it is hardly 21 %. We know that to bring up from 21% to near about 43% is too a tall order. For the country, we need to have 141 million hectares against current level of 69 million hectare. Very few states now have forest surplus (including Manipur). I do not think that the country should be sacrificing any more forest area out of the 21% we currently have.

Will mitigative measures suffice?

As we know, the case of providing non forest land for compensatory afforestation (CA) in lieu of the forest land diverted has been almost nil. So, we are doing the CA inside the "existing forests", so there is no resultant increase or compensation in true sense. Ultimately, there is more and more reduction of forest area. Similarly, the mitigative measures under the EIA (Environmental Impact Assessment) are also done inside the existing forests mainly. Initially, it may have some positive impact, but then in the long run, whatever has been lost, cannot be brought back. So, the EIA and CA should not be the only considerations.

History is the witness, those civilisations which did not take care of their forests and nature have all perished. We have seen the ominous signs already. It is simple common science that all the plants and animals have their own duty to sustain the nature and ecosystems, man being a small part. Destroying the nature, we are destroying ourselves. What will happen to our soils, our water and our oxygen and ultimately to our climate and global warming? It is again a fact that the forests is a public trust, the public interest has to have the priority. Inspite of having a forceful Act, more and more forest area is being sacrificed.

There are safeguards under the Forest Conservation Act and Environment Protection Act. These safeguards, even with a pragmatic EIA, are not able to suitably address the fallouts of over utilising the nature. The tendency in India is that we always tend to misuse powers and concessions, unless there is a strict restriction from centre, the forest land shall vanish in the thin air within no time. The case of freedom with responsibility shall take time to strike roots in India.

Conclusion

The problem now is of an unmanageable size of population and unsustainable models of development. Our development models are on more land based programmes which ultimately comes to the public land as the private lands are beyond reach. For balancing climate and development, we have to really tackle these issues. Though, these issues are non forestry issues and lies outside forestry sector, they have direct bearing on the well being of the forests. We need to find out more workable and relevant solutions to handle these issues. But, according to Lester R Brown, the World is on the Edge. The ecological collapse shall definitely be the economic collapse, ecological and economic collapse shall bring an end to the world. It is time that we make the right choice.