‘Management’ and ‘Productivity’ Should Not be Guiding Principles Behind the Forest Policy

As civil society groups and environmentalists oppose the draft National Forest Policy 2018 on grounds of privatisation and commercialisation of forests, a recent article in The Wire arguing for shifting the focus away from plantations to conservation of forests helps underscore how misguided the draft national policy as well as vision of the government are — hinged on the notion of ‘management’ and ‘productivity’.

Using Chhattisgarh as a case study, the author elaborates on the detrimental impact of plantation drives in ‘degraded’ forest areas rather than letting the degraded forests regenerate themselves naturally. In Chhattisgarh, 30% of the state’s forested area — or 16,662 sq km out of the total ‘forest cover’ of 55,547 sq km — is classified as degraded.

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These degraded forests are being ‘developed’ by the Chhattisgarh State Forest Development Corporation to increase their ‘productivity’. The corporation, he writes, plants teak and bamboo, “which are then felled on a rotational basis. The revenue is shared between the forest department and the communities that dependent on the forest.”

However, he notes, “the naturally growing species like saliha, kullu, bija, haldu, etc.” in Chhattisgarh have declined, “because nothing else grows around teak”. The natural regeneration of degraded forests is not able to take place because of the idea and practice of ‘management’ of forests. As the author says, forests do not require ‘management’ but ‘safeguarding’, while laying out the contours of this shift from plantation/management to conservation/safeguarding.

This approach of ‘management’ of the forests is amplified in the draft National Forest Policy 2018 to the extent that it appears to be the guiding principle behind the “strategies” put forward.

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For example, section 4.1.1 of the draft policy, titled ‘Sustainable Management of Forests’, even while paying lip service to “promoting natural regeneration”, is primarily concerned with forest management to increase its productivity. Take sub-section (d) of 4.1.1 —

“(d) Increase the productivity of forest plantations

Productivity of the forest plantations are poor in most of the States. This will be addressed by intensive scientific management of forest plantations of commercially important species like teak, sal, sisham, poplar, gmelina, eucalyptus, casuarina, bamboo etc. The lands available with the forest corporations which are degraded & underutilized will be managed to produce quality timber with scientific interventions.”

Even more problematically, it goes on to stipulate the entry of private parties in this ‘management’ of forests — something that civil society groups have been crying themselves hoarse against.

“Public private participation models will be developed for undertaking Afforestation and reforestation activities in degraded forest areas and forest areas available with Forest Development Corporations and outside forests” — as the sub-section (d) goes on to conclude.

If it was unclear so far, this “strategy” of bringing in the ‘public private partnership’ model for afforestation on degraded land with the aim of “increasing productivity” makes it clear that the motive is to promote private profit.

Indeed, more than 100 civil society organisations from 15 states that sent their comments to the environment ministry have objected to this PPP model over well-founded apprehensions that the private players will misuse this ‘model’ for their commercial interests. “There is no reason to believe that the participation of private parties will necessarily result in better regeneration of the forests or enhanced ecosystem and livelihood services to the local communities,” they wrote in their comments. 

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The thrust on the linkages with industry, or forest-industry interface, also underlines that. For example, under section 4.1.2 titled ‘Management of trees outside forests’, the government wants to promote agro-forestry and farm forestry, which will again be carried out with private involvement by way of the PPP model.

Then there is the fact that plantations for commercial and industrial purposes are mono-cultural that have an adverse impact on the forest lands.

“Commercial mono-cultural plantations are in fact endangering farms and forests of the adivasis, impacting their way of life by replacing sustenance with profit generation and replacing shared sustainable life ways with privatized gains” as critics have pointed out. Another activist was quoted as saying that the forest-dwelling communities “fear that the move would lead to leasing out of forest lands, traditionally used by them, to private companies for monocultures that are meant to feed industrial requirements.”

The language of the draft policy is rife with the term ‘management’, whether talking about forests or wildlife. In the general neoliberal obsession with ‘productivity’, the government seems to forget that the forests are not factories.

No wonder, then, that contrary to government estimates — which wrongly include plantations — scientific reports say that India’s forest cover has been decreasing over the years.