Forest laws and forest rights

Prelims and Mains

Gram sabha consent for forest clearance is the no objection certificate that each gram sabha concerned must give before forest land is diverted to non forest use.

• No forest clearance is issued in India until every gram sabha concerned has signed off, yet the law everyone credits that power to never mentions it.
• The Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980 requires the Centre's prior approval, in two stages, before forest land goes to non forest use.
• The Forest Rights Act does not use the language of consent.
• The consent comes from guidelines under the 1980 Act, first in the 2009 circular, which require a no objection certificate from each gram sabha.
• Whether that certificate is a veto or a formality is what the disputes on this page are about.

Prelims and Mains

The Agasthyamalai landscape of Tamil Nadu covers the Kalakad Mundanthurai and Srivilliputhur Megamalai tiger reserves and the Kanyakumari Wildlife Sanctuary, and lies within the Agasthyamala Biosphere Reserve.

• An encroacher and a recognised rights holder can be standing on the same patch of forest, and an order to clear one of them reaches the other.
• The Central Empowered Committee is the body the Supreme Court set up to examine forest and wildlife matters and report to it.

Prelims and Mains

Bamboo is botanically a grass, not a tree, and almost everything the law does about it turns on that fact.

• The Indian Forest Act, 1927 lets a State constitute reserved and protected forests and regulate what is cut from them and carried out.
• In 2017 bamboo was removed from the Act's definition of a tree, so bamboo grown on non forest land needs no permit to fell or transport.
• Bamboo standing in forest areas remains regulated.
• Under the Forest Rights Act bamboo is a minor forest produce, owned by the forest dwellers who collect it.
• Since the 2017 change, bamboo enterprises and livelihoods on farm grown bamboo have grown, with no further change in law.

Prelims and Mains

Ecotourism facilities inside forests are governed by the Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980, under which an ecotourism facility inside a forest counted as a non forest use and needed diversion approval.

• The 2023 amendment placed ecotourism facilities among forestry and conservation activities, so the same construction no longer takes that route.

Prelims and Mains

Hasdeo Arand in northern Chhattisgarh is one of central India's largest intact forests and overlies coal.

• A 2021 Wildlife Institute of India assessment recommended that no block beyond those already mined be opened.

Mains

Fortress conservation is the protection of wildlife by removing the communities that live in an area.

• The case against it rests on evidence that some traditional practices, such as mosaic burning, kept habitats in the condition wildlife needs.