Population and Forest

In one line

Population presses on forest in four ways, and only one of them is caused by the people who live beside the forest.

In the wording a student can write in an exam: population affects forest through fuelwood collection, grazing, encroachment for cultivation, and diversion of forest land for development. The first three are pressures from the people living in and around forests; the fourth is a decision of the State, and it is the largest in area. Recorded forest and tree cover has been broadly stable, but the Government's own draft policy of 2018 records that the low quality and low productivity of natural forests is a serious concern.

The four pressures

Fuelwood

Solid fuel remains a major source of domestic energy in rural India, and headload collection is a daily activity for a very large number of households.

Its effect on the forest is lopping and thinning rather than clearance, which is why it degrades rather than removes, and why it does not show in a cover figure.

The National Forest Policy 1988 addresses it directly. Paragraph 3.4 provides that provision of sufficient fodder, fuel and pasture, especially in areas adjoining forest, is necessary in order to prevent depletion of forests beyond the sustainable limit, and that since fuelwood continues to be the predominant source of energy in rural areas, afforestation should be intensified with special emphasis on augmenting fuelwood production to meet the requirement of rural people.

And its answer is a substitute rather than a prohibition. Clean cooking fuel programmes reduce fuelwood demand and improve indoor air quality at the same time, which is the rare case of a single measure serving two of this module's problems.

Grazing

Livestock numbers are very large, common grazing land has shrunk, and the animals go into the forest. Grazing prevents regeneration, because the seedlings are eaten before they establish.

The National Forest Policy 1988's answer is paragraph 4.3.4.1: rights and concessions, including grazing, should always remain related to the carrying capacity of forests, and the capacity should be optimised by investment and research; stall-feeding should be encouraged; and requirements that cannot be met by the rights so determined should be met by developing social forestry outside the reserved forests.

Encroachment

Cultivation of forest land, driven by the shrinking per capita availability of agricultural land in the chapter on land.

Do not treat this as simply unlawful occupation, and this is the point that distinguishes an answer. The Forest Rights Act 2006 recognises that a large part of what was recorded as encroachment was in fact occupation of land whose customary rights had been extinguished at settlement, which its preamble treats as a historical injustice. Section 3 recognises the right to hold and live in forest land under individual or common occupation for habitation or self-cultivation for livelihood, and section 4 provides for its vesting subject to the conditions the Act lays down.