Joint Forest Management, and the People Who Protect a Forest

In one line

The law gives the people who live in a forest three things: a share in managing it, a vote on what happens to it, and standing to sue about it, and the third has done more work than the other two.

In the wording a student can write in an exam: the participation of the people in forest protection rests on paragraph 4.6 of the National Forest Policy, 1988, which requires all agencies to associate the tribal people closely in the protection, regeneration and development of forests and to replace contractors by tribal cooperatives, labour cooperatives and government corporations; on section 28 of the Indian Forest Act, 1927, the village-forest; on the Gram Sabha under the Forest Rights Act, 2006, and under PESA; on the seats reserved to non-governmental organisations, Panchayati Raj institutions and tribal representatives on the executive committee of a State Authority under section 11(3) of the Compensatory Afforestation Fund Act, 2016; and on the standing that public interest litigation has given voluntary bodies.

The policy foundation

Objective nine of the 1988 policy is "creating a massive people's movement with the involvement of women, for achieving these objectives and to minimise pressure on existing forests".

Paragraph 4.6 states the reason: "Having regard to the symbiotic relationship between the tribal people and forests, a primary task of all agencies responsible for forest management, including the forest development corporations should be to associate the tribal people closely in the protection, regeneration and development of forests as well as to provide gainful employment to people living in and around the forest."

It then names the enemy. "One of the major causes for degradation of forest is illegal cutting and removal by contractors and their labour", and it directs that contractors be replaced by institutions such as tribal cooperatives, labour cooperatives and government corporations.

And paragraph 4.10 adds that the forest conservation programme "cannot succeed without the willing support and cooperation of the people".

Joint forest management is the programme built on those paragraphs. In outline it is an arrangement under which a village institution, constituted under the State's own orders, protects a patch of degraded forest and in return receives a share of the produce and of the final harvest, the forest department retaining ownership and the working plan. The detail differs from State to State because it rests on executive orders and not on an Act, and this book does not state that detail, because the circulars were not obtained.

What can be said with confidence is the legal character of the arrangement. A village institution under such a scheme has no proprietary right. Section 23 of the Indian Forest Act bars the acquisition of any right in a reserved forest except by succession or written grant. Section 28 assigns to a village community the rights of Government, and says in terms that the assignment may be cancelled. So participation under an executive scheme is revocable, and the difference between it and the Forest Rights Act is that the latter recognises a right which vests.