Many State Reports Documenting “Unclassed Forests” Are Incomplete

Decades-old state government reports documenting unclassed forests were made public for the first time last month, revealing several gaps. The central government seeks to use these reports to regulate activity and grant protection to forests which are not already notified under Indian laws. Many state governments have said, however, that the reports do not capture the full extent of unclassed forests within their jurisdiction, and that the information they have provided is incomplete.

Experts have raised concerns about using incomplete state government records to decide the level of protection meted out to forests, which could have wide ranging impacts on forest cover and the rights of forest-dwelling communities. “If forests are not properly identified, there’s a possibility that open natural grassland ecosystems will be misidentified and opened up for afforestation activity,” said Debadityo Sinha, lead of climate and ecosystems at Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy.

The reports were made public as part of an ongoing case challenging the central government’s amendment to the Forest (Conservation) Act 1980, which is intended to limit infrastructure development activity within forest areas. In 1996, the Supreme Court ruled that the Act would apply to all forests, including land parcels that resembled the dictionary meaning of the word “forest,” regardless of ownership or status. The Court had also instructed states to form state expert committees (SECs) to record such unclassed forests, among other forest types, and submit a report with their findings to it.

In 2023, however, the central government amended the law so its protections would only apply to those forests which are notified under the Indian Forest Act and those found in government records from various departments. According to the Forest Survey of India, around 28% of India’s forests are unclassed, or unlikely to be found in formal records.

During the case proceedings, the central government defended the amendment and said no unclassed forests would be excluded from the purview of the law, since states would need to “prepare a consolidated record of such lands,” as it came into force. The consolidation process would also include the records from the SEC reports, the government said.

The Supreme Court temporarily stayed this aspect of the amendment in an interim order in February, when it directed the government to abide by the 1996 judgement. The apex court is likely to deliver its judgement on the case in July.

Reports are incomplete

The 1996 Supreme Court order, called the Godavarman judgement, made it the responsibility of states to define forests for themselves. The judgement directed the SECs to carry out three tasks: identifying “forests” regardless of notification, classification, recognition, and ownership, identifying areas which were earlier forests but stand degraded, denuded or cleared, and identifying areas covered by government plantations. The SEC was to include the Principal Chief Conservator of Forests and another senior officer to oversee compliance, and the report was to be submitted to the court within one month of the committee being constituted.

The 36 available SEC reports reveal that several states could not complete the task, and that many didn’t provide any information on forest records. In its report, Arunachal Pradesh said recording forests of all types was a “stupendous task,” and that it relied heavily on existing reports in state environment records and surveys published by the Forest Survey of India (FSI), with limited field trips conducted in a few pockets across the state. “The Committee is of the view that an extensive field visit supported by satellite imageries coupled with ground truthing verification is required,” said the report, adding, “it is desirable to undertake a systematic and long-term study at least over a period of one year,” to meet its goals.

The SEC of Gujarat, too, said that “due to time constraint, exhaustive reports could not be prepared.” It said it had identified 192 square kilometres if non-statutory forest that would fall under the dictionary meaning of a forest, but that much of this land was “planted up by the forest department” on revenue “wastelands.”

“The Committee feels total areas would be much more but they have, so far, not been reported by the respective departments,” the Gujarat SEC report went on to say.

The Uttarakhand government SEC also cited the time constraint as a reason for not identifying forest lands fitting the Supreme Court’s directive. “The only alternative left for this committee was to rely on records maintained by the forest department, revenue department and the reports of the Forest Survey of India,” said the report.

“Most states have just reproduced whatever existing reports and data they had, in the SEC reports, without trying to present new information,” said Sinha, adding, “There will continue to be disputes over land unless there’s clarity on what has been demarcated as a forest.”

Reports from states like Bihar are handwritten and barely legible, while the reports from Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand present land record data alongside each district, without any context or details.

No location data available

According to an analysis of the SEC reports by former Indian Forest Service officer Prakriti Srivastava and conservationists Prerna Singh Bindra and Kritika Sampath, only 21 out of 36 states and union territories followed the Supreme Court’s directives in constituting their SECs within a month of the order, while including the PCCF in their teams.

Eight did not constitute SEC committees at all – Andhra Pradesh, Goa, Haryana, Jammu & Kashmir, Ladakh, Lakshadweep, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal. Jammu and Kashmir ordered the constituted the SEC committee as recently as March 16 this year. “The concern with states waking up late to the order is the amount of forest land that would have been lost since the judgement was passed in 1996,” said Srivastava.

Delhi and Tripura were the only regions to provide information on the location of the unclassed forests, according to the analysis. However, in the case of the former, it is for forests that were already in government records, and in the latter, it is without classifying the type of forest.

Last year, when the Forest (Conservation) Amendment Act was still being contemplated in Parliament, the central government told a Joint Parliamentary Committee that the amendment wouldn’t dilute any provisions in the law as the SEC reports documenting unclassed forests had “been taken on record.”

“Without the specific location of these unclassed forests, how can they be protected and brought under the purview of any law?” asked Srivastava, adding, “These reports weren’t for a cosmetic purpose. The SC gave these directions so forest areas could be identified and protected for our country’s ecological security. Many states have submitted the report and then forgotten about it, without making an attempt to fulfil the Supreme Court’s orders.”

(Published under Creative Commons from Mongabay-India. Read the original article here)