India is among the top ten countries most vulnerable to climate change. A new study finds that the Forest Rights Act is an effective tool to enable rights-based and gender-responsive approaches to climate action and can legally empower forest dwellers to manage and govern nearly 40 million hectares of the country's forests.
The spread of COVID-19 has laid bare the structural inequity in India. Even with massive vaccination drives underway, the country's Adivasis, forest-dwelling communities, and other tribal communities living outside the reach of mainstream healthcare systems continue to be excluded.
In welcome news for India’s forest communities, the state of Odisha has approved 14 Community Rights and Community Forest Resource Rights titles for 24 villages in its Nayagarh district, under the country’s 2006 Forest Rights Act. The government’s move to grant these titles is praiseworthy for one key reason: they recognize women’s critical role in protecting community forests.
The fires in Similipal National Park and Tiger Reserve have brought to the fore the tug of war between the forest department and the community for biosphere ownership.
New study shows forest rights recognition as game changer in building emergency resilience in forests
Referring to the estimates of Rights and Resources Initiative (RRI) CSD says the actual potential forest land going to be recognized under FRA, 2006 would be more than 85.6 million acres (excluding five north-eastern states and J&K) and more than 200 million Scheduled Tribes (STs) and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (OTFDs) in over 170,000 villages in the country are estimated to get IFR rights under FRA.
”We do not regard this order as pro-conservation. On the contrary, it is a real setback for conservation in India.”
Given that India is the seventh largest country in the world with a population of 1.3 billion people, it is not surprising that land conflicts that affect more remote communities and Indigenous Peoples rarely gain national or international recognition. Land Conflict Watch tracks these cases in order to make them more visible and actionable for journalists, researchers, and policymakers.
Along the route from Mumbai’s international airport in Santa Cruz to the high-profile business district of Nariman Point, is a series of billboards featuring a significantly larger-than-life image of Prime Minister Narendra Modi welcoming investors to the third annual general meeting of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB).
In recent research that analysed contribution of local communities’ contribution to climate change mitigation by looking at carbon storage in collective lands, it was established that communities that claim and own their collective lands have so far sequestered at least 54,546 million tonnes of carbon equivalent — roughly four times the world’s annual emissions. The study, carried out by Rights and Resources Initiative, Woods Hole Research Centre and World Resources Institute, calls for recognition of the world’s indigenous and local communities in climate stabilisation and carbon sequestration.
A report of the Rights and Resources Initiative (2015) suggests that if the FRA is implemented properly, it could lead to the recognition of the rights of at least 150 million forest-dwelling people over 40 million hectares of forestland in more than 1,70,000 villages.
The Niyamgiri case is one of the most infamous industrial projects plagued by land-related conflicts, alongside South Korean company Posco’s abortive steel project in Jagatsinghpur district in Odisha and Tata Motors’ Nano plant in Singur in West Bengal, which was later moved to Sanand in Gujarat.
Testimonies of affected tribespeople and activists point to a conspiracy that forest departments are using afforestation as a tool to exert control over forest lands traditionally used by tribespeople.
The National Wildlife Action Plan released by India’s environment ministry has asked for the speedy recognition of the forest rights of communities living inside tiger reserves, months after the ministry itself stalled the process.
NEW DELHI: A new report on government’s plantation drives has found that most of the plantations are carried out on forest areas which are already supporting native trees and vegetation. These plantations are in fact replacing forest trees with commercial timber species such as teak, eucalyptus, bamboo and others. Moreover, the plantations are often encroaching on forest dwellers’ land in violation of the forest rights act which gives forest communities the right to use forest resources, to conserve and to live in forests.
RRI Fellow Madhu Sarin has been working on forest tenure reform in India for the last 15 years. In a conversation with RRI, Madhu shares her perspective on what it takes to strengthen women’s land and community forest rights in practice in India, how the country’s Forest Rights Act helped secure women’s land rights, and more.
While land-related conflict in India has long posed a threat to communities’ security and investment in sustainable development alike, relatively little research has attempted to…
By Rina Chandran MUMBAI – Indian officials have been slow to implement a landmark law giving rights to forests to indigenous people because they view…
By Sam Eaton Even the monsoon rains don’t keep the women of Ghunduribadi, a tiny tribal village in India’s eastern state of Odisha, from patrolling…
Behold, my friends, the spring has come; the earth has gladly received the embraces of the sun, and we shall soon see the results of…
NEW DELHI—After tribal rights activists and opposition parties attacked the central government’s policies for not respecting tribal rights, it’s now the National Institution for Transforming…
With over 93% of natural resource development in emerging economies at risk for land conflict, the global land investment experience has key lessons for India…
As seen on The New York Times BHUBANESHWAR, India (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – India is embarking on a national campaign to help millions of indigenous…
Farmers are rallying for the implementation of the Forest Rights Act, which gives them the right to govern forest resources, as a High Court order…