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discuss the new development in forestry of india after 1980.

The following developments have come about in forestry after 1980:

a. Government in India has become more concerned about the rights of forest communities.

b. They have  realised that keeping forest communities away from forests have resulted in conflict.

c. Government has started giving importance to conserving forests, to involving local communities.

d. Environmentalist are today thinking of different forms of forest management that involves local populations.

e. For example in many forests in India villagers are protecting forests as scared groves like rai,kan, sarnas etc.

f.  The central government  has passed the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006 which safeguards the rights of the forest dwellers.

 

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Forest governance in independent India, 1947-2011

Forest governance in independent India may be divided into three distinct phases. In the first phase, the idea very clearly was to ensure that forests be made to work to generate revenue which, in turn, would support development and the countrys industrialisation. Inspection of any government policy document of the time makes this amply clear, and is discussed below. Gadgil and Guha (1992) are absolutely right when they argue that in post-Independence India, the demands of the commercial-industrial sector have replaced strategic imperial needs as the cornerstone of forest policy and management.

The second phase was when conservationists had a field day and their exclusionist conservation agenda was the dominant tool of forest management. Legislation on forest and wildlife conservation was enacted; peoples rights were also given their due place in these enactments but were not implemented with the same spirit on the ground.

It wasnt until 1988 that the third phase in forest management can be said to have begun, when, for the first time, the national forest policy articulated that people living in and around forests and dependent on them for their livelihood and sustenance should have first charge of forest produce. After this, the government did take small but significant steps in the form of Joint Forest Management (JFM) to make forest-dwellers stakeholders in the governance of forests. The FRA was a watershed in the history of not only tribal rights but forest governance as it changed the game in favour of tribals and forest-dwellers forever, at least on paper, by creating a legal mandate for recognition and verification of their rights over the forest land they had been living on for generations.

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Hi,

From the mid-nineteenth century, Waste Land Rules were enacted in various parts of the country. By these Rules uncultivated lands were taken over and given to select individuals.

Forest Acts were also being enacted in the different provinces. Through these Acts some forests which produced commercially valuable timber like deodar or sal were declared Reserved. No pastoralist was allowed access to these forests. Other forests were classified as Protected. This would help the colonists to export the woods and earn revenue.

Scientific forestry is the science of managing forests amd tree plantations. Natural forests with different types of trees were cut down and replaced with one type of tree planted in rows known as plantation. The forests were surveyed by officials according to areas under different types of trees and plans were made for forest management. A portion of the plantation area was cut down every year and replanted so that it was available to be used within a few years.

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