Forest Rights Act: Triggering the Apocalypse of Forest Loss and Fragmentation

While 77 lakh hectares of forest land have been granted to forest dwellers, not one hectare of Critical Wildlife Habitat has yet been notified under the FRA

- Praveen Bhargav Founding Trustee of Wildlife First, former member of the National Board for Wildlife and author, Wildlife Law for Conservation, Wildlife Law for Rangers

The Scheduled Tribes and other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006 (FRA), enacted in 2006, continues to be the subject of fierce debate. Despite clear evidence to the contrary, proponents of the Act aver that granting rights over millions of hectares of forest land for habitation, cultivation and commercial exploitation, including within Wildlife Reserves, will have no negative consequences because all forest dwellers purportedly live in ecological harmony with nature.

Empirical and scientific evidence, however, has demonstrated that such extensive grants of forest land, from which produce is supplied to bottomless markets, is ecologically unsustainable at the human population densities prevailing within India's forests. As more forests become honeycombed with settlements, the resulting habitat fragmentation will lead to a massive ecological crisis. In fact, a scientific analysis by the National Remote Sensing Centre (NRSC) has documented that such factors have been mainly responsible for forest fragmentation during the last few decades.

Measurable impact of FRA since 2008

Official data of the Ministry of Tribal Affairs as on November 30, 2024 reveals that over 77 lakh hectares of forest land, almost the area of Assam, have been granted under the FRA since 2008. Of these, individual rights account for 20.54 lakh hectares while the rest comes under community ownership. As populations increase in these scattered enclaves, succeeding generations of forest dwellers will inevitably expand their holdings and we will reach a point when no potential solution to this crisis will remain.