TAKING OWNERSHIP

There is a surge in demand by forest communities to not only access the resources of their habitat, but also to establish their ownership over forests. They are doing so by wielding a previously underused provision of the Forest Rights Act. The forest department, however, is reluctant to let go of its control. SHUCHITA JHA and ZUMBISH travel across Odisha and Chhattisgarh to understand how communities have gained through this law and the mechanisms they are setting up to ensure sustainable use of forest resources PARTY

- SHUCHITA JHA

ON JUNE 20, residents of 18 villages in Chhattisgarh's Udanti  Sitanadi Tiger Reserve blocked the busy National Highway 130C. "We need forest resources for survival. Being a tiger reserve, we already lead a life with many restrictions. There is no power supply, access to grazing lands is non-existent and we cannot undertake construction works," says Arjun Nayak of Nagesh, one of the 18 villages in Gariaband district.

The village residents were demanding rights over forest resources around their villages under Section 3(1)(i) of the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006, referred to as the Forest Rights Act (FRA).

Under FRA, forest-dwelling communities are entitled to two types of rights: the individual right of settlement and cultivation on forestlands, and a wider set of rights, referred to as community forest rights (CFR), under which communities can manage, collect and sell minor forest produce like bamboo and tendu leaves. Provisions of Section 3(1)(i),referred to as the Community Forest Resource Rights (CFRR), are even broader in scope. They recognise not just forest communities' rights to access and use forest produce, but also their "rights to protect, regenerate or conserve or manage any community forest resource which they have been traditionally protecting and conserving for sustainable use" (see 'Spectrum of rights', p36).