Forest law in India

1. FOREST LAW IN INDIA- A
CRITICALANALYSIS

2. Forest Act
• The Indian Forest Act,1927 aimed to regulate the movement of forest
produce, and duty leviable forest produce. It also explains the
procedure to be followed for declaring an area as Reserved Forest,
Protected Forest or a Village Forest.
• This act has details of what a forest offence is, what are the acts
prohibited inside a Reserved Forest, and penalties leviable on violation
of the provisions of the Act. After the Forest Act was enacted in 1865,
it was amended twice (1878 and 1927).

3. • India is the seventh largest country in the world occupying 2.4 percent of the world area. However,
only 1.8 percent of forests cover lies in India.
• In spite of recent efforts to increase forest cover through reforestation, being carried out mainly
under Compensatory Afforestation Management and Planning Authority (CAMPA), India's forests
are in a devastated condition, with just over 21 percent of India under forest cover in 2007.
• Â Dense forests cover only 12 percent of land. The policy requirement is that the forest cover
should be 33 percent of the area of the country, and all of this should be closed forest. However, we
are far from achieving this figure.

4. • Forests in India are under immense pressure today and are reducing at an alarming rate
• Until before 1976, forest and wildlife were State subjects in the Indian Constitution. The
forest departments are regulated forests in accordance with the Forest Act of 1927.
Recognizing the significance of forests and wildlife, the 42nd Amendment to the
Constitution deleted both from the State list and placed them in the Concurrent list,
bringing them under the purview of both the Central and State governments.

5. History
Indian Forest Act of 1865:
• It empowered the British government to declare any land covered with trees as a
government forest and make rules to manage it.
Indian Forest Act of 1878:
• This Act also enabled the administration to demarcate reserved and protected forests. This
Act classified the forests into three – reserved forests, protected forests and village
forests.
Indian Forest Act of 1927:
• The penalties and procedures given in this Act aimed to extend the state’s control over
forests as well as diminishing the status of people’s rights to forest use.
•
The village communities were alienated from their age-old symbiotic association with
forests. It was enacted to make forest laws more effective and to improve the previous
forest laws.

6. ANALYSIS

7. Colonial Legacy of Forest Policies in India
• Forest policies in India have recently been a subject matter. Part of the failure is rooted in the
absence of a detailed study of the evolution of forest policies in the regional context from the
multiple ideas and legal discourses involved in the process.
• This section identifies and analyses the colonial legacy of foreign policies, especially in the later
stages of their development.
• The saga of forest legislation in colonial and post-colonial India, when studied in a long time
framework, may highlight a few general issues:
1. The material interests of the state, especially the wood requirements for ship-building, railways,
government departments and industries, were the main driving force for the forest policies of the
colonial state, and for a considerable degree even for the national state.
2. There is a long history of the desiccations discourse both in the colonial and post-colonial
periods.
3. In the forest policy formulation process, the colonial bureaucracy was often in conflict with their
respective departments..
4. Imposition of regulation for the reserved and protected forests of various kinds and limitation of
the rights and privileges of people in other forests naturally led to sporadic conflicts between the
state and the communities.

8. Environment, Forest Law, and Policy in India
• The Government of India Act of 1935, and the Constituent Assembly Debates, of
1947-1950, added a key dimension to the development of about the environment
and its government in India by inserting them other debates about the shape of
Indian federalism
• When it came to natural resources and rural development, or, for that matter,
health and sanitation, these debates were mostly about which level of government
would administer what sectors of the economy and society as the prime mover in
those sectors

9. Forests: Law vs. Policy
While mega-projects involving large-scale destruction of even natural forests are
readily cleared by the central government, the provisions of the Forest
(Conservation) Act of 1980, and the amendment of it enacted in 1988 are invoked to
refuse clearance to small projects directly benefiting adivasis and other rural poor.
• Peoples rights over forests
• Eventual Classification of Forests

10. The Impact of National Policy on the Conservation and
Management of the Sacred Groves of India
• India is home to thousands of community and protected forests called sacred
groves. They are often private or community land, not formal protected areas or
parks. This poses an interesting challenge in terms of future management and
possible policy relating to the sacred groves.
• Local differences in land tenure also affect the groves.
• The Forest Act of 1878 (a revision of the 1865 act) designated state-controlled
forests as either reserved forests, which were managed and surveyed by the Forest
Department and had restricted access, or protected forests that were unsurveyed
and remained open for limited use

11. The Rights of Nature: Conferring Legal Personhood on
Natural Objects
• The frightful debasement of natural environment in past century, has obligated
some to re-question this attitude
• Currently, legal systems, only protect a man, if his rights are damaged by
environmental degradation, they do not protect the environment itself. `Rights of
Nature is a philosophy, rather easy to understand.
• The concept of legal personhood has always been applicable beyond human
beings: corporations, the state, even temple idols, etc. are non-human entities

12. Positive Effect of the Chipko Movement on the development
of Forest Law and Policy in India
• The Chipko Movement contributed immensely to international and national
ecological movements

13. The Godavarman Cases: The High-water Mark in Forest
Protection
• The idea of sustainable development, i.e., the balance between environment and
development, had its influence on the judiciary in interpreting the provisions of
laws relating to the forests.
• Various dimensions of forest protection were examined by the court. T N
Godavannan Timmulpad v. Union of India is a remarkable illustration of the
concept of sustainable development.

14. CONCLUSION
• The original intention of the framers of the Forest Act was to safeguard the forests
from feudal and imperial interests of the state.
• An analysis of the above discussed Godavarman Thirumalpad Case shows how
the courts tailored the needs of the changing times into the prevailing mechanism.
• The role of judiciary played in protecting forest and wildlife, by leaving the core
areas uncovered by law as fields appropriate for legislative action rather than for
judicial formulation, is significant