Why has the creation of eco-sensitive zones provoked protests?

Why has the creation of eco-sensitive zones provoked protests?

·     Ecologically sensitive zones (ESZ) are intended to protect ‘protected areas’ – national parks and wildlife sanctuaries – by transitioning from an area of lower protection to an area of higher protection. ESZs are effectively insulating layers where humans and nature can be at peace with each other. However, the creation of these zones has provoked protests in Kerala and some other areas, in a precursor to what is likely to emerge in other parts of the country.

Q. Why protests are happening? (Analysis)

·      Protected areas cover 5.26%  of India’s land area as 108 national parks and 564 wildlife sanctuaries. They are notified under the Wildlife (Protection) Act 1972. National parks do away with permissions for even those activities permitted in ‘reserve forests’ while wildlife sanctuaries offer progressively diminishing concessions.

·      This is the rights-negating ‘fortress conservation model’, which conservation scientists abandoned long ago. It is also no longer present in Indian law, at least over forests within the purview of the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act 2006 – a.k.a. the Forest Rights Act (FRA). FRA recognises the customary and the traditional rights (both individual and collective) of forest-dwellers on forest land, including inside protected areas.

·     India’s colonial forest regime should have recognised these rights but didn’t, resulting in a historic injustice that lawmakers tried to undo with the FRA. The Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change reckoned in 2009 itself that doing so would mean handing over at least four lakh sq. km – more than half of India’s notified forest area – to village-level institutions. But as of June 2022, only 64,873.70 sq. km – or 16% – had come under the FRA. (The actual area is likely smaller because some areas have been counted multiple times for different rights.)

·      The gram sabhas are now the statutory authorities empowered to conserve, protect and manage forests, wildlife and biodiversity lying within the traditional village boundaries over forest lands. This is to be a new category of forests called ‘community forest resource’ (CFR). Gram sabhas have to integrate their CFR conservation and management plan into the ‘working plan’ of the Forest Department, with the required modifications.

·      Surrounding these protected areas is an area of more than 1,11,000 sq. km – or 3.4% percent of the country’s land – which in effect falls under the ESZ regime. Governments have notified 341 ESZs in 29 States and five Union territories, while another 85 ESZs are awaiting notification. Together, protected areas and the ESZs cover 8.66% of India’s land area.

·    The ESZs span notified forests outside protected areas, most of which could also come under gram sabhas’ jurisdiction under the FRA. The extent of ESZs from the boundary of a protected area ranges from 0 to as much as 45.82 km (in Pin Valley National Park, Himachal Pradesh). Fifteen states have ESZs exceeding 10 km.

·    Significantly, parts of ESZs in ten States – Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha, Rajasthan and Telangana – fall within the Scheduled Area notified under the Fifth Schedule of the Constitution. Such Scheduled Areas cover over 11% of the country’s land area and are mostly thickly forested and mountainous. They are preponderantly populated by Scheduled Tribe groups and are notified by the President under Article 244 of the Provisions of the Panchayat (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act (PESA) 1996.

·   PESA recognises habitation-level gram sabhasto be competent to safeguard and preserve community resources on forest and revenue lands in Scheduled Areas. Effectively, PESA and FRA are two flagship laws of the Union government that, for the first time in independent India, gave primacy to people’s democracy in governance.

·    However, the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change (MoEFCC) has shown no inclination to amend the Indian Forest Act 1927, the Wildlife (Protection) Act and the Environment (Protection) Act 1986 (under which ESZs are notified) to comply with PESA and FRA.

·      In fact, in the Forest Conservation Rules, compliance with FRA, recognition of forest rights and gram sabha’s consent were preconditions for considering proposals to divert forest land for non-forestry purposes – until the MoEFCC did away with them in 2022. The ministry has also overlooked demands by the National Commission for Scheduled Tribes to restore the erstwhile FRA compliance procedure.