Key Objectives of the Forest Conservation Act Amendment

The amendment bill has the following primary objectives:

• To enhance the forest carbon stock by promoting plantation activities.
• To provide land for developers to fulfill their legal obligation of compensatory afforestation for the forest land used for development projects.

The amendment bill seeks to achieve these objectives by limiting the scope of the FC Act and releasing land currently classified as unrecorded forests.

Learn more about the Forest Conservation Act, 1980 in the linked article.

What is the extent of the area that will be affected?

• To give an idea of the magnitude of the area impacted, consider the latest State of Forests Report (SFR 2021) , which puts the total forest area in India at 713,789 square kilometres. Approximately 28% of this area, or roughly 197,159 square kilometres (an area similar in size to Rajasthan), is not officially classified as ‘forest.’

Exceptions included in the amendment bill:

• In recent years, several executive orders have been issued to exempt certain types of projects from the need for forest clearance. For instance, from 2014 to 2017, defense road construction projects within 100 km of the Line of Actual Control (LAC) were exempted from obtaining forest clearance.
• Similar exceptions have been made for essential public utilities in 106 Left Wing Extremism (LWE)- affected districts for various projects.
• Furthermore, the amendment bill extends the list of activities exempted from the FC Act to include silvicultural operations, zoo and wildlife safari construction, eco-tourism facilities, and any other activities designated by the Central Government.
• These extensive exemptions grant significant retrospective decision-making power to the Central Government.

Concerns Surrounding the Forest Conservation Amendment Bill

• Instead of concluding the on-ground demarcation process, the amendment bill proposes to limit the FC Act’s applicability only to lands officially recorded as ‘forest’.
• This could lead to the removal of the Act’s protection from vast tracts of land that possess forest-like characteristics but are not officially designated as forests.
• Reducing the FC Act’s applicability could result in fewer projects needing forest clearance, which is often viewed as a hindrance by government agencies and private developers. However, this change could also simplify the process for developers to acquire forest clearance when needed.
• The bill asserts that its aim is to adapt to dynamic changes and enhance the livelihoods of communities dependent on forests. However, the amendment primarily focuses on promoting plantations to achieve carbon neutrality, thereby narrowing the Act’s scope.
• Compensatory afforestation, which is mandatory for obtaining forest clearance, involves planting trees on non-forest land equivalent in size to the degraded forest land or twice its area. This requirement restricts developers’ demand for forest land due to limited land availability.
• Once the FC Act no longer applies to certain land, it can be used for plantation activities, thus offsetting an equal area of forest land that is diverted. This could lead to the development of private land banks of plantations and simplify the forest clearance process.
• Conservationists express concern that this mechanism could lead to the loss of unrecorded forests to plantations, resulting in the diversion of recorded forests for developmental projects.