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Missing Trees, Cancelled Rights: Does Compensatory Afforestation Negate Forest Rights?

Patrik Oskarsson and Sarthak Shukla

 

The ground-breaking Forest Rights Act in 2006 (‘FRA’) for the first time in history identified traditional forest-dwellers as rightful inhabitants and custodians of the forested landscapes they have inhabited since time immemorial. In the early years of the Act, slow but meaningful progress was made to implement and transfer the control over forests from the forest department to local villages. At the time it appeared as if democratic and participatory modes of forest governance would for the first time be implemented across large parts of the country.


A new central government with different priorities along with legal developments has, however, radically changed this picture in recent years. The Compensatory Afforestation Management and Planning Authority (‘CAMPA’) with associated legislation (particularly the Compensatory Afforestation Fund Act, 2016) has been put in place based on long-running litigation via the so called Godavarman Supreme Court case (see Menon and Kohli (2021)). CAMPA establishes mechanisms to collect funds and raise compensatory forests for any activity across the country which removes forests. Typically, this is for the expansion of mines, dams, infrastructure and similar large-scale projects. This may not necessarily be seen as working in opposition to the intents of the FRA but, in practice, CAMPA means a return of control over forest activities and forestry governance to the forest department in the states. The end result has been more forest plantations and less local control than what the FRA envisioned.


This essay explores compensatory afforestation and its implications for forest rights. It does this by reflecting on attempts to trace forest plantations created by coal mining expansions in the CAMPA system and on the ground in the state of Chhattisgarh.


Trying to Trace CAMPA


New compensatory plantations according to CAMPA need to be made in the vicinity of, or in continuation of, already forested areas with fencing and ownership transferred to the forest department. This reconfiguration of forest ownership and use is a result of the regulatory framework for CAMPA, where the guidelines issued under Forest Conservation Act 1980 for compensatory afforestation mention:

[a]s far as possible, the non-forest land for CA is to be identified contiguous to or in the proximity of a Reserved/Protected Forest to enable the Forest Department to effectively manage the newly planted area.” Additionally, “…user agencies are required to fence all such land parcels properly and mutate the same in the name of the Forest Department before handing them over.  (Para 3.2 (i) of Guidelines issued under Forest Conservation Act)

While not directly addressing potential clashes with the forest governance of FRA, the CAMPA legislation in this manner places compensatory forest plantations under the control of the forest departments.


The eGreenwatch website has been established to ostensibly provide clear and concise tracing of all sites approved for compensatory afforestation, including types of land, sanctioned funds, and a link of accountability between the original source of forest land use and the compensatory forest that was raised. The website, however, appears to serve the entirely opposite purpose. Our extensive searches in the database available on the eGreenwatch website, and discussions with other researchers as well as administrators in charge of CAMPA records gives the appearance of a website created as a bureaucratic maze. Based on our ongoing investigations it seems impossible to use the website to know which, or indeed if at all, any forest is being raised in the wake of recent coal mine expansions in Odisha and Chhattisgarh, where our present research project is active.


It is not possible to conclusively link which project resulted in which plantation using the website. This means that the supposed transparency between forest loss and forest compensation is broken. It is somewhat easier to find details of forest land diversion (along with the kml file [1] supposed to show exact forest plantation coordinates) and details of compensatory afforestation sites. However, the search functions of forest land diversion and of forest plantation operate in isolation and are not synchronised with each other. Linking which CA site corresponds to which project-related forest land diversion is next to impossible on the portal.


Our detailed searches on the eGreenwatch site to identify plantation locations in a specific district often provided results from completely different parts of the country. We were unable to find a single plantation site located within the same district as the original source of forest loss. This goes against the perceived understanding that CAMPA plantations should come up in the same area where the original forest loss occurred. For instance, while searching for compensatory afforestation sites for forest land diverted for coal mining in the Sambalpur Forest division of Odisha, the uploaded kml file is either not available or points to a site in some different state, as outlined below in Table 1.


Table 1: Example Sambalpur Forest Division Compensatory Forest Sites

Project Name

FCA

Project Year

Forest Division

Area Diverted (ha)

Land Type

Remarks from Satellite View

Mining lease for Samaleswari Coal Mine By M/S Mahanadi Coal

2009

Jharsuguda

211

Revenue Forest Land

NA

Mining Lease For Belpahar Coal Mine by Mahandi Coal Fields Ltd

2000

Jharsuguda

135

Revenue Forest Land

Site in Madhya  Pradesh. Green cover

Mining Lease for Samaleswari Coal Mine by Mahandi Coal Fields Ltd

2001

Jharsuguda

65

Revenue Forest Land

Site in Madhya Pradesh. Patchy barren view

Open Cast Mining Project of M/s Ney

2019

Sambalpur

44

Revenue Forest Land

Site in Ludhiana, Punjab

Open Cast Mining Project of M/s Ney

2019

Sambalpur

21

Revenue Forest Land

Site in Tugal, Punjab

Open Cast Mining Project of M/s Ney

2019

Sambalpur

20

Revenue Forest Land

Site in Punjab

Open Cast Mining Project of M/s Ney

2019

Sambalpur

34

Revenue Forest

Land

Site in Punjab

Open Cast Mining Project of M/s Ney

2019

Sambalpur

206

Degraded Notified Forest

Site in Uttar Pradesh (Bamrola District) - A straight patch of plantation right next to NH 44

Open Cast Mining Project of M/s Ney

2019

Sambalpur

55

Degraded Notified Forest

Site in Lalitpur, Uttar Pradesh. Lean patch, parallel to national highway 44.

Open Cast Mining Project of M/s Ney

2019

Sambalpur

55

Degraded Notified Forest

Site in Lalitpur, Uttar Pradesh. Lean patch on the opposite side of the road of the previous one. Just beneath the flyover.


The data presented Table 1 is a sample of coal mining projects with compensatory afforestation sites located in other states. But when we examine those locations using satellite imagery it is not possible to see any actual forestry plantations in spite of the use of recently taken images. In no case have we been able to verify forest plantations from CAMPA within the state where the original deforestation occurred. And in no case can we see actual forest plantations taking place. As we are yet to receive answers this lack of accountability we can at present only point to a clear lack of traceability between forest loss and forest plantation.


The Meaning of CAMPA on the Ground


In a research project which seeks to understand preferred and possible future land uses for exhausted coal mines, we along with project colleagues have made visits to CAMPA plantations across Chhattisgarh and Odisha to understand how this program functions on the ground. In a field visit to the DFO (District Forest Office) in Korba, it took thirty minutes to figure out where a nearby CAMPA site was located where the team could make a visit. Once a site had been identified that was suitable and not on any restricted lands, the DFO did not know which project let to the CAMPA plantation. Team members were able to visit the site and there was indeed a forest plantation. Signs at the site identified this as a Forest Department site but did not, however, make mention of CAMPA thereby omitting to provide a direct link to the program which funded the site. Instead, the sign was a generic forest department signboard which mentioned the acreage, type of species in that forest (bamboo in this case), year of plantation, name of forest division and in big bold letters on top – the name of the state’s forest department highlighting that the property belonged to the state forest department (see Figure 1). While on paper the location was a CAMPA site right next to the state highway, there were no fences, and no signboards mentioning that it was a compensatory forest plantation. In fact, the place had become a recreational spot for alcohol consumption evident from litter and bottles lying all around (Figure 2).


Figure 1: CA Site in Kathghora, Korba of Chhattisgarh with the signboard on the left and the bamboo plantations depicted on the right-side picture. Source: Authors, taken during fieldwork on 24 May 2024.


Figure 2: Plastic litter, paper waste, alcohol and water bottles at the CA site visited in Korba, Chhattisgarh. Source: Authors, taken during fieldwork on 24 May 2024.


From interviews with the state forest department, we learned that all CAMPA sites in Chhattisgarh come up on “officially disputed sites” between the revenue and the forest department. This means that there is a lot of internal state government wrangling about these plantations. The loss of forest control from CAMPA is thus not just about local communities losing control in favour of the state. Within the state, the forest department appears to be seeking control over lands which the same state government’s revenue department similarly seeks to control. Meanwhile it is unclear what kind of forest, if indeed any at all, is being raised in the state as part of the CAMPA programme.


Conclusion


The individual and community claims that forest dwellers can make under the Forest Rights Act are easy to trace, and come with built-in local accountability and transparency via the Gram Sabha with the rights of communities at the centre. This also gave villagers some influence in stopping unwanted industrial projects based on local democracy. CAMPA on the other hand appears to lack meaningful accountability in our still ongoing investigations. It rather appears like an offsetting mechanism disguised as a sustainability initiative, which lacks any community-engagement or participation in the governance or benefit-sharing over the raised plantations. CAMPA appears opaque by design and virtually impossible to trace in spite of the elaborate website and other documents available in the public domain. In addition, while our attempts to trace CAMPA on the ground did lead us to actual forest plantations, the missing link back to the original site of deforestation implies clear loss of accountability.


For these reasons the trees of compensatory afforestation can in our ongoing investigations be labelled as ‘missing’ for a variety of reasons. Their presence appears only on paper and the area is missing any credible geo-referenced coordinates on the eGreenwatch portal supposed to act as a repository of compensatory afforestation. At a deeper level, these plantations and trees are also missing tenets of participatory engagement, procedural justice, community-ownership and local rights. Instead, the compensatory plantations have become a mechanism to restore the historical injustices done to forest-dwelling communities that the Forest Rights Act attempted to undo.

 

End-Note


[1] A kml file is used to specify a geographical area on a map, in this case the location of a forest plantation.


 

Patrik Oskarsson is Associate Professor at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. His present research examines coal mining and land use in ongoing energy expansions in India, and the possibilities to tackle environmental pollution via participatory environmental monitoring. His research interests include changes to land and resource uses and what these mean to rural populations in the Global South.




Sarthak Shukla is a doctoral student working in the domain of just energy transitions at the Department of Rural and Urban Development, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. Having worked in multiple think-tanks in India, he has been a part of multiple research-cum-advocacy projects around electricity sector, energy, labour welfare, just transitions, responsible renewable energy and oil exploration sector.



Feature Image: CA Site in Kathghora, Korba of Chhattisgarh. Source: Authors, taken during fieldwork on 24 May 2024.


This post is part of a series on 'Rights to the Forest'. Read the other posts here.

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