* India’s environment ministry has notified the Compensatory Afforestation Fund (CAF) Rules 2018 to ensure proper utilisation of Rs 660 billion for plantation of trees across India.
* Environmentalists and civil society groups are against the rules as they point out that the rules ignore the rights of forest dwellers and tribals. They also said that the new CAF rules are against existing laws ensuring forest rights and self governance for communities living in Scheduled Areas.
* India’s former environment minister too has criticised the new rules stating that they are in violation of some assurances given in parliament in 2016 by the then environment minister Anil Madhav Dave.
In 2006, India passed a law, the Forest Rights Act (FRA) recognising “historical injustice” meted out to the country’s forest dwellers and recognised the primacy of a Gram Sabha (village council) while deciding the fate of the forests.
Cut to August 2018, the government of India has now notified the Compensatory Afforestation Fund (CAF) Rules, 2018 in which the Gram Sabha no longer plays a key role and control of over Rs. 660 billion, to be spent on afforestation, is given in the hands of the forest bureaucracy.
Under the provisions of the Forest (Conservation) Act 1980, the government collects money for diverting forest land for non-forest purposes such as industrial projects like mining or dams. The fund has accumulated to be over Rs. 660 billion (Rs. 66,000 crore) over the past four decades and has to be used for carrying out compensatory afforestation across the country.
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