Fisheries Administration and Lagislation

Unit 6 - Laws and policies related to the environment

6.9. Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980
This Act, amended in 1988, deals primarily with using forestlands for non-forestry purposes, mainly industry and mining; fisheries habitat and water quality would be affected. It requires state governments to acquire the approval of the central government before it de-gazettes a reserved forest, leases forestland to a private person or corporation, or clears it for the purpose of reforestation. Implementation of this act has reduced the annual rate of diversion of forestlands for non-forestry purposes to 16,000 hectares a year, compared with 150,000 hectares per year prior to 1980. (Sampath). The Forest Conservation Act, as stated earlier, becomes relevant in the context of mangroves forest which are declared reserved under the Indian Forest Act. The dereservation or use of such forests for non-forestry purposes or clear felling such forests or leasing such forests would attract the Forest Conservation Act.

National Forest Policy, 1988 (NFA 1988)
This policy deals with conservation and management of forests, afforestation and with the rules governing people’s access to government owned forests and their products. This policy for the first time after Independence places greater importance on using local forest resources to meet local people’s needs rather than industrial needs. The policy stresses the involvement of local people in the management of forests. In particular tribal communities access to the forests and resources on which their livelihoods depend have been recognized. It was under this policy that the Government Resolution on Joint Forest Management (JFM) was passed in India in 1990. Since then millions of ha of forests outside PAs have been brought under JFM. JFM aims at regenerating degraded forests with the participation of local communities and sharing the benefits accruing from timber harvests from these areas with local communities. JFM has been a miserable failure in some states and sites while quite successful in others, depending on the state policies and methods of implementation, and often also on individual forest officers and concerned local communities.

Mangroves and Economic development
According to a recent IUCN/FAO report, one out of every six mangrove species may soon go extinct because of over-exploitation and invasive industries, such as shrimp farming. Mangrove forests are critical to climate change mitigation due to their enhanced ability to sequester large amounts of carbon in their surrounding soils. However, mangrove forest ecosystems are under siege everywhere they are found, from destrtuctive tourism development in Bimini Island in the Bahamas to golf course development in Malaysia; from out of control oil exploitation in the Niger Delta on the western cost of Africa to unmanaged urban expansion in India’s Bhitarakanika Wildlife Sanctuary. One percent of our planet’s mangroves are disappearing each year-that’s 150, 000 ha a year lost to unsustainable development.