Draft National Forest Policy recommends green tax

The environment ministry has released the draft National Forest Policy (NFP) for the management of forests, proposing levy of a green tax for facilitating ecologically responsible behaviour, supplementing financial resources essential to address forestry woes. The NFP will replace the 1988 edition, incorporating consequences of climate change, but it ignored one of the three forest-related laws such as Forest Rights Act, growing trees outside forest lands and wood industry.

Forests and trees constitute nearly one-fourth of the geographic area of the country. Protection of this vast and valuable resource, improving and increasing the forest and tree cover requires adequate investment keeping in view the pressures on these forests, and the ecosystem services that they provide to the nation. Large tracts of forest area in the country have degraded due to immense biotic pressure and lack of adequate investment.

According to policy, wood has significantly lowered the carbon footprint than the fossil fuels that consumes in their production. Wood has the potential to enhance new green jobs by promoting indigenous manufacturing using locally grown raw material. Since, wood plays a positive role in mitigating climate change and ensuring sustainable living. Therefore, governments and stakeholders must shift from regulating to promoting cultivation, harvesting, transportation and marketing of wood.

The policy released for public comments until the June 30 says governments must switch focus from forests to landscapes, from canopy cover to healthy ecosystems, from substituting wood to promoting sustainable wood use, from participatory approaches to empowerment, from joint forest management to community forest management from qualitative policy statements to a result-oriented policy frame work.

But it ignores the Forest Rights Act of 2006, to take back from the forest department traditional forest lands hand them over to tribals and other forest-dwellers to have complete management control over their lands, with the forest department’s role substantially diminished. The budget of forestry sector should be appropriately enhanced so that the objectives enshrined in this policy can be achieved.

Environmental cess, green tax, carbon tax etc. may be levied on certain products and services for facilitating ecologically responsible behaviour, garnering citizen’s contribution and supplementing financial resources,” the policy adds. According to the State of Forest Report 2015, forest and tree cover makes up 24.16% of its geographical area and it has set an ambitious target of bringing it to 33% of its geographical area within a decade.

The policy recommends the replenishing of the lands with native species rather than introducing exotic species. It favours exercising strict restraint on diversion of forest land for non-forestry purposes like mining and other industrial projects such as construction of dams, roads and other linear infrastructure need to adopt special caution. Pollution and damage should be minimised.

The policy called for nod of government for the controversial decision to declare certain animals as vermin and sanctioning the slaughter of nilgai, wild pigs and monkeys in certain States. It also recommends mitigating human-wildlife conflicts by taking up habitat enrichment, providing adequate and timely compensation in case of injury or loss of human life, property, crop damage or livestock casualties and developing teams of well-equipped and trained forest personnel.

By Gudipati Rajendera Kumar