Report of the Workshop on Community Forest Management Planning in Dindori District

The region of forest villages in southeastern Dindori District, popularly referred to as Baiga Chak, has a history of actively mobilising in support of forest conservation in the Maikal Hills since the late 1990s. Many of these forest villages successfully applied for recognition of community forest rights (CFR) following the implementation of the Forest Rights Act (FRA), 2006, in the district. Experience from Maharashtra shows that CFR rights can enhance rural livelihoods while also fostering conservation‐oriented forest management. However, Baiga Chak villages have been unable to exercise their community forest rights due to a limited understanding on the part of both village residents and administrative officials of the CFR provisions and of ongoing CFR activities and experiences elsewhere.

To address this lacuna, a 2‐day workshop on CFR management planning was organised by ATREE with the support of the Dindori District administration on 24‐25 March 2022. A total of 20+ volunteers from five Forest Villages‐‐Ajgar, Dhaba, Khapripani, Paudi/ Pondi, and Sheetalpani—were invited. These villages were chosen on the basis of their prior conservation efforts (protecting the forest from fire, informal rules for sustainable firewood harvesting, and vigorous opposition to commercial timber extraction). The objective of the workshop was to expose the participants to positive examples of CFR management, to the share the template for CFR management planning developed by ATREE and approved by Govt of Maharashtra, to help them think through and draft an outline of their village’s CFR management plan, and to present the same to district officials to identify points of convergence and synergy.

Day 1 involved presentation of videos, discussion of the goals and methods of successful CFR management, the planning template, understanding current village forest conditions and maps, and group discussions for developing a plan outline. Day 2 involved further refinement of the plan outlines, and presentation of the plans to district officials, namely the SDM Dindori, SDO (Forest), Janpad APOs, and Panchayat Sachivs.

The representatives of all five villages expressed hearty enthusiasm to engage in systematic community forest management and devise a management plan to this effect. ATREE introduced a template of a simple community forest management plan and carried out a simulated plan‐preparation exercise. Over the two days of the workshop, village representatives were able to prepare a simple management plan (as a sample) for 5 villages.

The participants vigorously solicited support from MGNREGA to carry out the following management activities: 1. Removal of lantana and other invasive plants to promote regeneration of native plant species (used as medicine, food, fodder, firewood, etc). 2. Planting native species of plants (harra, baheda, chaar, amla, maahul, soore, jamun, and mahua) and protecting them for a period of up to three years. 3. Watch‐and‐ward and patrolling to protect the forest from fire, overharvesting of NTFP, excessive grazing, etc. 4. Soil and moisture conservation activities such as stone bunds, contour trenches, and check dams. As of now, such activities on forest land are constrained by the lack of forest department permission as well as lack of clarity on which resources can be deployed for the same.

Participants stated that they would develop forest management rules in consultation with all village residents to restrict the use of fire, excessive harvesting of forest produce, and hunting in order to prevent damage to the forest. For scaling up impact, participants suggested that they were ready to hold a wider discussion with neighbouring villages to formulate such rules so that forest protection would extend over a wider region rather than just a single village.

Timber extraction is a cause for widespread resentment. Village representatives were unanimous in their contention that timber extraction by the forest department must be sharply reduced to foster forest regeneration. At present, regenerating trees are felled as timber before they grow to full adulthood, because of which many useful native plant species, including bamboo, have become rare or locally extinct. More importantly, selection felling of adult trees opens up the canopy that in turn facilitates the rapid invasion of lantana. Lantana then suppresses the regeneration of native tree species, thereby nullifying all predictions about future forest growth.

While identifying the errors in CFR titles, four common errors were identified in the CFR titles provided to the five villages: The titles are issued in the name of the Van Suraksha Samiti instead of the Gram Sabha as mandated by the FRA. The titles state that they are issued subject to the provisions of the Indian Forest Act, 1927, when they should only mention conditions from section 5 of the Forest Rights Act, 2006. The forest compartments include those marked ‘B,’ which are compartments corresponding almost entirely to FV settlements and agriculture, and hence are of limited use from a CFR perspective. The titles only confer CR rights, i.e., access to nistar (sec 3(1)(b)) and NTFPs collection & sale (sec 3(1)(c)). They do not confer CFR management (sec 3(1)(i) rights.

Discrepancies in the recognition of Individual Forest Rights (IFR): Forest Villages are settlements created by the Forest Department during colonial and post‐colonial times for the explicit purpose of suppressing shifting cultivation and ensuring availability of labour for forestry (felling and transport) operations. Therefore cultivation rights in these villages need to be settled comprehensively, as per guidelines issued by the Ministry of Tribal Affairs. Unfortunately, this has not happened, resulting in widespread discontent among the villagers. A sample study of the 5 FVs were represented in the workshop. It showed the total area approved under IFRs is far lower than the total cultivated/settlement area in the village. 

This has happened due to three kinds of discrepancies in IFR titles: Understatement of landholding: Most common, many IFR titles recognize only partial landholding. Some titles recognise only the homestead area (e.g. 0.09 hectares) and not the cultivated area at all. No titles received: Several Adivasi households have not received titles at all. As a result, they are also deprived of convergence with MGNREGA and PM‐Aawaas and PM‐Kisan schemes. Case of OTFD households: OBC households of the Panika and Ahir castes whose ancestors were settled by the forest department in forest villages have been denied IFR titles. The FD insists that the rejection has been done on the basis of satellite imagery. Apart from the fact that this is not as per the law, our comparison of satellite imagery between pre‐2005 and current period shows that about 95% of the land being cultivated today was under cultivation pre‐2005—which is only to be expected in an FV which is completely under the control of the FD. Clearly, a comprehensive process of surveying and recognizing IFRs for all cultivated and homestead areas in each FV needs to be carried out.

The Workshop ended with officials and villagers expressing willingness to continue the dialogue so as to identify ways of livelihood enhancement and sustainable forestry through CFRs and IFRs.