Block Level CFRR Claim-Making and WebGIS Workshops in Bastar

Introduction

The Bastar District Administration has given the task of training and capacity building for the recognition and management of Community Forest Resource Rights (CFRR) to Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment (ATREE). While working towards capacity building, our team recognized that a very common roadblock to claim-making has been the lack of convergence between forest and revenue maps, where the Revenue Department’s maps don’t show forest compartment boundaries and the Forest Department’s maps don’t show revenue village boundaries.
In order to address this lack of convergence, the CFRR team at ATREE has developed a webGIS system (a mapping system accessible through a web browser) which superimposes four types of maps of Bastar district on top of each other; a Google Earth/Bing satellite map, revenue boundary maps, forest compartment maps, and cadastral maps of each village. Since this system transposes all the maps on top of each other, and is freely accessible to the public, it allows people to understand which identify what forest area is being claimed, in reference to the revenue and cadastral boundaries of the village.
To introduce the WebGIS system as a tool to better facilitate the claim-making process, and to address other gaps in the CFRR claim-making process, the ATREE team organised a series of block level workshops to be held in each of the seven blocks in Bastar district. Each workshop was held in the block headquarters of the seven blocks, between the 7th and 14th of February, and was attended by FRC Adhyakshs, Sachivs, and members, Panchayat Sachivs and Sarpanchs, and Patwaris.