CII Communique - February, 2010

development initiatives
Re-greening Degraded Lands
This Report, a CII policy
intervention for the next
generation sustainable
business, proposes that the
Corporate Sector be allowed to
invest on a large scale in raising
technology-based industrial
plantations (4 million hectares in
the next 10 years in the country)
on available degraded revenue/
private/forest land through a
partnership arrangement. This is
an independent report prepared by CII in association
with international and nationally acclaimed institutions.
The report focuses attention on the fact that our Forest
Policy 1988 does not involve the Corporate Sector in
re-greening degraded lands.
The proposal is based on the rationale that State
Forest Departments neither have adequate financial
resources nor enough back-up to establish plantations
on these lands. Further, this proposal would support
the Government’s committed goal of raising at least
3 million hectares of plantations annually to meet the
country’s requirements of forest products as outlined in
the National Forestry Action Plan (NFAP). Currently, due
to fund constraints, only 30% of this target is being met.
At the same time, it would supplement the Government’s
Joint Forest Management Programme (JFM) which is
directed to meet the country’s requirements for fuel
wood, leaf fodder and timber. The advantages of this
endeavour are manifold, as it would:
• Assure sustained additional annual rural employment
of 320 million person days out of which nearly 70% jobs
would be created for women. This is most important as
the Government seeks to generate more employment
opportunities.
• Provide fuel wood, leaf fodder, small timber and
grasses to the rural poor for their livestock, and thus
release the pressure from natural forests. This would
also promote biodiversity conservation, while helping
to meet the industrial timber needs of the country.
• Improve the productivity and fertility of degraded
lands in India, thus improving local environment and
soil and water conservation.
• Help in ‘re-generating’ the rural landscape: The
plantations would work as ‘carbon-sinks’ and the scope
for carbon trading may bring about
an opportunity for forestry to the
private sector, in which massive
international resource transfer is
expected.
• Promote self-reliance in timber
and wood-based products in India,
reducing the foreign exchange
burden that is rising sharply due
to increase in imports.
Further, such a proposal
addressing the two critical issues
of improvement in the quality of environment and rural
unemployment would be achieved through private
sector investment, freeing Government resources for
other socially-oriented programmes. One way to do this
could be leasing out a portion of the degraded forest
land to the paper industry to take care of the apparent
contradictions arising out of India simultaneously signing
the Convention on Biodiversity and the World Trade
Organization Protocols.
The paper industry has to play a proactive role in changing
its perceived role from that of ‘opportunism’ to one that
makes it accountable towards ensuring the well-being of
the nation. At the same time, the State has to shed its
inhibitions of looking at forests only from the perspective
of conservation and consider the importance of increasing
the productivity of land under forests as well.
The report presents a projection of the benefits that may
accrue to the different stakeholders if around 1.2 million
hectares of degraded lands are leased out to the paper
industry. In all, the total benefit works out to be well above
Rs. 10500 crores per year ! These gains are in addition
to the prospective gains in the form of water and soil
conservation, protection to the existing forests and the
consequent protection of our gene pool therein.
Such a ‘trinity’ — strong bondage of partnership across
Community, State and the Private sector — will go a long
way in opening up the space for a fruitful private-public
partnership in re-greening the country and motivate such
collaborations in other sectors of the economy. Such
joint intervention needs to be indertaken with urgency,
to restore the productivity of these lands through
plantations before they become permanently degraded
and cause irreparable damage to our environment and
rural landscape.
52 | February 2010 Communiqué