A Critical Conversation on Climate Change ... - Green Choices

offsets – the fossil economy’s new arena of conflict 32376 General Manager, District Trade and IndustryCentre, Raigarh, 2005.77 Gupta et al., op. cit. supra note 67.78 Ghosh et al., Report on CDM Projects, op. cit. supranote 66.79 Two researchers using software developed at theWorld Resources Institute in Washington estimatedthat as much as a staggering 7 billion tonnes worthof carbon credits could be sequestered by Indianplantations between 2000 and 2050 (SuruchaiBhadwal and Roma Singh, ‘Carbon SequestrationEstimates for Forestry Options under DifferentLand Use Scenarios in India’, Current Science83, 11, 2002, pp. 1380-1386, http://www.ias.ac.in/currsci/dec102002/1380.pdf, p. 1380). A PlanningCommission document has projected a vastly lowerfigure of 5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide saved ayear, netting India about USD 125 million during theKyoto Protocol’s first commitment period (PlanningCommission of India, National Action Plan forOperationalising Clean Development Mechanism inIndia, New Delhi, 2003, http://planningcommission.nic.in/reports/genrep/fin_CDM.pdf, p. 97). Thefact that these two figures differ by a factor of 28reflects the delirium that characterises the theory ofcarbon plantation ‘offsets’ (see Chapter 3).80 Since 1992, the Indian pulp and paper industry hasbeen trying to lease ‘degraded’ state forests toestablish private plantations in order to meet thegrowing demand for raw materials. In 1994, whenthe Indian government tried to pass a law makingthis transformation possible, it faced stiff resistancefrom not only community groups and NGOs, butalso the Planning Commission, which set up anexpert committee to look into the matter. Thecommittee categorically refuted the industry claimthat degraded lands do not support biodiversity andare not used by local communities. It went on toshow that leasing out of forests to industries wouldprove to be both ecologically and socially harmful,and would be an injustice to communities, who useall forests for livelihood and other reasons, andthat no forests in the country could be said to be‘absolutely degraded’ (N. C. Saxena et al., Report onthe Prospects of Making Degraded Forests Availableto Private Entrepreneurs, Planning Commission ofIndia, New Delhi, 1999).81 Ghosh et al., Report on CDM Projects, op. cit. supranote 66.82 See http://www.communityforestryinternational.org.83 See, for example, Irshad A. Khan, ‘Joint ForestManagement: Most Significant Forest Sector PolicyReform of Twentieth Century’, note, World Bank,New Delhi, 2003.84 Nandini Sundar et al., Branching Out: Joint ForestManagement in India, Oxford University Press,New Delhi, 2001; Arvind Khare et al., ‘Joint ForestManagement: Policy, Practice and Prospects:India Country Study’, International Institute forEnvironment and Development, London, 2000;Dermot Shields et al., ‘Incentives for Joint ForestManagement in India: Analytical Methods andCase Studies’, World Bank Technical PaperNo. 394, Washington, 1998; Shashi Kant et al.,‘Complementarity of Institutions – a Prerequisitefor the Success of Joint Forest Management: AComparative Case of Four Villages in India’, WorldBank, Washington, 2002.85 K. Sivaramakrishnan, ‘Modern Forestry: Trees andDevelopment Spaces in West Bengal’, in LauraRival, ed., The Social Life of Trees: AnthropologicalPerspectives on Tree Symbolism, Berg, Oxford, pp.273-96.86 Mark Poffenberger et al., ‘Communities andClimate Change: The Clean DevelopmentMechanism and Village-based Forest Restorationin Central India’, Community Forestry Internationaland Indian Institute of Forest Management,Santa Barbara, 2001, p. 71, http://www.communityforestryinternational.org/publications/research_reports/harda_report_with_maps.pdf.87 See M. Sarin et al., ‘Devolution as a Threat toDemocratic Decision-making in Forestry? Findingsfrom Three States in India, Overseas DevelopmentInstitute, ODI Working Paper No. 19, 2003, http://www.odi.org.uk and G. Brahmane et al., ‘The Adivasisand the World Bank-Aided Madhya PradeshForestry Project: A Case Study of IndigenousExperience’, discussion document prepared for theWorkshop on Indigenous Peoples, Forests and theWorld Bank: Policies and Practice, 9-10 May 2000,Washington DC, http://www.forestpeoples.org.88 Shramik Adivasi Sanghathan, ‘Village ForestProtection Committees in Madhya Pradesh: AnUpdate and <strong>Critical</strong> Evaluation’, 2004, availablefrom http://www.forestpeoples.org. See also N.Kumar, ‘All is Not Green with JFM in India’, Forests,Trees and People, No. 42, June 2000, pp. 46-50, andA. Roychaudhury, ‘The Woods are Lovely…’, Down toEarth 17, 1995, pp. 25-30.89 ‘Report of the Joint Mission on Madhya PradeshForestry Project’, May 1999; Samata, ‘Impact ofJFM in North Coastal Andhra Pradesh – A People’sPerspective’, Samata and CRY-Net, Hyderabad,2000; and M. Sarin et al., ‘Devolution as a Threat toDemocratic Decision-making in Forestry? Findingsfrom Three States in India (Orissa, Madhya Pradesh,Uttarakhand)’, Overseas Development Institute,Working Paper No. 197, ODI, London, 2003, pp. 33,35, 49-50, 56, 57, 61.