Revitalization of Rivers in India Draft Policy - Isha Guru Jaggi Vasudev

Revitalization of Rivers In India
Draft Policy Recommendation
Community forest rights and forest resource rights have the potential for:
Transforming forest governance and forest-people relations: Studies show that people
develop a connection with forests because of everyday proximity. They develop
special ecological knowledge and, often, use it to devise low-cost, efficient
and powerful forest management interventions. Innumerable community
conservation efforts across the country show that communities are quite skilled
at devising governance institutions for effective conservation and management of
natural resources.
Creating space for democratic, community-based forest governance: Community forest
resource rights support local adaptive forest governance. Transfer of jurisdiction
of CFRs to the Gram Sabha will boost creativity and leverage dispersed local
knowledge of forest dwellers to effectively manage, govern and restore forests
at a low cost. While only a small percentage of the potential CFR area has been
recognized till now, effective forest governance by the Gram Sabha is already
being practiced in hundreds of villages.
Livelihood security, poverty alleviation and development: Individual and community
forest and resource rights through the Forest Rights Act have extraordinary
potential for ensuring livelihood security and poverty alleviation through
sustainable and community-based management of forests. The Act offers
opportunities for poverty alleviation through forest product harvesting,
processing and forest enterprises, and transfer payments to the Gram Sabha
for reforestation, carbon sequestration and provision of ecological services.
A significant opportunity lies in the convergence of FRA with development
programmes such as MGNREGA and IAY.
Food security: Food from forests and tree-based systems is likely to continue to
form an essential part of household strategies to eliminate hunger and achieve
nutritionally balanced diets. Food from forests provides micronutrients and
contributes to dietary diversity. It also provides nutritional sufficiency and a
“safety net” during periods of other food shortages caused by crop failure and
during seasonal crop production gaps. Individual and community forest and
resource rights have the potential to improve the status of food security of
millions of forest-dwelling poor and tribal communities by recognizing their
502 Annexures