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NTCA Order

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April 26, 2017

What is the issue?

The National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) recently ordered that there would be no tribal rights under the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006 (FRA) in critical tiger habitats.

Does it contradict the earlier stance of Government?

  • Both the ‘Guidance document for preparation of tiger conservation plan’ and the Protocol/guidelines for voluntary village relocation in notified core/critical tiger habitats of tiger reserves’ issued by the Environment Ministry acknowledge that although there is a need to keep forest reserves as inviolate for the purposes of tiger conservation, this ought to be done without affecting the rights of traditional forest dwellers.
  • The NTCA and the relevant expert committee constituted to ensure tiger conservation under the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972 (WPA) have a mandate to ensure conservation along with human coexistence.

Can the tribal rights be compromised?

  • Compromises on the rights of Tribals can be made only where there is proof that the tribal/right holder’s presence in these protected areas will create irreversible damage to their ecology.
  • While on paper the process adopted or recommended for creation and maintenance of critical tiger habitats appears fairly just, in effect its functioning is arbitrary.
  • Neither the FRA nor the WPA has ever made a case for circumscribing the rights of Tribals in the name of environmental protection.
  • Yet this takes place as the practice of conservation is predicated on exclusionary logic.
  • Even in the face of significant evidence that Tribals have helped in increasing the tiger population, whether the Soligas in the BRT Tiger reserve in Karnataka or the Baigas in the Kanha National Park in M.P. (in photo), they have been periodically evicted, even as corporations and developmental projects are given a free hand to generate an environmental crisis on an unprecedented scale.

What do the data say?

  • According to the Global Environmental Justice Atlas data of 2016, India registered the highest number of environment-related conflicts (222) in proportion to the population.
  • It is thus necessary for civil society and peoples’ collectives to forge an alliance to prevent dissociating indigenous communities from the environmental conservation narrative.
  • Strengthening the FRA and eliminating instances that marginalise people in the name of conservation will require greater policy attention.

 

Source: The Hindu

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