Community Forest Resources
The Energy and Resource Institute (TERI) noted in a study that state-level guidelines must be created for sustainable resource usage in areas where community forest resource (CFR) rights are given under the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006 (FRA). The study was commissioned by the Ministry of Tribal Affairs (MoTA) in February 2019.
Key Features
- MoTA must issue broad guidelines and principles for implementation of CFRs, mentioning specific role of the state forest department, state tribal/social welfare department, revenue department and gram sabhas.
- State governments should prepare state-specific guidelines on the basis of MoTA’s guidelines.
- MoTa should focus on capacity-building of gram sabha members, assessment of the biomass stock and biodiversity conservation.
- Focus on capacity building programmes to educate various stakeholder government departments about the acts/schemes/policies.
- The micro-plans prepared by gram sabha for their respective CFR should be a part of the working plans of forest division concerned, so that forest staff could facilitate the implementation of sustainable forest management.
