Deprecated (16384): The ArrayAccess methods will be removed in 4.0.0.Use getParam(), getData() and getQuery() instead. - /home/brlfuser/public_html/src/Controller/ArtileDetailController.php, line: 73
 You can disable deprecation warnings by setting `Error.errorLevel` to `E_ALL & ~E_USER_DEPRECATED` in your config/app.php. [CORE/src/Core/functions.php, line 311]
Code Context


        trigger_error($message, E_USER_DEPRECATED);

    }
$message = 'The ArrayAccess methods will be removed in 4.0.0.Use getParam(), getData() and getQuery() instead. - /home/brlfuser/public_html/src/Controller/ArtileDetailController.php, line: 73
 You can disable deprecation warnings by setting `Error.errorLevel` to `E_ALL & ~E_USER_DEPRECATED` in your config/app.php.'
$stackFrame = (int) 1
$trace = [
	(int) 0 => [
		'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Http/ServerRequest.php',
		'line' => (int) 2421,
		'function' => 'deprecationWarning',
		'args' => [
			(int) 0 => 'The ArrayAccess methods will be removed in 4.0.0.Use getParam(), getData() and getQuery() instead.'
		]
	],
	(int) 1 => [
		'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/src/Controller/ArtileDetailController.php',
		'line' => (int) 73,
		'function' => 'offsetGet',
		'class' => 'Cake\Http\ServerRequest',
		'object' => object(Cake\Http\ServerRequest) {},
		'type' => '->',
		'args' => [
			(int) 0 => 'catslug'
		]
	],
	(int) 2 => [
		'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Controller/Controller.php',
		'line' => (int) 610,
		'function' => 'printArticle',
		'class' => 'App\Controller\ArtileDetailController',
		'object' => object(App\Controller\ArtileDetailController) {},
		'type' => '->',
		'args' => []
	],
	(int) 3 => [
		'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Http/ActionDispatcher.php',
		'line' => (int) 120,
		'function' => 'invokeAction',
		'class' => 'Cake\Controller\Controller',
		'object' => object(App\Controller\ArtileDetailController) {},
		'type' => '->',
		'args' => []
	],
	(int) 4 => [
		'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Http/ActionDispatcher.php',
		'line' => (int) 94,
		'function' => '_invoke',
		'class' => 'Cake\Http\ActionDispatcher',
		'object' => object(Cake\Http\ActionDispatcher) {},
		'type' => '->',
		'args' => [
			(int) 0 => object(App\Controller\ArtileDetailController) {}
		]
	],
	(int) 5 => [
		'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Http/BaseApplication.php',
		'line' => (int) 235,
		'function' => 'dispatch',
		'class' => 'Cake\Http\ActionDispatcher',
		'object' => object(Cake\Http\ActionDispatcher) {},
		'type' => '->',
		'args' => [
			(int) 0 => object(Cake\Http\ServerRequest) {},
			(int) 1 => object(Cake\Http\Response) {}
		]
	],
	(int) 6 => [
		'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Http/Runner.php',
		'line' => (int) 65,
		'function' => '__invoke',
		'class' => 'Cake\Http\BaseApplication',
		'object' => object(App\Application) {},
		'type' => '->',
		'args' => [
			(int) 0 => object(Cake\Http\ServerRequest) {},
			(int) 1 => object(Cake\Http\Response) {},
			(int) 2 => object(Cake\Http\Runner) {}
		]
	],
	(int) 7 => [
		'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Routing/Middleware/RoutingMiddleware.php',
		'line' => (int) 162,
		'function' => '__invoke',
		'class' => 'Cake\Http\Runner',
		'object' => object(Cake\Http\Runner) {},
		'type' => '->',
		'args' => [
			(int) 0 => object(Cake\Http\ServerRequest) {},
			(int) 1 => object(Cake\Http\Response) {}
		]
	],
	(int) 8 => [
		'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Http/Runner.php',
		'line' => (int) 65,
		'function' => '__invoke',
		'class' => 'Cake\Routing\Middleware\RoutingMiddleware',
		'object' => object(Cake\Routing\Middleware\RoutingMiddleware) {},
		'type' => '->',
		'args' => [
			(int) 0 => object(Cake\Http\ServerRequest) {},
			(int) 1 => object(Cake\Http\Response) {},
			(int) 2 => object(Cake\Http\Runner) {}
		]
	],
	(int) 9 => [
		'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Routing/Middleware/AssetMiddleware.php',
		'line' => (int) 88,
		'function' => '__invoke',
		'class' => 'Cake\Http\Runner',
		'object' => object(Cake\Http\Runner) {},
		'type' => '->',
		'args' => [
			(int) 0 => object(Cake\Http\ServerRequest) {},
			(int) 1 => object(Cake\Http\Response) {}
		]
	],
	(int) 10 => [
		'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Http/Runner.php',
		'line' => (int) 65,
		'function' => '__invoke',
		'class' => 'Cake\Routing\Middleware\AssetMiddleware',
		'object' => object(Cake\Routing\Middleware\AssetMiddleware) {},
		'type' => '->',
		'args' => [
			(int) 0 => object(Cake\Http\ServerRequest) {},
			(int) 1 => object(Cake\Http\Response) {},
			(int) 2 => object(Cake\Http\Runner) {}
		]
	],
	(int) 11 => [
		'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Error/Middleware/ErrorHandlerMiddleware.php',
		'line' => (int) 96,
		'function' => '__invoke',
		'class' => 'Cake\Http\Runner',
		'object' => object(Cake\Http\Runner) {},
		'type' => '->',
		'args' => [
			(int) 0 => object(Cake\Http\ServerRequest) {},
			(int) 1 => object(Cake\Http\Response) {}
		]
	],
	(int) 12 => [
		'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Http/Runner.php',
		'line' => (int) 65,
		'function' => '__invoke',
		'class' => 'Cake\Error\Middleware\ErrorHandlerMiddleware',
		'object' => object(Cake\Error\Middleware\ErrorHandlerMiddleware) {},
		'type' => '->',
		'args' => [
			(int) 0 => object(Cake\Http\ServerRequest) {},
			(int) 1 => object(Cake\Http\Response) {},
			(int) 2 => object(Cake\Http\Runner) {}
		]
	],
	(int) 13 => [
		'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Http/Runner.php',
		'line' => (int) 51,
		'function' => '__invoke',
		'class' => 'Cake\Http\Runner',
		'object' => object(Cake\Http\Runner) {},
		'type' => '->',
		'args' => [
			(int) 0 => object(Cake\Http\ServerRequest) {},
			(int) 1 => object(Cake\Http\Response) {}
		]
	],
	(int) 14 => [
		'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Http/Server.php',
		'line' => (int) 98,
		'function' => 'run',
		'class' => 'Cake\Http\Runner',
		'object' => object(Cake\Http\Runner) {},
		'type' => '->',
		'args' => [
			(int) 0 => object(Cake\Http\MiddlewareQueue) {},
			(int) 1 => object(Cake\Http\ServerRequest) {},
			(int) 2 => object(Cake\Http\Response) {}
		]
	],
	(int) 15 => [
		'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/webroot/index.php',
		'line' => (int) 39,
		'function' => 'run',
		'class' => 'Cake\Http\Server',
		'object' => object(Cake\Http\Server) {},
		'type' => '->',
		'args' => []
	]
]
$frame = [
	'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/src/Controller/ArtileDetailController.php',
	'line' => (int) 73,
	'function' => 'offsetGet',
	'class' => 'Cake\Http\ServerRequest',
	'object' => object(Cake\Http\ServerRequest) {
		trustProxy => false
		[protected] params => [
			[maximum depth reached]
		]
		[protected] data => [[maximum depth reached]]
		[protected] query => [[maximum depth reached]]
		[protected] cookies => [
			[maximum depth reached]
		]
		[protected] _environment => [
			[maximum depth reached]
		]
		[protected] url => 'latest-news-updates/national-forest-policy-draft-2018-takes-one-step-forward-two-steps-back-sushant-agarwal-4684288/print'
		[protected] base => ''
		[protected] webroot => '/'
		[protected] here => '/latest-news-updates/national-forest-policy-draft-2018-takes-one-step-forward-two-steps-back-sushant-agarwal-4684288/print'
		[protected] trustedProxies => [[maximum depth reached]]
		[protected] _input => null
		[protected] _detectors => [
			[maximum depth reached]
		]
		[protected] _detectorCache => [
			[maximum depth reached]
		]
		[protected] stream => object(Zend\Diactoros\PhpInputStream) {}
		[protected] uri => object(Zend\Diactoros\Uri) {}
		[protected] session => object(Cake\Http\Session) {}
		[protected] attributes => [[maximum depth reached]]
		[protected] emulatedAttributes => [
			[maximum depth reached]
		]
		[protected] uploadedFiles => [[maximum depth reached]]
		[protected] protocol => null
		[protected] requestTarget => null
		[private] deprecatedProperties => [
			[maximum depth reached]
		]
	},
	'type' => '->',
	'args' => [
		(int) 0 => 'catslug'
	]
]
deprecationWarning - CORE/src/Core/functions.php, line 311
Cake\Http\ServerRequest::offsetGet() - CORE/src/Http/ServerRequest.php, line 2421
App\Controller\ArtileDetailController::printArticle() - APP/Controller/ArtileDetailController.php, line 73
Cake\Controller\Controller::invokeAction() - CORE/src/Controller/Controller.php, line 610
Cake\Http\ActionDispatcher::_invoke() - CORE/src/Http/ActionDispatcher.php, line 120
Cake\Http\ActionDispatcher::dispatch() - CORE/src/Http/ActionDispatcher.php, line 94
Cake\Http\BaseApplication::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/BaseApplication.php, line 235
Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
Cake\Routing\Middleware\RoutingMiddleware::__invoke() - CORE/src/Routing/Middleware/RoutingMiddleware.php, line 162
Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
Cake\Routing\Middleware\AssetMiddleware::__invoke() - CORE/src/Routing/Middleware/AssetMiddleware.php, line 88
Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
Cake\Error\Middleware\ErrorHandlerMiddleware::__invoke() - CORE/src/Error/Middleware/ErrorHandlerMiddleware.php, line 96
Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
Cake\Http\Runner::run() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 51
Cake\Http\Server::run() - CORE/src/Http/Server.php, line 98

Deprecated (16384): The ArrayAccess methods will be removed in 4.0.0.Use getParam(), getData() and getQuery() instead. - /home/brlfuser/public_html/src/Controller/ArtileDetailController.php, line: 74
 You can disable deprecation warnings by setting `Error.errorLevel` to `E_ALL & ~E_USER_DEPRECATED` in your config/app.php. [CORE/src/Core/functions.php, line 311]
Code Context


        trigger_error($message, E_USER_DEPRECATED);

    }
$message = 'The ArrayAccess methods will be removed in 4.0.0.Use getParam(), getData() and getQuery() instead. - /home/brlfuser/public_html/src/Controller/ArtileDetailController.php, line: 74
 You can disable deprecation warnings by setting `Error.errorLevel` to `E_ALL & ~E_USER_DEPRECATED` in your config/app.php.'
$stackFrame = (int) 1
$trace = [
	(int) 0 => [
		'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Http/ServerRequest.php',
		'line' => (int) 2421,
		'function' => 'deprecationWarning',
		'args' => [
			(int) 0 => 'The ArrayAccess methods will be removed in 4.0.0.Use getParam(), getData() and getQuery() instead.'
		]
	],
	(int) 1 => [
		'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/src/Controller/ArtileDetailController.php',
		'line' => (int) 74,
		'function' => 'offsetGet',
		'class' => 'Cake\Http\ServerRequest',
		'object' => object(Cake\Http\ServerRequest) {},
		'type' => '->',
		'args' => [
			(int) 0 => 'artileslug'
		]
	],
	(int) 2 => [
		'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Controller/Controller.php',
		'line' => (int) 610,
		'function' => 'printArticle',
		'class' => 'App\Controller\ArtileDetailController',
		'object' => object(App\Controller\ArtileDetailController) {},
		'type' => '->',
		'args' => []
	],
	(int) 3 => [
		'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Http/ActionDispatcher.php',
		'line' => (int) 120,
		'function' => 'invokeAction',
		'class' => 'Cake\Controller\Controller',
		'object' => object(App\Controller\ArtileDetailController) {},
		'type' => '->',
		'args' => []
	],
	(int) 4 => [
		'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Http/ActionDispatcher.php',
		'line' => (int) 94,
		'function' => '_invoke',
		'class' => 'Cake\Http\ActionDispatcher',
		'object' => object(Cake\Http\ActionDispatcher) {},
		'type' => '->',
		'args' => [
			(int) 0 => object(App\Controller\ArtileDetailController) {}
		]
	],
	(int) 5 => [
		'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Http/BaseApplication.php',
		'line' => (int) 235,
		'function' => 'dispatch',
		'class' => 'Cake\Http\ActionDispatcher',
		'object' => object(Cake\Http\ActionDispatcher) {},
		'type' => '->',
		'args' => [
			(int) 0 => object(Cake\Http\ServerRequest) {},
			(int) 1 => object(Cake\Http\Response) {}
		]
	],
	(int) 6 => [
		'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Http/Runner.php',
		'line' => (int) 65,
		'function' => '__invoke',
		'class' => 'Cake\Http\BaseApplication',
		'object' => object(App\Application) {},
		'type' => '->',
		'args' => [
			(int) 0 => object(Cake\Http\ServerRequest) {},
			(int) 1 => object(Cake\Http\Response) {},
			(int) 2 => object(Cake\Http\Runner) {}
		]
	],
	(int) 7 => [
		'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Routing/Middleware/RoutingMiddleware.php',
		'line' => (int) 162,
		'function' => '__invoke',
		'class' => 'Cake\Http\Runner',
		'object' => object(Cake\Http\Runner) {},
		'type' => '->',
		'args' => [
			(int) 0 => object(Cake\Http\ServerRequest) {},
			(int) 1 => object(Cake\Http\Response) {}
		]
	],
	(int) 8 => [
		'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Http/Runner.php',
		'line' => (int) 65,
		'function' => '__invoke',
		'class' => 'Cake\Routing\Middleware\RoutingMiddleware',
		'object' => object(Cake\Routing\Middleware\RoutingMiddleware) {},
		'type' => '->',
		'args' => [
			(int) 0 => object(Cake\Http\ServerRequest) {},
			(int) 1 => object(Cake\Http\Response) {},
			(int) 2 => object(Cake\Http\Runner) {}
		]
	],
	(int) 9 => [
		'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Routing/Middleware/AssetMiddleware.php',
		'line' => (int) 88,
		'function' => '__invoke',
		'class' => 'Cake\Http\Runner',
		'object' => object(Cake\Http\Runner) {},
		'type' => '->',
		'args' => [
			(int) 0 => object(Cake\Http\ServerRequest) {},
			(int) 1 => object(Cake\Http\Response) {}
		]
	],
	(int) 10 => [
		'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Http/Runner.php',
		'line' => (int) 65,
		'function' => '__invoke',
		'class' => 'Cake\Routing\Middleware\AssetMiddleware',
		'object' => object(Cake\Routing\Middleware\AssetMiddleware) {},
		'type' => '->',
		'args' => [
			(int) 0 => object(Cake\Http\ServerRequest) {},
			(int) 1 => object(Cake\Http\Response) {},
			(int) 2 => object(Cake\Http\Runner) {}
		]
	],
	(int) 11 => [
		'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Error/Middleware/ErrorHandlerMiddleware.php',
		'line' => (int) 96,
		'function' => '__invoke',
		'class' => 'Cake\Http\Runner',
		'object' => object(Cake\Http\Runner) {},
		'type' => '->',
		'args' => [
			(int) 0 => object(Cake\Http\ServerRequest) {},
			(int) 1 => object(Cake\Http\Response) {}
		]
	],
	(int) 12 => [
		'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Http/Runner.php',
		'line' => (int) 65,
		'function' => '__invoke',
		'class' => 'Cake\Error\Middleware\ErrorHandlerMiddleware',
		'object' => object(Cake\Error\Middleware\ErrorHandlerMiddleware) {},
		'type' => '->',
		'args' => [
			(int) 0 => object(Cake\Http\ServerRequest) {},
			(int) 1 => object(Cake\Http\Response) {},
			(int) 2 => object(Cake\Http\Runner) {}
		]
	],
	(int) 13 => [
		'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Http/Runner.php',
		'line' => (int) 51,
		'function' => '__invoke',
		'class' => 'Cake\Http\Runner',
		'object' => object(Cake\Http\Runner) {},
		'type' => '->',
		'args' => [
			(int) 0 => object(Cake\Http\ServerRequest) {},
			(int) 1 => object(Cake\Http\Response) {}
		]
	],
	(int) 14 => [
		'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Http/Server.php',
		'line' => (int) 98,
		'function' => 'run',
		'class' => 'Cake\Http\Runner',
		'object' => object(Cake\Http\Runner) {},
		'type' => '->',
		'args' => [
			(int) 0 => object(Cake\Http\MiddlewareQueue) {},
			(int) 1 => object(Cake\Http\ServerRequest) {},
			(int) 2 => object(Cake\Http\Response) {}
		]
	],
	(int) 15 => [
		'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/webroot/index.php',
		'line' => (int) 39,
		'function' => 'run',
		'class' => 'Cake\Http\Server',
		'object' => object(Cake\Http\Server) {},
		'type' => '->',
		'args' => []
	]
]
$frame = [
	'file' => '/home/brlfuser/public_html/src/Controller/ArtileDetailController.php',
	'line' => (int) 74,
	'function' => 'offsetGet',
	'class' => 'Cake\Http\ServerRequest',
	'object' => object(Cake\Http\ServerRequest) {
		trustProxy => false
		[protected] params => [
			[maximum depth reached]
		]
		[protected] data => [[maximum depth reached]]
		[protected] query => [[maximum depth reached]]
		[protected] cookies => [
			[maximum depth reached]
		]
		[protected] _environment => [
			[maximum depth reached]
		]
		[protected] url => 'latest-news-updates/national-forest-policy-draft-2018-takes-one-step-forward-two-steps-back-sushant-agarwal-4684288/print'
		[protected] base => ''
		[protected] webroot => '/'
		[protected] here => '/latest-news-updates/national-forest-policy-draft-2018-takes-one-step-forward-two-steps-back-sushant-agarwal-4684288/print'
		[protected] trustedProxies => [[maximum depth reached]]
		[protected] _input => null
		[protected] _detectors => [
			[maximum depth reached]
		]
		[protected] _detectorCache => [
			[maximum depth reached]
		]
		[protected] stream => object(Zend\Diactoros\PhpInputStream) {}
		[protected] uri => object(Zend\Diactoros\Uri) {}
		[protected] session => object(Cake\Http\Session) {}
		[protected] attributes => [[maximum depth reached]]
		[protected] emulatedAttributes => [
			[maximum depth reached]
		]
		[protected] uploadedFiles => [[maximum depth reached]]
		[protected] protocol => null
		[protected] requestTarget => null
		[private] deprecatedProperties => [
			[maximum depth reached]
		]
	},
	'type' => '->',
	'args' => [
		(int) 0 => 'artileslug'
	]
]
deprecationWarning - CORE/src/Core/functions.php, line 311
Cake\Http\ServerRequest::offsetGet() - CORE/src/Http/ServerRequest.php, line 2421
App\Controller\ArtileDetailController::printArticle() - APP/Controller/ArtileDetailController.php, line 74
Cake\Controller\Controller::invokeAction() - CORE/src/Controller/Controller.php, line 610
Cake\Http\ActionDispatcher::_invoke() - CORE/src/Http/ActionDispatcher.php, line 120
Cake\Http\ActionDispatcher::dispatch() - CORE/src/Http/ActionDispatcher.php, line 94
Cake\Http\BaseApplication::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/BaseApplication.php, line 235
Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
Cake\Routing\Middleware\RoutingMiddleware::__invoke() - CORE/src/Routing/Middleware/RoutingMiddleware.php, line 162
Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
Cake\Routing\Middleware\AssetMiddleware::__invoke() - CORE/src/Routing/Middleware/AssetMiddleware.php, line 88
Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
Cake\Error\Middleware\ErrorHandlerMiddleware::__invoke() - CORE/src/Error/Middleware/ErrorHandlerMiddleware.php, line 96
Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
Cake\Http\Runner::run() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 51
Cake\Http\Server::run() - CORE/src/Http/Server.php, line 98

Warning (512): Unable to emit headers. Headers sent in file=/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Error/Debugger.php line=853 [CORE/src/Http/ResponseEmitter.php, line 48]
Code Context
            if (Configure::read('debug')) {

                trigger_error($message, E_USER_WARNING);

            } else {
$response = object(Cake\Http\Response) {

	'status' => (int) 200,
	'contentType' => 'text/html',
	'headers' => [
		'Content-Type' => [
			[maximum depth reached]
		]
	],
	'file' => null,
	'fileRange' => [],
	'cookies' => object(Cake\Http\Cookie\CookieCollection) {},
	'cacheDirectives' => [],
	'body' => '<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
        "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
    <link rel="canonical" href="https://im4change.in/<pre class="cake-error"><a href="javascript:void(0);" onclick="document.getElementById('cakeErr67f0b91cce59f-trace').style.display = (document.getElementById('cakeErr67f0b91cce59f-trace').style.display == 'none' ? '' : 'none');"><b>Notice</b> (8)</a>: Undefined variable: urlPrefix [<b>APP/Template/Layout/printlayout.ctp</b>, line <b>8</b>]<div id="cakeErr67f0b91cce59f-trace" class="cake-stack-trace" style="display: none;"><a href="javascript:void(0);" onclick="document.getElementById('cakeErr67f0b91cce59f-code').style.display = (document.getElementById('cakeErr67f0b91cce59f-code').style.display == 'none' ? '' : 'none')">Code</a> <a href="javascript:void(0);" onclick="document.getElementById('cakeErr67f0b91cce59f-context').style.display = (document.getElementById('cakeErr67f0b91cce59f-context').style.display == 'none' ? '' : 'none')">Context</a><pre id="cakeErr67f0b91cce59f-code" class="cake-code-dump" style="display: none;"><code><span style="color: #000000"><span style="color: #0000BB"></span><span style="color: #007700">&lt;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">head</span><span style="color: #007700">&gt;
</span></span></code>
<span class="code-highlight"><code><span style="color: #000000">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&lt;link&nbsp;rel="canonical"&nbsp;href="<span style="color: #0000BB">&lt;?php&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #007700">echo&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">Configure</span><span style="color: #007700">::</span><span style="color: #0000BB">read</span><span style="color: #007700">(</span><span style="color: #DD0000">'SITE_URL'</span><span style="color: #007700">);&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">?&gt;&lt;?php&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #007700">echo&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">$urlPrefix</span><span style="color: #007700">;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">?&gt;&lt;?php&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #007700">echo&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">$article_current</span><span style="color: #007700">-&gt;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">category</span><span style="color: #007700">-&gt;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">slug</span><span style="color: #007700">;&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">?&gt;</span>/<span style="color: #0000BB">&lt;?php&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #007700">echo&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">$article_current</span><span style="color: #007700">-&gt;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">seo_url</span><span style="color: #007700">;&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">?&gt;</span>.html"/&gt;
</span></code></span>
<code><span style="color: #000000"><span style="color: #0000BB">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #007700">&lt;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">meta&nbsp;http</span><span style="color: #007700">-</span><span style="color: #0000BB">equiv</span><span style="color: #007700">=</span><span style="color: #DD0000">"Content-Type"&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">content</span><span style="color: #007700">=</span><span style="color: #DD0000">"text/html;&nbsp;charset=utf-8"</span><span style="color: #007700">/&gt;
</span></span></code></pre><pre id="cakeErr67f0b91cce59f-context" class="cake-context" style="display: none;">$viewFile = &#039;/home/brlfuser/public_html/src/Template/Layout/printlayout.ctp&#039;
$dataForView = [
	&#039;article_current&#039; =&gt; object(App\Model\Entity\Article) {

		&#039;id&#039; =&gt; (int) 36180,
		&#039;title&#039; =&gt; &#039;National Forest Policy Draft 2018 Takes One Step Forward, Two Steps Back -Sushant Agarwal&#039;,
		&#039;subheading&#039; =&gt; &#039;&#039;,
		&#039;description&#039; =&gt; &#039;&lt;div align=&quot;justify&quot;&gt;
-TheWire.in&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;em&gt;Unless consumer preferences shift to climate resistant crops, goals associated with the policy won&amp;rsquo;t materialize.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
On March 14, the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) uploaded a draft of the National Forest Policy 2018, three decades years after the last such policy. The draft appears to be an attempt to shift the approach towards forestry in India &amp;ndash; specifically, from a local community- and ecology-centric approach emphasised in the 1988 policy to focusing on timber and forest-based industries.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
This is not the first time that the 1988 policy has been revisited to open the doors for forest-based industries. In 2016, a draft policy was published on the MoEFCC website only to be taken down after it was panned for excluding the Forest Rights Act and encouraging the entry of private industries in forest management. Even though the MoEFCC distanced itself from the draft, major chunks in the current draft have been copied from the 2016 document.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
While there is merit in new concepts being introduced &amp;ndash; economic valuation of ecosystem services, forest certification, national forest ecosystem management information system, etc. &amp;ndash; these do not necessitate a complete shift in policy focus.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;em&gt;From tribal to timber&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
The shift in approach to forestry proposed by the 2018 draft contrasts the guidelines specified in the 1988 policy. The significance attributed to requirements and rights of local, forest-dependent communities is being substituted by the demand for raw material from forest-based industries. The 1988 policy had sections called &amp;lsquo;Rights and Concessions&amp;rsquo; and &amp;lsquo;Tribal People and Forests&amp;rsquo;, both of which have been replaced by &amp;lsquo;Production Forestry&amp;rsquo;, &amp;lsquo;Increase (sic) the productivity of forest plantations&amp;rsquo; and &amp;lsquo;Facilitate forest industry interface&amp;rsquo;, all of which focus on increasing the timber yield. The draft stresses the &amp;ldquo;need to stimulate growth in the forest based industry sector&amp;rdquo; and encourages forest corporations and industrial units to &amp;ldquo;step up growing of industrial plantations&amp;rdquo;.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The 1988 policy had specified that forest-based industry should &amp;ldquo;raise the raw material needed for meeting its own requirements&amp;rdquo; and that &amp;ldquo;no forest-based enterprise, except that at the village or cottage level, should be permitted in the future&amp;rdquo;. It had reiterated that the requirements of the local communities &amp;ldquo;should not be sacrificed for this purpose&amp;rdquo;.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
On the other hand, the livelihoods of local communities finds mention in the current draft only thrice: as passive recipients of benefits accruing from wildlife tourism, as labour for forest-based industries and in relation to non-timber forest produce (NTFP). On the last count, the draft policy mentions that business plans for NTFP will be developed based on &amp;ldquo;climate-smart value chains&amp;rdquo; but does not specify how any such initiative will be owned or its benefits shared.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Second: the 1988 policy had articulated the need for a massive afforestation programme with particular emphasis on &amp;ldquo;fuelwood and fodder development&amp;rdquo; on all degraded and denuded lands in the country, including land available with forest corporations. The 2018 draft aims to use degraded land available with forest corporations to produce &amp;ldquo;quality timber&amp;rdquo; and proposes a public-private partnership model for afforestation in &amp;ldquo;degraded forest areas and forest areas available with Forest Development Corporations and outside forests&amp;rdquo;.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Worse, the document also recommends &amp;ldquo;commercially important species like poplar and eucalyptus&amp;rdquo;, both known to be water-demanding species with deep root systems that deplete groundwater. In 2016, the Karnataka government had blamed eucalyptus trees for depleting groundwater in the Arkavathi basin, which led to a fall in water supply to Bengaluru. Both poplar and eucalyptus also have negative allelopathic properties &amp;ndash; i.e. they don&amp;rsquo;t encourage vegetative growth under their cover.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Over the years, numerous instances of gaur entering Kodaikanal in search of food have been attributed to the destruction of grasslands in shola forests by eucalyptus trees. In fact, a Parliamentary Standing Committee report on the Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority (CAMPA) Bill, 2015, highlighted this concern, recommending the clause&amp;nbsp; &amp;ldquo;particularly native species&amp;rdquo; be added after the word &amp;lsquo;plantation&amp;rsquo; in two instances. However, this was not incorporated in the Act that was finally passed.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Pushing non-indigenous plantation species to meet afforestation targets and timber requirements will damage groundwater recharge and be counterproductive to public investments in such initiatives.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Please &lt;a href=&quot;https://thewire.in/environment/national-forest-policy-draft-2018-takes-one-step-forward-two-steps-back&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to read more. &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;&#039;,
		&#039;credit_writer&#039; =&gt; &#039;TheWire.in, 2 April, 2018, https://thewire.in/environment/national-forest-policy-draft-2018-takes-one-step-forward-two-steps-back&#039;,
		&#039;article_img&#039; =&gt; &#039;&#039;,
		&#039;article_img_thumb&#039; =&gt; &#039;&#039;,
		&#039;status&#039; =&gt; (int) 1,
		&#039;show_on_home&#039; =&gt; (int) 1,
		&#039;lang&#039; =&gt; &#039;EN&#039;,
		&#039;category_id&#039; =&gt; (int) 16,
		&#039;tag_keyword&#039; =&gt; &#039;&#039;,
		&#039;seo_url&#039; =&gt; &#039;national-forest-policy-draft-2018-takes-one-step-forward-two-steps-back-sushant-agarwal-4684288&#039;,
		&#039;meta_title&#039; =&gt; null,
		&#039;meta_keywords&#039; =&gt; null,
		&#039;meta_description&#039; =&gt; null,
		&#039;noindex&#039; =&gt; (int) 0,
		&#039;publish_date&#039; =&gt; object(Cake\I18n\FrozenDate) {},
		&#039;most_visit_section_id&#039; =&gt; null,
		&#039;article_big_img&#039; =&gt; null,
		&#039;liveid&#039; =&gt; (int) 4684288,
		&#039;created&#039; =&gt; object(Cake\I18n\FrozenTime) {},
		&#039;modified&#039; =&gt; object(Cake\I18n\FrozenTime) {},
		&#039;edate&#039; =&gt; &#039;&#039;,
		&#039;tags&#039; =&gt; [
			[maximum depth reached]
		],
		&#039;category&#039; =&gt; object(App\Model\Entity\Category) {},
		&#039;[new]&#039; =&gt; false,
		&#039;[accessible]&#039; =&gt; [
			[maximum depth reached]
		],
		&#039;[dirty]&#039; =&gt; [[maximum depth reached]],
		&#039;[original]&#039; =&gt; [[maximum depth reached]],
		&#039;[virtual]&#039; =&gt; [[maximum depth reached]],
		&#039;[hasErrors]&#039; =&gt; false,
		&#039;[errors]&#039; =&gt; [[maximum depth reached]],
		&#039;[invalid]&#039; =&gt; [[maximum depth reached]],
		&#039;[repository]&#039; =&gt; &#039;Articles&#039;
	
	},
	&#039;articleid&#039; =&gt; (int) 36180,
	&#039;metaTitle&#039; =&gt; &#039;LATEST NEWS UPDATES | National Forest Policy Draft 2018 Takes One Step Forward, Two Steps Back -Sushant Agarwal&#039;,
	&#039;metaKeywords&#039; =&gt; &#039;new National Forest Policy (NFP),Compensatory Afforestation Fund Act 2016 (CAF),Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority (CAMPA)&#039;,
	&#039;metaDesc&#039; =&gt; &#039;
-TheWire.in

Unless consumer preferences shift to climate resistant crops, goals associated with the policy won&amp;rsquo;t materialize.

On March 14, the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) uploaded a draft of the National Forest Policy 2018, three decades years after the...&#039;,
	&#039;disp&#039; =&gt; &#039;&lt;div align=&quot;justify&quot;&gt;-TheWire.in&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;em&gt;Unless consumer preferences shift to climate resistant crops, goals associated with the policy won&amp;rsquo;t materialize.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br /&gt;On March 14, the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) uploaded a draft of the National Forest Policy 2018, three decades years after the last such policy. The draft appears to be an attempt to shift the approach towards forestry in India &amp;ndash; specifically, from a local community- and ecology-centric approach emphasised in the 1988 policy to focusing on timber and forest-based industries.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;This is not the first time that the 1988 policy has been revisited to open the doors for forest-based industries. In 2016, a draft policy was published on the MoEFCC website only to be taken down after it was panned for excluding the Forest Rights Act and encouraging the entry of private industries in forest management. Even though the MoEFCC distanced itself from the draft, major chunks in the current draft have been copied from the 2016 document.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;While there is merit in new concepts being introduced &amp;ndash; economic valuation of ecosystem services, forest certification, national forest ecosystem management information system, etc. &amp;ndash; these do not necessitate a complete shift in policy focus.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;em&gt;From tribal to timber&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The shift in approach to forestry proposed by the 2018 draft contrasts the guidelines specified in the 1988 policy. The significance attributed to requirements and rights of local, forest-dependent communities is being substituted by the demand for raw material from forest-based industries. The 1988 policy had sections called &amp;lsquo;Rights and Concessions&amp;rsquo; and &amp;lsquo;Tribal People and Forests&amp;rsquo;, both of which have been replaced by &amp;lsquo;Production Forestry&amp;rsquo;, &amp;lsquo;Increase (sic) the productivity of forest plantations&amp;rsquo; and &amp;lsquo;Facilitate forest industry interface&amp;rsquo;, all of which focus on increasing the timber yield. The draft stresses the &amp;ldquo;need to stimulate growth in the forest based industry sector&amp;rdquo; and encourages forest corporations and industrial units to &amp;ldquo;step up growing of industrial plantations&amp;rdquo;.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The 1988 policy had specified that forest-based industry should &amp;ldquo;raise the raw material needed for meeting its own requirements&amp;rdquo; and that &amp;ldquo;no forest-based enterprise, except that at the village or cottage level, should be permitted in the future&amp;rdquo;. It had reiterated that the requirements of the local communities &amp;ldquo;should not be sacrificed for this purpose&amp;rdquo;.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;On the other hand, the livelihoods of local communities finds mention in the current draft only thrice: as passive recipients of benefits accruing from wildlife tourism, as labour for forest-based industries and in relation to non-timber forest produce (NTFP). On the last count, the draft policy mentions that business plans for NTFP will be developed based on &amp;ldquo;climate-smart value chains&amp;rdquo; but does not specify how any such initiative will be owned or its benefits shared.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Second: the 1988 policy had articulated the need for a massive afforestation programme with particular emphasis on &amp;ldquo;fuelwood and fodder development&amp;rdquo; on all degraded and denuded lands in the country, including land available with forest corporations. The 2018 draft aims to use degraded land available with forest corporations to produce &amp;ldquo;quality timber&amp;rdquo; and proposes a public-private partnership model for afforestation in &amp;ldquo;degraded forest areas and forest areas available with Forest Development Corporations and outside forests&amp;rdquo;.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Worse, the document also recommends &amp;ldquo;commercially important species like poplar and eucalyptus&amp;rdquo;, both known to be water-demanding species with deep root systems that deplete groundwater. In 2016, the Karnataka government had blamed eucalyptus trees for depleting groundwater in the Arkavathi basin, which led to a fall in water supply to Bengaluru. Both poplar and eucalyptus also have negative allelopathic properties &amp;ndash; i.e. they don&amp;rsquo;t encourage vegetative growth under their cover.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Over the years, numerous instances of gaur entering Kodaikanal in search of food have been attributed to the destruction of grasslands in shola forests by eucalyptus trees. In fact, a Parliamentary Standing Committee report on the Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority (CAMPA) Bill, 2015, highlighted this concern, recommending the clause&amp;nbsp; &amp;ldquo;particularly native species&amp;rdquo; be added after the word &amp;lsquo;plantation&amp;rsquo; in two instances. However, this was not incorporated in the Act that was finally passed.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Pushing non-indigenous plantation species to meet afforestation targets and timber requirements will damage groundwater recharge and be counterproductive to public investments in such initiatives.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Please &lt;a href=&quot;https://thewire.in/environment/national-forest-policy-draft-2018-takes-one-step-forward-two-steps-back&quot; title=&quot;https://thewire.in/environment/national-forest-policy-draft-2018-takes-one-step-forward-two-steps-back&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to read more. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&#039;,
	&#039;lang&#039; =&gt; &#039;English&#039;,
	&#039;SITE_URL&#039; =&gt; &#039;https://im4change.in/&#039;,
	&#039;site_title&#039; =&gt; &#039;im4change&#039;,
	&#039;adminprix&#039; =&gt; &#039;admin&#039;
]
$article_current = object(App\Model\Entity\Article) {

	&#039;id&#039; =&gt; (int) 36180,
	&#039;title&#039; =&gt; &#039;National Forest Policy Draft 2018 Takes One Step Forward, Two Steps Back -Sushant Agarwal&#039;,
	&#039;subheading&#039; =&gt; &#039;&#039;,
	&#039;description&#039; =&gt; &#039;&lt;div align=&quot;justify&quot;&gt;
-TheWire.in&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;em&gt;Unless consumer preferences shift to climate resistant crops, goals associated with the policy won&amp;rsquo;t materialize.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
On March 14, the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) uploaded a draft of the National Forest Policy 2018, three decades years after the last such policy. The draft appears to be an attempt to shift the approach towards forestry in India &amp;ndash; specifically, from a local community- and ecology-centric approach emphasised in the 1988 policy to focusing on timber and forest-based industries.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
This is not the first time that the 1988 policy has been revisited to open the doors for forest-based industries. In 2016, a draft policy was published on the MoEFCC website only to be taken down after it was panned for excluding the Forest Rights Act and encouraging the entry of private industries in forest management. Even though the MoEFCC distanced itself from the draft, major chunks in the current draft have been copied from the 2016 document.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
While there is merit in new concepts being introduced &amp;ndash; economic valuation of ecosystem services, forest certification, national forest ecosystem management information system, etc. &amp;ndash; these do not necessitate a complete shift in policy focus.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;em&gt;From tribal to timber&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
The shift in approach to forestry proposed by the 2018 draft contrasts the guidelines specified in the 1988 policy. The significance attributed to requirements and rights of local, forest-dependent communities is being substituted by the demand for raw material from forest-based industries. The 1988 policy had sections called &amp;lsquo;Rights and Concessions&amp;rsquo; and &amp;lsquo;Tribal People and Forests&amp;rsquo;, both of which have been replaced by &amp;lsquo;Production Forestry&amp;rsquo;, &amp;lsquo;Increase (sic) the productivity of forest plantations&amp;rsquo; and &amp;lsquo;Facilitate forest industry interface&amp;rsquo;, all of which focus on increasing the timber yield. The draft stresses the &amp;ldquo;need to stimulate growth in the forest based industry sector&amp;rdquo; and encourages forest corporations and industrial units to &amp;ldquo;step up growing of industrial plantations&amp;rdquo;.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The 1988 policy had specified that forest-based industry should &amp;ldquo;raise the raw material needed for meeting its own requirements&amp;rdquo; and that &amp;ldquo;no forest-based enterprise, except that at the village or cottage level, should be permitted in the future&amp;rdquo;. It had reiterated that the requirements of the local communities &amp;ldquo;should not be sacrificed for this purpose&amp;rdquo;.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
On the other hand, the livelihoods of local communities finds mention in the current draft only thrice: as passive recipients of benefits accruing from wildlife tourism, as labour for forest-based industries and in relation to non-timber forest produce (NTFP). On the last count, the draft policy mentions that business plans for NTFP will be developed based on &amp;ldquo;climate-smart value chains&amp;rdquo; but does not specify how any such initiative will be owned or its benefits shared.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Second: the 1988 policy had articulated the need for a massive afforestation programme with particular emphasis on &amp;ldquo;fuelwood and fodder development&amp;rdquo; on all degraded and denuded lands in the country, including land available with forest corporations. The 2018 draft aims to use degraded land available with forest corporations to produce &amp;ldquo;quality timber&amp;rdquo; and proposes a public-private partnership model for afforestation in &amp;ldquo;degraded forest areas and forest areas available with Forest Development Corporations and outside forests&amp;rdquo;.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Worse, the document also recommends &amp;ldquo;commercially important species like poplar and eucalyptus&amp;rdquo;, both known to be water-demanding species with deep root systems that deplete groundwater. In 2016, the Karnataka government had blamed eucalyptus trees for depleting groundwater in the Arkavathi basin, which led to a fall in water supply to Bengaluru. Both poplar and eucalyptus also have negative allelopathic properties &amp;ndash; i.e. they don&amp;rsquo;t encourage vegetative growth under their cover.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Over the years, numerous instances of gaur entering Kodaikanal in search of food have been attributed to the destruction of grasslands in shola forests by eucalyptus trees. In fact, a Parliamentary Standing Committee report on the Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority (CAMPA) Bill, 2015, highlighted this concern, recommending the clause&amp;nbsp; &amp;ldquo;particularly native species&amp;rdquo; be added after the word &amp;lsquo;plantation&amp;rsquo; in two instances. However, this was not incorporated in the Act that was finally passed.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Pushing non-indigenous plantation species to meet afforestation targets and timber requirements will damage groundwater recharge and be counterproductive to public investments in such initiatives.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Please &lt;a href=&quot;https://thewire.in/environment/national-forest-policy-draft-2018-takes-one-step-forward-two-steps-back&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to read more. &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;&#039;,
	&#039;credit_writer&#039; =&gt; &#039;TheWire.in, 2 April, 2018, https://thewire.in/environment/national-forest-policy-draft-2018-takes-one-step-forward-two-steps-back&#039;,
	&#039;article_img&#039; =&gt; &#039;&#039;,
	&#039;article_img_thumb&#039; =&gt; &#039;&#039;,
	&#039;status&#039; =&gt; (int) 1,
	&#039;show_on_home&#039; =&gt; (int) 1,
	&#039;lang&#039; =&gt; &#039;EN&#039;,
	&#039;category_id&#039; =&gt; (int) 16,
	&#039;tag_keyword&#039; =&gt; &#039;&#039;,
	&#039;seo_url&#039; =&gt; &#039;national-forest-policy-draft-2018-takes-one-step-forward-two-steps-back-sushant-agarwal-4684288&#039;,
	&#039;meta_title&#039; =&gt; null,
	&#039;meta_keywords&#039; =&gt; null,
	&#039;meta_description&#039; =&gt; null,
	&#039;noindex&#039; =&gt; (int) 0,
	&#039;publish_date&#039; =&gt; object(Cake\I18n\FrozenDate) {},
	&#039;most_visit_section_id&#039; =&gt; null,
	&#039;article_big_img&#039; =&gt; null,
	&#039;liveid&#039; =&gt; (int) 4684288,
	&#039;created&#039; =&gt; object(Cake\I18n\FrozenTime) {},
	&#039;modified&#039; =&gt; object(Cake\I18n\FrozenTime) {},
	&#039;edate&#039; =&gt; &#039;&#039;,
	&#039;tags&#039; =&gt; [
		(int) 0 =&gt; object(Cake\ORM\Entity) {},
		(int) 1 =&gt; object(Cake\ORM\Entity) {},
		(int) 2 =&gt; object(Cake\ORM\Entity) {}
	],
	&#039;category&#039; =&gt; object(App\Model\Entity\Category) {},
	&#039;[new]&#039; =&gt; false,
	&#039;[accessible]&#039; =&gt; [
		&#039;*&#039; =&gt; true,
		&#039;id&#039; =&gt; false
	],
	&#039;[dirty]&#039; =&gt; [],
	&#039;[original]&#039; =&gt; [],
	&#039;[virtual]&#039; =&gt; [],
	&#039;[hasErrors]&#039; =&gt; false,
	&#039;[errors]&#039; =&gt; [],
	&#039;[invalid]&#039; =&gt; [],
	&#039;[repository]&#039; =&gt; &#039;Articles&#039;

}
$articleid = (int) 36180
$metaTitle = &#039;LATEST NEWS UPDATES | National Forest Policy Draft 2018 Takes One Step Forward, Two Steps Back -Sushant Agarwal&#039;
$metaKeywords = &#039;new National Forest Policy (NFP),Compensatory Afforestation Fund Act 2016 (CAF),Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority (CAMPA)&#039;
$metaDesc = &#039;
-TheWire.in

Unless consumer preferences shift to climate resistant crops, goals associated with the policy won&amp;rsquo;t materialize.

On March 14, the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) uploaded a draft of the National Forest Policy 2018, three decades years after the...&#039;
$disp = &#039;&lt;div align=&quot;justify&quot;&gt;-TheWire.in&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;em&gt;Unless consumer preferences shift to climate resistant crops, goals associated with the policy won&amp;rsquo;t materialize.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br /&gt;On March 14, the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) uploaded a draft of the National Forest Policy 2018, three decades years after the last such policy. The draft appears to be an attempt to shift the approach towards forestry in India &amp;ndash; specifically, from a local community- and ecology-centric approach emphasised in the 1988 policy to focusing on timber and forest-based industries.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;This is not the first time that the 1988 policy has been revisited to open the doors for forest-based industries. In 2016, a draft policy was published on the MoEFCC website only to be taken down after it was panned for excluding the Forest Rights Act and encouraging the entry of private industries in forest management. Even though the MoEFCC distanced itself from the draft, major chunks in the current draft have been copied from the 2016 document.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;While there is merit in new concepts being introduced &amp;ndash; economic valuation of ecosystem services, forest certification, national forest ecosystem management information system, etc. &amp;ndash; these do not necessitate a complete shift in policy focus.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;em&gt;From tribal to timber&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The shift in approach to forestry proposed by the 2018 draft contrasts the guidelines specified in the 1988 policy. The significance attributed to requirements and rights of local, forest-dependent communities is being substituted by the demand for raw material from forest-based industries. The 1988 policy had sections called &amp;lsquo;Rights and Concessions&amp;rsquo; and &amp;lsquo;Tribal People and Forests&amp;rsquo;, both of which have been replaced by &amp;lsquo;Production Forestry&amp;rsquo;, &amp;lsquo;Increase (sic) the productivity of forest plantations&amp;rsquo; and &amp;lsquo;Facilitate forest industry interface&amp;rsquo;, all of which focus on increasing the timber yield. The draft stresses the &amp;ldquo;need to stimulate growth in the forest based industry sector&amp;rdquo; and encourages forest corporations and industrial units to &amp;ldquo;step up growing of industrial plantations&amp;rdquo;.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The 1988 policy had specified that forest-based industry should &amp;ldquo;raise the raw material needed for meeting its own requirements&amp;rdquo; and that &amp;ldquo;no forest-based enterprise, except that at the village or cottage level, should be permitted in the future&amp;rdquo;. It had reiterated that the requirements of the local communities &amp;ldquo;should not be sacrificed for this purpose&amp;rdquo;.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;On the other hand, the livelihoods of local communities finds mention in the current draft only thrice: as passive recipients of benefits accruing from wildlife tourism, as labour for forest-based industries and in relation to non-timber forest produce (NTFP). On the last count, the draft policy mentions that business plans for NTFP will be developed based on &amp;ldquo;climate-smart value chains&amp;rdquo; but does not specify how any such initiative will be owned or its benefits shared.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Second: the 1988 policy had articulated the need for a massive afforestation programme with particular emphasis on &amp;ldquo;fuelwood and fodder development&amp;rdquo; on all degraded and denuded lands in the country, including land available with forest corporations. The 2018 draft aims to use degraded land available with forest corporations to produce &amp;ldquo;quality timber&amp;rdquo; and proposes a public-private partnership model for afforestation in &amp;ldquo;degraded forest areas and forest areas available with Forest Development Corporations and outside forests&amp;rdquo;.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Worse, the document also recommends &amp;ldquo;commercially important species like poplar and eucalyptus&amp;rdquo;, both known to be water-demanding species with deep root systems that deplete groundwater. In 2016, the Karnataka government had blamed eucalyptus trees for depleting groundwater in the Arkavathi basin, which led to a fall in water supply to Bengaluru. Both poplar and eucalyptus also have negative allelopathic properties &amp;ndash; i.e. they don&amp;rsquo;t encourage vegetative growth under their cover.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Over the years, numerous instances of gaur entering Kodaikanal in search of food have been attributed to the destruction of grasslands in shola forests by eucalyptus trees. In fact, a Parliamentary Standing Committee report on the Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority (CAMPA) Bill, 2015, highlighted this concern, recommending the clause&amp;nbsp; &amp;ldquo;particularly native species&amp;rdquo; be added after the word &amp;lsquo;plantation&amp;rsquo; in two instances. However, this was not incorporated in the Act that was finally passed.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Pushing non-indigenous plantation species to meet afforestation targets and timber requirements will damage groundwater recharge and be counterproductive to public investments in such initiatives.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Please &lt;a href=&quot;https://thewire.in/environment/national-forest-policy-draft-2018-takes-one-step-forward-two-steps-back&quot; title=&quot;https://thewire.in/environment/national-forest-policy-draft-2018-takes-one-step-forward-two-steps-back&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to read more. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&#039;
$lang = &#039;English&#039;
$SITE_URL = &#039;https://im4change.in/&#039;
$site_title = &#039;im4change&#039;
$adminprix = &#039;admin&#039;</pre><pre class="stack-trace">include - APP/Template/Layout/printlayout.ctp, line 8
Cake\View\View::_evaluate() - CORE/src/View/View.php, line 1413
Cake\View\View::_render() - CORE/src/View/View.php, line 1374
Cake\View\View::renderLayout() - CORE/src/View/View.php, line 927
Cake\View\View::render() - CORE/src/View/View.php, line 885
Cake\Controller\Controller::render() - CORE/src/Controller/Controller.php, line 791
Cake\Http\ActionDispatcher::_invoke() - CORE/src/Http/ActionDispatcher.php, line 126
Cake\Http\ActionDispatcher::dispatch() - CORE/src/Http/ActionDispatcher.php, line 94
Cake\Http\BaseApplication::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/BaseApplication.php, line 235
Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
Cake\Routing\Middleware\RoutingMiddleware::__invoke() - CORE/src/Routing/Middleware/RoutingMiddleware.php, line 162
Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
Cake\Routing\Middleware\AssetMiddleware::__invoke() - CORE/src/Routing/Middleware/AssetMiddleware.php, line 88
Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
Cake\Error\Middleware\ErrorHandlerMiddleware::__invoke() - CORE/src/Error/Middleware/ErrorHandlerMiddleware.php, line 96
Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
Cake\Http\Runner::run() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 51</pre></div></pre>latest-news-updates/national-forest-policy-draft-2018-takes-one-step-forward-two-steps-back-sushant-agarwal-4684288.html"/>
    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"/>
    <link href="https://im4change.in/css/control.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"
          media="all"/>
    <title>LATEST NEWS UPDATES | National Forest Policy Draft 2018 Takes One Step Forward, Two Steps Back -Sushant Agarwal | Im4change.org</title>
    <meta name="description" content="
-TheWire.in

Unless consumer preferences shift to climate resistant crops, goals associated with the policy won&rsquo;t materialize.

On March 14, the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) uploaded a draft of the National Forest Policy 2018, three decades years after the..."/>
    <script src="https://im4change.in/js/jquery-1.10.2.js"></script>
    <script type="text/javascript" src="https://im4change.in/js/jquery-migrate.min.js"></script>
    <script language="javascript" type="text/javascript">

        $(document).ready(function () {
            var img = $("img")[0]; // Get my img elem
            var pic_real_width, pic_real_height;
            $("<img/>") // Make in memory copy of image to avoid css issues
                .attr("src", $(img).attr("src"))
                .load(function () {
                    pic_real_width = this.width;   // Note: $(this).width() will not
                    pic_real_height = this.height; // work for in memory images.
                });
        });
    </script>
    <style type="text/css">
        @media screen {
            div.divFooter {
                display: block;
            }
        }

        @media print {
            .printbutton {
                display: none !important;
            }
        }
    </style>
</head>
<body>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0" width="98%" align="center">
    <tr>
        <td class="top_bg">
            <div class="divFooter">
                <img src="https://im4change.in/images/logo1.jpg" height="59" border="0"
                     alt="Resource centre on India's rural distress" style="padding-top:14px;"/>
            </div>

        </td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
        <td id="topspace">&nbsp;</td>
    </tr>

    <tr id="topspace">
        <td>&nbsp;</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
        <td height="50" style="border-bottom:1px solid #000; padding-top:10px;" class="printbutton">
            <form><input type="button" value=" Print this page "
                         onclick="window.print();return false;"/></form>
        </td>
    </tr>

    <tr>
        <td width="100%">
            <h1 class="news_headlines" style="font-style:normal">
                <strong>National Forest Policy Draft 2018 Takes One Step Forward, Two Steps Back -Sushant Agarwal</strong></h1>
        </td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
        <td width="100%" style="font-family:Arial, 'Segoe Script', 'Segoe UI', sans-serif, serif"><font size="3">
                <div align="justify">-TheWire.in<br /><br /><em>Unless consumer preferences shift to climate resistant crops, goals associated with the policy won&rsquo;t materialize.<br /></em><br />On March 14, the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) uploaded a draft of the National Forest Policy 2018, three decades years after the last such policy. The draft appears to be an attempt to shift the approach towards forestry in India &ndash; specifically, from a local community- and ecology-centric approach emphasised in the 1988 policy to focusing on timber and forest-based industries.<br /><br />This is not the first time that the 1988 policy has been revisited to open the doors for forest-based industries. In 2016, a draft policy was published on the MoEFCC website only to be taken down after it was panned for excluding the Forest Rights Act and encouraging the entry of private industries in forest management. Even though the MoEFCC distanced itself from the draft, major chunks in the current draft have been copied from the 2016 document.<br /><br />While there is merit in new concepts being introduced &ndash; economic valuation of ecosystem services, forest certification, national forest ecosystem management information system, etc. &ndash; these do not necessitate a complete shift in policy focus.<br /><br /><em>From tribal to timber<br /></em><br />The shift in approach to forestry proposed by the 2018 draft contrasts the guidelines specified in the 1988 policy. The significance attributed to requirements and rights of local, forest-dependent communities is being substituted by the demand for raw material from forest-based industries. The 1988 policy had sections called &lsquo;Rights and Concessions&rsquo; and &lsquo;Tribal People and Forests&rsquo;, both of which have been replaced by &lsquo;Production Forestry&rsquo;, &lsquo;Increase (sic) the productivity of forest plantations&rsquo; and &lsquo;Facilitate forest industry interface&rsquo;, all of which focus on increasing the timber yield. The draft stresses the &ldquo;need to stimulate growth in the forest based industry sector&rdquo; and encourages forest corporations and industrial units to &ldquo;step up growing of industrial plantations&rdquo;.<br /><br />The 1988 policy had specified that forest-based industry should &ldquo;raise the raw material needed for meeting its own requirements&rdquo; and that &ldquo;no forest-based enterprise, except that at the village or cottage level, should be permitted in the future&rdquo;. It had reiterated that the requirements of the local communities &ldquo;should not be sacrificed for this purpose&rdquo;.<br /><br />On the other hand, the livelihoods of local communities finds mention in the current draft only thrice: as passive recipients of benefits accruing from wildlife tourism, as labour for forest-based industries and in relation to non-timber forest produce (NTFP). On the last count, the draft policy mentions that business plans for NTFP will be developed based on &ldquo;climate-smart value chains&rdquo; but does not specify how any such initiative will be owned or its benefits shared.<br /><br />Second: the 1988 policy had articulated the need for a massive afforestation programme with particular emphasis on &ldquo;fuelwood and fodder development&rdquo; on all degraded and denuded lands in the country, including land available with forest corporations. The 2018 draft aims to use degraded land available with forest corporations to produce &ldquo;quality timber&rdquo; and proposes a public-private partnership model for afforestation in &ldquo;degraded forest areas and forest areas available with Forest Development Corporations and outside forests&rdquo;.<br /><br />Worse, the document also recommends &ldquo;commercially important species like poplar and eucalyptus&rdquo;, both known to be water-demanding species with deep root systems that deplete groundwater. In 2016, the Karnataka government had blamed eucalyptus trees for depleting groundwater in the Arkavathi basin, which led to a fall in water supply to Bengaluru. Both poplar and eucalyptus also have negative allelopathic properties &ndash; i.e. they don&rsquo;t encourage vegetative growth under their cover.<br /><br />Over the years, numerous instances of gaur entering Kodaikanal in search of food have been attributed to the destruction of grasslands in shola forests by eucalyptus trees. In fact, a Parliamentary Standing Committee report on the Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority (CAMPA) Bill, 2015, highlighted this concern, recommending the clause&nbsp; &ldquo;particularly native species&rdquo; be added after the word &lsquo;plantation&rsquo; in two instances. However, this was not incorporated in the Act that was finally passed.<br /><br />Pushing non-indigenous plantation species to meet afforestation targets and timber requirements will damage groundwater recharge and be counterproductive to public investments in such initiatives.<br /><br />Please <a href="https://thewire.in/environment/national-forest-policy-draft-2018-takes-one-step-forward-two-steps-back" title="https://thewire.in/environment/national-forest-policy-draft-2018-takes-one-step-forward-two-steps-back">click here</a> to read more. <br /></div>               </font>
        </td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
        <td>&nbsp;</td>
    </tr>

    <tr>
        <td height="50" style="border-top:1px solid #000; border-bottom:1px solid #000;padding-top:10px;">
            <form><input type="button" value=" Print this page "
                         onclick="window.print();return false;"/></form>
        </td>
    </tr>
</table></body>
</html>'

}
$maxBufferLength = (int) 8192
$file = '/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Error/Debugger.php'
$line = (int) 853
$message = 'Unable to emit headers. Headers sent in file=/home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Error/Debugger.php line=853'
Cake\Http\ResponseEmitter::emit() - CORE/src/Http/ResponseEmitter.php, line 48
Cake\Http\Server::emit() - CORE/src/Http/Server.php, line 141
[main] - ROOT/webroot/index.php, line 39

Warning (2): Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Error/Debugger.php:853) [CORE/src/Http/ResponseEmitter.php, line 148]
Code Context
            $response->getStatusCode(),

            ($reasonPhrase ? ' ' . $reasonPhrase : '')

        ));
$response = object(Cake\Http\Response) {

	'status' => (int) 200,
	'contentType' => 'text/html',
	'headers' => [
		'Content-Type' => [
			[maximum depth reached]
		]
	],
	'file' => null,
	'fileRange' => [],
	'cookies' => object(Cake\Http\Cookie\CookieCollection) {},
	'cacheDirectives' => [],
	'body' => '<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
        "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
    <link rel="canonical" href="https://im4change.in/<pre class="cake-error"><a href="javascript:void(0);" onclick="document.getElementById('cakeErr67f0b91cce59f-trace').style.display = (document.getElementById('cakeErr67f0b91cce59f-trace').style.display == 'none' ? '' : 'none');"><b>Notice</b> (8)</a>: Undefined variable: urlPrefix [<b>APP/Template/Layout/printlayout.ctp</b>, line <b>8</b>]<div id="cakeErr67f0b91cce59f-trace" class="cake-stack-trace" style="display: none;"><a href="javascript:void(0);" onclick="document.getElementById('cakeErr67f0b91cce59f-code').style.display = (document.getElementById('cakeErr67f0b91cce59f-code').style.display == 'none' ? '' : 'none')">Code</a> <a href="javascript:void(0);" onclick="document.getElementById('cakeErr67f0b91cce59f-context').style.display = (document.getElementById('cakeErr67f0b91cce59f-context').style.display == 'none' ? '' : 'none')">Context</a><pre id="cakeErr67f0b91cce59f-code" class="cake-code-dump" style="display: none;"><code><span style="color: #000000"><span style="color: #0000BB"></span><span style="color: #007700">&lt;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">head</span><span style="color: #007700">&gt;
</span></span></code>
<span class="code-highlight"><code><span style="color: #000000">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&lt;link&nbsp;rel="canonical"&nbsp;href="<span style="color: #0000BB">&lt;?php&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #007700">echo&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">Configure</span><span style="color: #007700">::</span><span style="color: #0000BB">read</span><span style="color: #007700">(</span><span style="color: #DD0000">'SITE_URL'</span><span style="color: #007700">);&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">?&gt;&lt;?php&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #007700">echo&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">$urlPrefix</span><span style="color: #007700">;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">?&gt;&lt;?php&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #007700">echo&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">$article_current</span><span style="color: #007700">-&gt;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">category</span><span style="color: #007700">-&gt;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">slug</span><span style="color: #007700">;&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">?&gt;</span>/<span style="color: #0000BB">&lt;?php&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #007700">echo&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">$article_current</span><span style="color: #007700">-&gt;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">seo_url</span><span style="color: #007700">;&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">?&gt;</span>.html"/&gt;
</span></code></span>
<code><span style="color: #000000"><span style="color: #0000BB">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #007700">&lt;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">meta&nbsp;http</span><span style="color: #007700">-</span><span style="color: #0000BB">equiv</span><span style="color: #007700">=</span><span style="color: #DD0000">"Content-Type"&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">content</span><span style="color: #007700">=</span><span style="color: #DD0000">"text/html;&nbsp;charset=utf-8"</span><span style="color: #007700">/&gt;
</span></span></code></pre><pre id="cakeErr67f0b91cce59f-context" class="cake-context" style="display: none;">$viewFile = &#039;/home/brlfuser/public_html/src/Template/Layout/printlayout.ctp&#039;
$dataForView = [
	&#039;article_current&#039; =&gt; object(App\Model\Entity\Article) {

		&#039;id&#039; =&gt; (int) 36180,
		&#039;title&#039; =&gt; &#039;National Forest Policy Draft 2018 Takes One Step Forward, Two Steps Back -Sushant Agarwal&#039;,
		&#039;subheading&#039; =&gt; &#039;&#039;,
		&#039;description&#039; =&gt; &#039;&lt;div align=&quot;justify&quot;&gt;
-TheWire.in&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;em&gt;Unless consumer preferences shift to climate resistant crops, goals associated with the policy won&amp;rsquo;t materialize.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
On March 14, the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) uploaded a draft of the National Forest Policy 2018, three decades years after the last such policy. The draft appears to be an attempt to shift the approach towards forestry in India &amp;ndash; specifically, from a local community- and ecology-centric approach emphasised in the 1988 policy to focusing on timber and forest-based industries.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
This is not the first time that the 1988 policy has been revisited to open the doors for forest-based industries. In 2016, a draft policy was published on the MoEFCC website only to be taken down after it was panned for excluding the Forest Rights Act and encouraging the entry of private industries in forest management. Even though the MoEFCC distanced itself from the draft, major chunks in the current draft have been copied from the 2016 document.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
While there is merit in new concepts being introduced &amp;ndash; economic valuation of ecosystem services, forest certification, national forest ecosystem management information system, etc. &amp;ndash; these do not necessitate a complete shift in policy focus.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;em&gt;From tribal to timber&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
The shift in approach to forestry proposed by the 2018 draft contrasts the guidelines specified in the 1988 policy. The significance attributed to requirements and rights of local, forest-dependent communities is being substituted by the demand for raw material from forest-based industries. The 1988 policy had sections called &amp;lsquo;Rights and Concessions&amp;rsquo; and &amp;lsquo;Tribal People and Forests&amp;rsquo;, both of which have been replaced by &amp;lsquo;Production Forestry&amp;rsquo;, &amp;lsquo;Increase (sic) the productivity of forest plantations&amp;rsquo; and &amp;lsquo;Facilitate forest industry interface&amp;rsquo;, all of which focus on increasing the timber yield. The draft stresses the &amp;ldquo;need to stimulate growth in the forest based industry sector&amp;rdquo; and encourages forest corporations and industrial units to &amp;ldquo;step up growing of industrial plantations&amp;rdquo;.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The 1988 policy had specified that forest-based industry should &amp;ldquo;raise the raw material needed for meeting its own requirements&amp;rdquo; and that &amp;ldquo;no forest-based enterprise, except that at the village or cottage level, should be permitted in the future&amp;rdquo;. It had reiterated that the requirements of the local communities &amp;ldquo;should not be sacrificed for this purpose&amp;rdquo;.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
On the other hand, the livelihoods of local communities finds mention in the current draft only thrice: as passive recipients of benefits accruing from wildlife tourism, as labour for forest-based industries and in relation to non-timber forest produce (NTFP). On the last count, the draft policy mentions that business plans for NTFP will be developed based on &amp;ldquo;climate-smart value chains&amp;rdquo; but does not specify how any such initiative will be owned or its benefits shared.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Second: the 1988 policy had articulated the need for a massive afforestation programme with particular emphasis on &amp;ldquo;fuelwood and fodder development&amp;rdquo; on all degraded and denuded lands in the country, including land available with forest corporations. The 2018 draft aims to use degraded land available with forest corporations to produce &amp;ldquo;quality timber&amp;rdquo; and proposes a public-private partnership model for afforestation in &amp;ldquo;degraded forest areas and forest areas available with Forest Development Corporations and outside forests&amp;rdquo;.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Worse, the document also recommends &amp;ldquo;commercially important species like poplar and eucalyptus&amp;rdquo;, both known to be water-demanding species with deep root systems that deplete groundwater. In 2016, the Karnataka government had blamed eucalyptus trees for depleting groundwater in the Arkavathi basin, which led to a fall in water supply to Bengaluru. Both poplar and eucalyptus also have negative allelopathic properties &amp;ndash; i.e. they don&amp;rsquo;t encourage vegetative growth under their cover.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Over the years, numerous instances of gaur entering Kodaikanal in search of food have been attributed to the destruction of grasslands in shola forests by eucalyptus trees. In fact, a Parliamentary Standing Committee report on the Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority (CAMPA) Bill, 2015, highlighted this concern, recommending the clause&amp;nbsp; &amp;ldquo;particularly native species&amp;rdquo; be added after the word &amp;lsquo;plantation&amp;rsquo; in two instances. However, this was not incorporated in the Act that was finally passed.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Pushing non-indigenous plantation species to meet afforestation targets and timber requirements will damage groundwater recharge and be counterproductive to public investments in such initiatives.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Please &lt;a href=&quot;https://thewire.in/environment/national-forest-policy-draft-2018-takes-one-step-forward-two-steps-back&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to read more. &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;&#039;,
		&#039;credit_writer&#039; =&gt; &#039;TheWire.in, 2 April, 2018, https://thewire.in/environment/national-forest-policy-draft-2018-takes-one-step-forward-two-steps-back&#039;,
		&#039;article_img&#039; =&gt; &#039;&#039;,
		&#039;article_img_thumb&#039; =&gt; &#039;&#039;,
		&#039;status&#039; =&gt; (int) 1,
		&#039;show_on_home&#039; =&gt; (int) 1,
		&#039;lang&#039; =&gt; &#039;EN&#039;,
		&#039;category_id&#039; =&gt; (int) 16,
		&#039;tag_keyword&#039; =&gt; &#039;&#039;,
		&#039;seo_url&#039; =&gt; &#039;national-forest-policy-draft-2018-takes-one-step-forward-two-steps-back-sushant-agarwal-4684288&#039;,
		&#039;meta_title&#039; =&gt; null,
		&#039;meta_keywords&#039; =&gt; null,
		&#039;meta_description&#039; =&gt; null,
		&#039;noindex&#039; =&gt; (int) 0,
		&#039;publish_date&#039; =&gt; object(Cake\I18n\FrozenDate) {},
		&#039;most_visit_section_id&#039; =&gt; null,
		&#039;article_big_img&#039; =&gt; null,
		&#039;liveid&#039; =&gt; (int) 4684288,
		&#039;created&#039; =&gt; object(Cake\I18n\FrozenTime) {},
		&#039;modified&#039; =&gt; object(Cake\I18n\FrozenTime) {},
		&#039;edate&#039; =&gt; &#039;&#039;,
		&#039;tags&#039; =&gt; [
			[maximum depth reached]
		],
		&#039;category&#039; =&gt; object(App\Model\Entity\Category) {},
		&#039;[new]&#039; =&gt; false,
		&#039;[accessible]&#039; =&gt; [
			[maximum depth reached]
		],
		&#039;[dirty]&#039; =&gt; [[maximum depth reached]],
		&#039;[original]&#039; =&gt; [[maximum depth reached]],
		&#039;[virtual]&#039; =&gt; [[maximum depth reached]],
		&#039;[hasErrors]&#039; =&gt; false,
		&#039;[errors]&#039; =&gt; [[maximum depth reached]],
		&#039;[invalid]&#039; =&gt; [[maximum depth reached]],
		&#039;[repository]&#039; =&gt; &#039;Articles&#039;
	
	},
	&#039;articleid&#039; =&gt; (int) 36180,
	&#039;metaTitle&#039; =&gt; &#039;LATEST NEWS UPDATES | National Forest Policy Draft 2018 Takes One Step Forward, Two Steps Back -Sushant Agarwal&#039;,
	&#039;metaKeywords&#039; =&gt; &#039;new National Forest Policy (NFP),Compensatory Afforestation Fund Act 2016 (CAF),Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority (CAMPA)&#039;,
	&#039;metaDesc&#039; =&gt; &#039;
-TheWire.in

Unless consumer preferences shift to climate resistant crops, goals associated with the policy won&amp;rsquo;t materialize.

On March 14, the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) uploaded a draft of the National Forest Policy 2018, three decades years after the...&#039;,
	&#039;disp&#039; =&gt; &#039;&lt;div align=&quot;justify&quot;&gt;-TheWire.in&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;em&gt;Unless consumer preferences shift to climate resistant crops, goals associated with the policy won&amp;rsquo;t materialize.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br /&gt;On March 14, the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) uploaded a draft of the National Forest Policy 2018, three decades years after the last such policy. The draft appears to be an attempt to shift the approach towards forestry in India &amp;ndash; specifically, from a local community- and ecology-centric approach emphasised in the 1988 policy to focusing on timber and forest-based industries.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;This is not the first time that the 1988 policy has been revisited to open the doors for forest-based industries. In 2016, a draft policy was published on the MoEFCC website only to be taken down after it was panned for excluding the Forest Rights Act and encouraging the entry of private industries in forest management. Even though the MoEFCC distanced itself from the draft, major chunks in the current draft have been copied from the 2016 document.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;While there is merit in new concepts being introduced &amp;ndash; economic valuation of ecosystem services, forest certification, national forest ecosystem management information system, etc. &amp;ndash; these do not necessitate a complete shift in policy focus.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;em&gt;From tribal to timber&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The shift in approach to forestry proposed by the 2018 draft contrasts the guidelines specified in the 1988 policy. The significance attributed to requirements and rights of local, forest-dependent communities is being substituted by the demand for raw material from forest-based industries. The 1988 policy had sections called &amp;lsquo;Rights and Concessions&amp;rsquo; and &amp;lsquo;Tribal People and Forests&amp;rsquo;, both of which have been replaced by &amp;lsquo;Production Forestry&amp;rsquo;, &amp;lsquo;Increase (sic) the productivity of forest plantations&amp;rsquo; and &amp;lsquo;Facilitate forest industry interface&amp;rsquo;, all of which focus on increasing the timber yield. The draft stresses the &amp;ldquo;need to stimulate growth in the forest based industry sector&amp;rdquo; and encourages forest corporations and industrial units to &amp;ldquo;step up growing of industrial plantations&amp;rdquo;.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The 1988 policy had specified that forest-based industry should &amp;ldquo;raise the raw material needed for meeting its own requirements&amp;rdquo; and that &amp;ldquo;no forest-based enterprise, except that at the village or cottage level, should be permitted in the future&amp;rdquo;. It had reiterated that the requirements of the local communities &amp;ldquo;should not be sacrificed for this purpose&amp;rdquo;.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;On the other hand, the livelihoods of local communities finds mention in the current draft only thrice: as passive recipients of benefits accruing from wildlife tourism, as labour for forest-based industries and in relation to non-timber forest produce (NTFP). On the last count, the draft policy mentions that business plans for NTFP will be developed based on &amp;ldquo;climate-smart value chains&amp;rdquo; but does not specify how any such initiative will be owned or its benefits shared.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Second: the 1988 policy had articulated the need for a massive afforestation programme with particular emphasis on &amp;ldquo;fuelwood and fodder development&amp;rdquo; on all degraded and denuded lands in the country, including land available with forest corporations. The 2018 draft aims to use degraded land available with forest corporations to produce &amp;ldquo;quality timber&amp;rdquo; and proposes a public-private partnership model for afforestation in &amp;ldquo;degraded forest areas and forest areas available with Forest Development Corporations and outside forests&amp;rdquo;.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Worse, the document also recommends &amp;ldquo;commercially important species like poplar and eucalyptus&amp;rdquo;, both known to be water-demanding species with deep root systems that deplete groundwater. In 2016, the Karnataka government had blamed eucalyptus trees for depleting groundwater in the Arkavathi basin, which led to a fall in water supply to Bengaluru. Both poplar and eucalyptus also have negative allelopathic properties &amp;ndash; i.e. they don&amp;rsquo;t encourage vegetative growth under their cover.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Over the years, numerous instances of gaur entering Kodaikanal in search of food have been attributed to the destruction of grasslands in shola forests by eucalyptus trees. In fact, a Parliamentary Standing Committee report on the Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority (CAMPA) Bill, 2015, highlighted this concern, recommending the clause&amp;nbsp; &amp;ldquo;particularly native species&amp;rdquo; be added after the word &amp;lsquo;plantation&amp;rsquo; in two instances. However, this was not incorporated in the Act that was finally passed.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Pushing non-indigenous plantation species to meet afforestation targets and timber requirements will damage groundwater recharge and be counterproductive to public investments in such initiatives.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Please &lt;a href=&quot;https://thewire.in/environment/national-forest-policy-draft-2018-takes-one-step-forward-two-steps-back&quot; title=&quot;https://thewire.in/environment/national-forest-policy-draft-2018-takes-one-step-forward-two-steps-back&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to read more. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&#039;,
	&#039;lang&#039; =&gt; &#039;English&#039;,
	&#039;SITE_URL&#039; =&gt; &#039;https://im4change.in/&#039;,
	&#039;site_title&#039; =&gt; &#039;im4change&#039;,
	&#039;adminprix&#039; =&gt; &#039;admin&#039;
]
$article_current = object(App\Model\Entity\Article) {

	&#039;id&#039; =&gt; (int) 36180,
	&#039;title&#039; =&gt; &#039;National Forest Policy Draft 2018 Takes One Step Forward, Two Steps Back -Sushant Agarwal&#039;,
	&#039;subheading&#039; =&gt; &#039;&#039;,
	&#039;description&#039; =&gt; &#039;&lt;div align=&quot;justify&quot;&gt;
-TheWire.in&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;em&gt;Unless consumer preferences shift to climate resistant crops, goals associated with the policy won&amp;rsquo;t materialize.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
On March 14, the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) uploaded a draft of the National Forest Policy 2018, three decades years after the last such policy. The draft appears to be an attempt to shift the approach towards forestry in India &amp;ndash; specifically, from a local community- and ecology-centric approach emphasised in the 1988 policy to focusing on timber and forest-based industries.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
This is not the first time that the 1988 policy has been revisited to open the doors for forest-based industries. In 2016, a draft policy was published on the MoEFCC website only to be taken down after it was panned for excluding the Forest Rights Act and encouraging the entry of private industries in forest management. Even though the MoEFCC distanced itself from the draft, major chunks in the current draft have been copied from the 2016 document.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
While there is merit in new concepts being introduced &amp;ndash; economic valuation of ecosystem services, forest certification, national forest ecosystem management information system, etc. &amp;ndash; these do not necessitate a complete shift in policy focus.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;em&gt;From tribal to timber&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
The shift in approach to forestry proposed by the 2018 draft contrasts the guidelines specified in the 1988 policy. The significance attributed to requirements and rights of local, forest-dependent communities is being substituted by the demand for raw material from forest-based industries. The 1988 policy had sections called &amp;lsquo;Rights and Concessions&amp;rsquo; and &amp;lsquo;Tribal People and Forests&amp;rsquo;, both of which have been replaced by &amp;lsquo;Production Forestry&amp;rsquo;, &amp;lsquo;Increase (sic) the productivity of forest plantations&amp;rsquo; and &amp;lsquo;Facilitate forest industry interface&amp;rsquo;, all of which focus on increasing the timber yield. The draft stresses the &amp;ldquo;need to stimulate growth in the forest based industry sector&amp;rdquo; and encourages forest corporations and industrial units to &amp;ldquo;step up growing of industrial plantations&amp;rdquo;.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The 1988 policy had specified that forest-based industry should &amp;ldquo;raise the raw material needed for meeting its own requirements&amp;rdquo; and that &amp;ldquo;no forest-based enterprise, except that at the village or cottage level, should be permitted in the future&amp;rdquo;. It had reiterated that the requirements of the local communities &amp;ldquo;should not be sacrificed for this purpose&amp;rdquo;.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
On the other hand, the livelihoods of local communities finds mention in the current draft only thrice: as passive recipients of benefits accruing from wildlife tourism, as labour for forest-based industries and in relation to non-timber forest produce (NTFP). On the last count, the draft policy mentions that business plans for NTFP will be developed based on &amp;ldquo;climate-smart value chains&amp;rdquo; but does not specify how any such initiative will be owned or its benefits shared.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Second: the 1988 policy had articulated the need for a massive afforestation programme with particular emphasis on &amp;ldquo;fuelwood and fodder development&amp;rdquo; on all degraded and denuded lands in the country, including land available with forest corporations. The 2018 draft aims to use degraded land available with forest corporations to produce &amp;ldquo;quality timber&amp;rdquo; and proposes a public-private partnership model for afforestation in &amp;ldquo;degraded forest areas and forest areas available with Forest Development Corporations and outside forests&amp;rdquo;.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Worse, the document also recommends &amp;ldquo;commercially important species like poplar and eucalyptus&amp;rdquo;, both known to be water-demanding species with deep root systems that deplete groundwater. In 2016, the Karnataka government had blamed eucalyptus trees for depleting groundwater in the Arkavathi basin, which led to a fall in water supply to Bengaluru. Both poplar and eucalyptus also have negative allelopathic properties &amp;ndash; i.e. they don&amp;rsquo;t encourage vegetative growth under their cover.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Over the years, numerous instances of gaur entering Kodaikanal in search of food have been attributed to the destruction of grasslands in shola forests by eucalyptus trees. In fact, a Parliamentary Standing Committee report on the Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority (CAMPA) Bill, 2015, highlighted this concern, recommending the clause&amp;nbsp; &amp;ldquo;particularly native species&amp;rdquo; be added after the word &amp;lsquo;plantation&amp;rsquo; in two instances. However, this was not incorporated in the Act that was finally passed.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Pushing non-indigenous plantation species to meet afforestation targets and timber requirements will damage groundwater recharge and be counterproductive to public investments in such initiatives.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Please &lt;a href=&quot;https://thewire.in/environment/national-forest-policy-draft-2018-takes-one-step-forward-two-steps-back&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to read more. &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;&#039;,
	&#039;credit_writer&#039; =&gt; &#039;TheWire.in, 2 April, 2018, https://thewire.in/environment/national-forest-policy-draft-2018-takes-one-step-forward-two-steps-back&#039;,
	&#039;article_img&#039; =&gt; &#039;&#039;,
	&#039;article_img_thumb&#039; =&gt; &#039;&#039;,
	&#039;status&#039; =&gt; (int) 1,
	&#039;show_on_home&#039; =&gt; (int) 1,
	&#039;lang&#039; =&gt; &#039;EN&#039;,
	&#039;category_id&#039; =&gt; (int) 16,
	&#039;tag_keyword&#039; =&gt; &#039;&#039;,
	&#039;seo_url&#039; =&gt; &#039;national-forest-policy-draft-2018-takes-one-step-forward-two-steps-back-sushant-agarwal-4684288&#039;,
	&#039;meta_title&#039; =&gt; null,
	&#039;meta_keywords&#039; =&gt; null,
	&#039;meta_description&#039; =&gt; null,
	&#039;noindex&#039; =&gt; (int) 0,
	&#039;publish_date&#039; =&gt; object(Cake\I18n\FrozenDate) {},
	&#039;most_visit_section_id&#039; =&gt; null,
	&#039;article_big_img&#039; =&gt; null,
	&#039;liveid&#039; =&gt; (int) 4684288,
	&#039;created&#039; =&gt; object(Cake\I18n\FrozenTime) {},
	&#039;modified&#039; =&gt; object(Cake\I18n\FrozenTime) {},
	&#039;edate&#039; =&gt; &#039;&#039;,
	&#039;tags&#039; =&gt; [
		(int) 0 =&gt; object(Cake\ORM\Entity) {},
		(int) 1 =&gt; object(Cake\ORM\Entity) {},
		(int) 2 =&gt; object(Cake\ORM\Entity) {}
	],
	&#039;category&#039; =&gt; object(App\Model\Entity\Category) {},
	&#039;[new]&#039; =&gt; false,
	&#039;[accessible]&#039; =&gt; [
		&#039;*&#039; =&gt; true,
		&#039;id&#039; =&gt; false
	],
	&#039;[dirty]&#039; =&gt; [],
	&#039;[original]&#039; =&gt; [],
	&#039;[virtual]&#039; =&gt; [],
	&#039;[hasErrors]&#039; =&gt; false,
	&#039;[errors]&#039; =&gt; [],
	&#039;[invalid]&#039; =&gt; [],
	&#039;[repository]&#039; =&gt; &#039;Articles&#039;

}
$articleid = (int) 36180
$metaTitle = &#039;LATEST NEWS UPDATES | National Forest Policy Draft 2018 Takes One Step Forward, Two Steps Back -Sushant Agarwal&#039;
$metaKeywords = &#039;new National Forest Policy (NFP),Compensatory Afforestation Fund Act 2016 (CAF),Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority (CAMPA)&#039;
$metaDesc = &#039;
-TheWire.in

Unless consumer preferences shift to climate resistant crops, goals associated with the policy won&amp;rsquo;t materialize.

On March 14, the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) uploaded a draft of the National Forest Policy 2018, three decades years after the...&#039;
$disp = &#039;&lt;div align=&quot;justify&quot;&gt;-TheWire.in&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;em&gt;Unless consumer preferences shift to climate resistant crops, goals associated with the policy won&amp;rsquo;t materialize.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br /&gt;On March 14, the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) uploaded a draft of the National Forest Policy 2018, three decades years after the last such policy. The draft appears to be an attempt to shift the approach towards forestry in India &amp;ndash; specifically, from a local community- and ecology-centric approach emphasised in the 1988 policy to focusing on timber and forest-based industries.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;This is not the first time that the 1988 policy has been revisited to open the doors for forest-based industries. In 2016, a draft policy was published on the MoEFCC website only to be taken down after it was panned for excluding the Forest Rights Act and encouraging the entry of private industries in forest management. Even though the MoEFCC distanced itself from the draft, major chunks in the current draft have been copied from the 2016 document.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;While there is merit in new concepts being introduced &amp;ndash; economic valuation of ecosystem services, forest certification, national forest ecosystem management information system, etc. &amp;ndash; these do not necessitate a complete shift in policy focus.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;em&gt;From tribal to timber&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The shift in approach to forestry proposed by the 2018 draft contrasts the guidelines specified in the 1988 policy. The significance attributed to requirements and rights of local, forest-dependent communities is being substituted by the demand for raw material from forest-based industries. The 1988 policy had sections called &amp;lsquo;Rights and Concessions&amp;rsquo; and &amp;lsquo;Tribal People and Forests&amp;rsquo;, both of which have been replaced by &amp;lsquo;Production Forestry&amp;rsquo;, &amp;lsquo;Increase (sic) the productivity of forest plantations&amp;rsquo; and &amp;lsquo;Facilitate forest industry interface&amp;rsquo;, all of which focus on increasing the timber yield. The draft stresses the &amp;ldquo;need to stimulate growth in the forest based industry sector&amp;rdquo; and encourages forest corporations and industrial units to &amp;ldquo;step up growing of industrial plantations&amp;rdquo;.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The 1988 policy had specified that forest-based industry should &amp;ldquo;raise the raw material needed for meeting its own requirements&amp;rdquo; and that &amp;ldquo;no forest-based enterprise, except that at the village or cottage level, should be permitted in the future&amp;rdquo;. It had reiterated that the requirements of the local communities &amp;ldquo;should not be sacrificed for this purpose&amp;rdquo;.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;On the other hand, the livelihoods of local communities finds mention in the current draft only thrice: as passive recipients of benefits accruing from wildlife tourism, as labour for forest-based industries and in relation to non-timber forest produce (NTFP). On the last count, the draft policy mentions that business plans for NTFP will be developed based on &amp;ldquo;climate-smart value chains&amp;rdquo; but does not specify how any such initiative will be owned or its benefits shared.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Second: the 1988 policy had articulated the need for a massive afforestation programme with particular emphasis on &amp;ldquo;fuelwood and fodder development&amp;rdquo; on all degraded and denuded lands in the country, including land available with forest corporations. The 2018 draft aims to use degraded land available with forest corporations to produce &amp;ldquo;quality timber&amp;rdquo; and proposes a public-private partnership model for afforestation in &amp;ldquo;degraded forest areas and forest areas available with Forest Development Corporations and outside forests&amp;rdquo;.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Worse, the document also recommends &amp;ldquo;commercially important species like poplar and eucalyptus&amp;rdquo;, both known to be water-demanding species with deep root systems that deplete groundwater. In 2016, the Karnataka government had blamed eucalyptus trees for depleting groundwater in the Arkavathi basin, which led to a fall in water supply to Bengaluru. Both poplar and eucalyptus also have negative allelopathic properties &amp;ndash; i.e. they don&amp;rsquo;t encourage vegetative growth under their cover.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Over the years, numerous instances of gaur entering Kodaikanal in search of food have been attributed to the destruction of grasslands in shola forests by eucalyptus trees. In fact, a Parliamentary Standing Committee report on the Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority (CAMPA) Bill, 2015, highlighted this concern, recommending the clause&amp;nbsp; &amp;ldquo;particularly native species&amp;rdquo; be added after the word &amp;lsquo;plantation&amp;rsquo; in two instances. However, this was not incorporated in the Act that was finally passed.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Pushing non-indigenous plantation species to meet afforestation targets and timber requirements will damage groundwater recharge and be counterproductive to public investments in such initiatives.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Please &lt;a href=&quot;https://thewire.in/environment/national-forest-policy-draft-2018-takes-one-step-forward-two-steps-back&quot; title=&quot;https://thewire.in/environment/national-forest-policy-draft-2018-takes-one-step-forward-two-steps-back&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to read more. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&#039;
$lang = &#039;English&#039;
$SITE_URL = &#039;https://im4change.in/&#039;
$site_title = &#039;im4change&#039;
$adminprix = &#039;admin&#039;</pre><pre class="stack-trace">include - APP/Template/Layout/printlayout.ctp, line 8
Cake\View\View::_evaluate() - CORE/src/View/View.php, line 1413
Cake\View\View::_render() - CORE/src/View/View.php, line 1374
Cake\View\View::renderLayout() - CORE/src/View/View.php, line 927
Cake\View\View::render() - CORE/src/View/View.php, line 885
Cake\Controller\Controller::render() - CORE/src/Controller/Controller.php, line 791
Cake\Http\ActionDispatcher::_invoke() - CORE/src/Http/ActionDispatcher.php, line 126
Cake\Http\ActionDispatcher::dispatch() - CORE/src/Http/ActionDispatcher.php, line 94
Cake\Http\BaseApplication::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/BaseApplication.php, line 235
Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
Cake\Routing\Middleware\RoutingMiddleware::__invoke() - CORE/src/Routing/Middleware/RoutingMiddleware.php, line 162
Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
Cake\Routing\Middleware\AssetMiddleware::__invoke() - CORE/src/Routing/Middleware/AssetMiddleware.php, line 88
Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
Cake\Error\Middleware\ErrorHandlerMiddleware::__invoke() - CORE/src/Error/Middleware/ErrorHandlerMiddleware.php, line 96
Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
Cake\Http\Runner::run() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 51</pre></div></pre>latest-news-updates/national-forest-policy-draft-2018-takes-one-step-forward-two-steps-back-sushant-agarwal-4684288.html"/>
    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"/>
    <link href="https://im4change.in/css/control.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"
          media="all"/>
    <title>LATEST NEWS UPDATES | National Forest Policy Draft 2018 Takes One Step Forward, Two Steps Back -Sushant Agarwal | Im4change.org</title>
    <meta name="description" content="
-TheWire.in

Unless consumer preferences shift to climate resistant crops, goals associated with the policy won&rsquo;t materialize.

On March 14, the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) uploaded a draft of the National Forest Policy 2018, three decades years after the..."/>
    <script src="https://im4change.in/js/jquery-1.10.2.js"></script>
    <script type="text/javascript" src="https://im4change.in/js/jquery-migrate.min.js"></script>
    <script language="javascript" type="text/javascript">

        $(document).ready(function () {
            var img = $("img")[0]; // Get my img elem
            var pic_real_width, pic_real_height;
            $("<img/>") // Make in memory copy of image to avoid css issues
                .attr("src", $(img).attr("src"))
                .load(function () {
                    pic_real_width = this.width;   // Note: $(this).width() will not
                    pic_real_height = this.height; // work for in memory images.
                });
        });
    </script>
    <style type="text/css">
        @media screen {
            div.divFooter {
                display: block;
            }
        }

        @media print {
            .printbutton {
                display: none !important;
            }
        }
    </style>
</head>
<body>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0" width="98%" align="center">
    <tr>
        <td class="top_bg">
            <div class="divFooter">
                <img src="https://im4change.in/images/logo1.jpg" height="59" border="0"
                     alt="Resource centre on India's rural distress" style="padding-top:14px;"/>
            </div>

        </td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
        <td id="topspace">&nbsp;</td>
    </tr>

    <tr id="topspace">
        <td>&nbsp;</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
        <td height="50" style="border-bottom:1px solid #000; padding-top:10px;" class="printbutton">
            <form><input type="button" value=" Print this page "
                         onclick="window.print();return false;"/></form>
        </td>
    </tr>

    <tr>
        <td width="100%">
            <h1 class="news_headlines" style="font-style:normal">
                <strong>National Forest Policy Draft 2018 Takes One Step Forward, Two Steps Back -Sushant Agarwal</strong></h1>
        </td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
        <td width="100%" style="font-family:Arial, 'Segoe Script', 'Segoe UI', sans-serif, serif"><font size="3">
                <div align="justify">-TheWire.in<br /><br /><em>Unless consumer preferences shift to climate resistant crops, goals associated with the policy won&rsquo;t materialize.<br /></em><br />On March 14, the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) uploaded a draft of the National Forest Policy 2018, three decades years after the last such policy. The draft appears to be an attempt to shift the approach towards forestry in India &ndash; specifically, from a local community- and ecology-centric approach emphasised in the 1988 policy to focusing on timber and forest-based industries.<br /><br />This is not the first time that the 1988 policy has been revisited to open the doors for forest-based industries. In 2016, a draft policy was published on the MoEFCC website only to be taken down after it was panned for excluding the Forest Rights Act and encouraging the entry of private industries in forest management. Even though the MoEFCC distanced itself from the draft, major chunks in the current draft have been copied from the 2016 document.<br /><br />While there is merit in new concepts being introduced &ndash; economic valuation of ecosystem services, forest certification, national forest ecosystem management information system, etc. &ndash; these do not necessitate a complete shift in policy focus.<br /><br /><em>From tribal to timber<br /></em><br />The shift in approach to forestry proposed by the 2018 draft contrasts the guidelines specified in the 1988 policy. The significance attributed to requirements and rights of local, forest-dependent communities is being substituted by the demand for raw material from forest-based industries. The 1988 policy had sections called &lsquo;Rights and Concessions&rsquo; and &lsquo;Tribal People and Forests&rsquo;, both of which have been replaced by &lsquo;Production Forestry&rsquo;, &lsquo;Increase (sic) the productivity of forest plantations&rsquo; and &lsquo;Facilitate forest industry interface&rsquo;, all of which focus on increasing the timber yield. The draft stresses the &ldquo;need to stimulate growth in the forest based industry sector&rdquo; and encourages forest corporations and industrial units to &ldquo;step up growing of industrial plantations&rdquo;.<br /><br />The 1988 policy had specified that forest-based industry should &ldquo;raise the raw material needed for meeting its own requirements&rdquo; and that &ldquo;no forest-based enterprise, except that at the village or cottage level, should be permitted in the future&rdquo;. It had reiterated that the requirements of the local communities &ldquo;should not be sacrificed for this purpose&rdquo;.<br /><br />On the other hand, the livelihoods of local communities finds mention in the current draft only thrice: as passive recipients of benefits accruing from wildlife tourism, as labour for forest-based industries and in relation to non-timber forest produce (NTFP). On the last count, the draft policy mentions that business plans for NTFP will be developed based on &ldquo;climate-smart value chains&rdquo; but does not specify how any such initiative will be owned or its benefits shared.<br /><br />Second: the 1988 policy had articulated the need for a massive afforestation programme with particular emphasis on &ldquo;fuelwood and fodder development&rdquo; on all degraded and denuded lands in the country, including land available with forest corporations. The 2018 draft aims to use degraded land available with forest corporations to produce &ldquo;quality timber&rdquo; and proposes a public-private partnership model for afforestation in &ldquo;degraded forest areas and forest areas available with Forest Development Corporations and outside forests&rdquo;.<br /><br />Worse, the document also recommends &ldquo;commercially important species like poplar and eucalyptus&rdquo;, both known to be water-demanding species with deep root systems that deplete groundwater. In 2016, the Karnataka government had blamed eucalyptus trees for depleting groundwater in the Arkavathi basin, which led to a fall in water supply to Bengaluru. Both poplar and eucalyptus also have negative allelopathic properties &ndash; i.e. they don&rsquo;t encourage vegetative growth under their cover.<br /><br />Over the years, numerous instances of gaur entering Kodaikanal in search of food have been attributed to the destruction of grasslands in shola forests by eucalyptus trees. In fact, a Parliamentary Standing Committee report on the Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority (CAMPA) Bill, 2015, highlighted this concern, recommending the clause&nbsp; &ldquo;particularly native species&rdquo; be added after the word &lsquo;plantation&rsquo; in two instances. However, this was not incorporated in the Act that was finally passed.<br /><br />Pushing non-indigenous plantation species to meet afforestation targets and timber requirements will damage groundwater recharge and be counterproductive to public investments in such initiatives.<br /><br />Please <a href="https://thewire.in/environment/national-forest-policy-draft-2018-takes-one-step-forward-two-steps-back" title="https://thewire.in/environment/national-forest-policy-draft-2018-takes-one-step-forward-two-steps-back">click here</a> to read more. <br /></div>               </font>
        </td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
        <td>&nbsp;</td>
    </tr>

    <tr>
        <td height="50" style="border-top:1px solid #000; border-bottom:1px solid #000;padding-top:10px;">
            <form><input type="button" value=" Print this page "
                         onclick="window.print();return false;"/></form>
        </td>
    </tr>
</table></body>
</html>'

}
$reasonPhrase = 'OK'
header - [internal], line ??
Cake\Http\ResponseEmitter::emitStatusLine() - CORE/src/Http/ResponseEmitter.php, line 148
Cake\Http\ResponseEmitter::emit() - CORE/src/Http/ResponseEmitter.php, line 54
Cake\Http\Server::emit() - CORE/src/Http/Server.php, line 141
[main] - ROOT/webroot/index.php, line 39

Warning (2): Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at /home/brlfuser/public_html/vendor/cakephp/cakephp/src/Error/Debugger.php:853) [CORE/src/Http/ResponseEmitter.php, line 181]
Code Context
                    $value

                ), $first);

                $first = false;
$response = object(Cake\Http\Response) {

	'status' => (int) 200,
	'contentType' => 'text/html',
	'headers' => [
		'Content-Type' => [
			[maximum depth reached]
		]
	],
	'file' => null,
	'fileRange' => [],
	'cookies' => object(Cake\Http\Cookie\CookieCollection) {},
	'cacheDirectives' => [],
	'body' => '<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
        "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
    <link rel="canonical" href="https://im4change.in/<pre class="cake-error"><a href="javascript:void(0);" onclick="document.getElementById('cakeErr67f0b91cce59f-trace').style.display = (document.getElementById('cakeErr67f0b91cce59f-trace').style.display == 'none' ? '' : 'none');"><b>Notice</b> (8)</a>: Undefined variable: urlPrefix [<b>APP/Template/Layout/printlayout.ctp</b>, line <b>8</b>]<div id="cakeErr67f0b91cce59f-trace" class="cake-stack-trace" style="display: none;"><a href="javascript:void(0);" onclick="document.getElementById('cakeErr67f0b91cce59f-code').style.display = (document.getElementById('cakeErr67f0b91cce59f-code').style.display == 'none' ? '' : 'none')">Code</a> <a href="javascript:void(0);" onclick="document.getElementById('cakeErr67f0b91cce59f-context').style.display = (document.getElementById('cakeErr67f0b91cce59f-context').style.display == 'none' ? '' : 'none')">Context</a><pre id="cakeErr67f0b91cce59f-code" class="cake-code-dump" style="display: none;"><code><span style="color: #000000"><span style="color: #0000BB"></span><span style="color: #007700">&lt;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">head</span><span style="color: #007700">&gt;
</span></span></code>
<span class="code-highlight"><code><span style="color: #000000">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&lt;link&nbsp;rel="canonical"&nbsp;href="<span style="color: #0000BB">&lt;?php&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #007700">echo&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">Configure</span><span style="color: #007700">::</span><span style="color: #0000BB">read</span><span style="color: #007700">(</span><span style="color: #DD0000">'SITE_URL'</span><span style="color: #007700">);&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">?&gt;&lt;?php&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #007700">echo&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">$urlPrefix</span><span style="color: #007700">;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">?&gt;&lt;?php&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #007700">echo&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">$article_current</span><span style="color: #007700">-&gt;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">category</span><span style="color: #007700">-&gt;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">slug</span><span style="color: #007700">;&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">?&gt;</span>/<span style="color: #0000BB">&lt;?php&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #007700">echo&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">$article_current</span><span style="color: #007700">-&gt;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">seo_url</span><span style="color: #007700">;&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">?&gt;</span>.html"/&gt;
</span></code></span>
<code><span style="color: #000000"><span style="color: #0000BB">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #007700">&lt;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">meta&nbsp;http</span><span style="color: #007700">-</span><span style="color: #0000BB">equiv</span><span style="color: #007700">=</span><span style="color: #DD0000">"Content-Type"&nbsp;</span><span style="color: #0000BB">content</span><span style="color: #007700">=</span><span style="color: #DD0000">"text/html;&nbsp;charset=utf-8"</span><span style="color: #007700">/&gt;
</span></span></code></pre><pre id="cakeErr67f0b91cce59f-context" class="cake-context" style="display: none;">$viewFile = &#039;/home/brlfuser/public_html/src/Template/Layout/printlayout.ctp&#039;
$dataForView = [
	&#039;article_current&#039; =&gt; object(App\Model\Entity\Article) {

		&#039;id&#039; =&gt; (int) 36180,
		&#039;title&#039; =&gt; &#039;National Forest Policy Draft 2018 Takes One Step Forward, Two Steps Back -Sushant Agarwal&#039;,
		&#039;subheading&#039; =&gt; &#039;&#039;,
		&#039;description&#039; =&gt; &#039;&lt;div align=&quot;justify&quot;&gt;
-TheWire.in&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;em&gt;Unless consumer preferences shift to climate resistant crops, goals associated with the policy won&amp;rsquo;t materialize.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
On March 14, the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) uploaded a draft of the National Forest Policy 2018, three decades years after the last such policy. The draft appears to be an attempt to shift the approach towards forestry in India &amp;ndash; specifically, from a local community- and ecology-centric approach emphasised in the 1988 policy to focusing on timber and forest-based industries.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
This is not the first time that the 1988 policy has been revisited to open the doors for forest-based industries. In 2016, a draft policy was published on the MoEFCC website only to be taken down after it was panned for excluding the Forest Rights Act and encouraging the entry of private industries in forest management. Even though the MoEFCC distanced itself from the draft, major chunks in the current draft have been copied from the 2016 document.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
While there is merit in new concepts being introduced &amp;ndash; economic valuation of ecosystem services, forest certification, national forest ecosystem management information system, etc. &amp;ndash; these do not necessitate a complete shift in policy focus.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;em&gt;From tribal to timber&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
The shift in approach to forestry proposed by the 2018 draft contrasts the guidelines specified in the 1988 policy. The significance attributed to requirements and rights of local, forest-dependent communities is being substituted by the demand for raw material from forest-based industries. The 1988 policy had sections called &amp;lsquo;Rights and Concessions&amp;rsquo; and &amp;lsquo;Tribal People and Forests&amp;rsquo;, both of which have been replaced by &amp;lsquo;Production Forestry&amp;rsquo;, &amp;lsquo;Increase (sic) the productivity of forest plantations&amp;rsquo; and &amp;lsquo;Facilitate forest industry interface&amp;rsquo;, all of which focus on increasing the timber yield. The draft stresses the &amp;ldquo;need to stimulate growth in the forest based industry sector&amp;rdquo; and encourages forest corporations and industrial units to &amp;ldquo;step up growing of industrial plantations&amp;rdquo;.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The 1988 policy had specified that forest-based industry should &amp;ldquo;raise the raw material needed for meeting its own requirements&amp;rdquo; and that &amp;ldquo;no forest-based enterprise, except that at the village or cottage level, should be permitted in the future&amp;rdquo;. It had reiterated that the requirements of the local communities &amp;ldquo;should not be sacrificed for this purpose&amp;rdquo;.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
On the other hand, the livelihoods of local communities finds mention in the current draft only thrice: as passive recipients of benefits accruing from wildlife tourism, as labour for forest-based industries and in relation to non-timber forest produce (NTFP). On the last count, the draft policy mentions that business plans for NTFP will be developed based on &amp;ldquo;climate-smart value chains&amp;rdquo; but does not specify how any such initiative will be owned or its benefits shared.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Second: the 1988 policy had articulated the need for a massive afforestation programme with particular emphasis on &amp;ldquo;fuelwood and fodder development&amp;rdquo; on all degraded and denuded lands in the country, including land available with forest corporations. The 2018 draft aims to use degraded land available with forest corporations to produce &amp;ldquo;quality timber&amp;rdquo; and proposes a public-private partnership model for afforestation in &amp;ldquo;degraded forest areas and forest areas available with Forest Development Corporations and outside forests&amp;rdquo;.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Worse, the document also recommends &amp;ldquo;commercially important species like poplar and eucalyptus&amp;rdquo;, both known to be water-demanding species with deep root systems that deplete groundwater. In 2016, the Karnataka government had blamed eucalyptus trees for depleting groundwater in the Arkavathi basin, which led to a fall in water supply to Bengaluru. Both poplar and eucalyptus also have negative allelopathic properties &amp;ndash; i.e. they don&amp;rsquo;t encourage vegetative growth under their cover.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Over the years, numerous instances of gaur entering Kodaikanal in search of food have been attributed to the destruction of grasslands in shola forests by eucalyptus trees. In fact, a Parliamentary Standing Committee report on the Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority (CAMPA) Bill, 2015, highlighted this concern, recommending the clause&amp;nbsp; &amp;ldquo;particularly native species&amp;rdquo; be added after the word &amp;lsquo;plantation&amp;rsquo; in two instances. However, this was not incorporated in the Act that was finally passed.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Pushing non-indigenous plantation species to meet afforestation targets and timber requirements will damage groundwater recharge and be counterproductive to public investments in such initiatives.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Please &lt;a href=&quot;https://thewire.in/environment/national-forest-policy-draft-2018-takes-one-step-forward-two-steps-back&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to read more. &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;&#039;,
		&#039;credit_writer&#039; =&gt; &#039;TheWire.in, 2 April, 2018, https://thewire.in/environment/national-forest-policy-draft-2018-takes-one-step-forward-two-steps-back&#039;,
		&#039;article_img&#039; =&gt; &#039;&#039;,
		&#039;article_img_thumb&#039; =&gt; &#039;&#039;,
		&#039;status&#039; =&gt; (int) 1,
		&#039;show_on_home&#039; =&gt; (int) 1,
		&#039;lang&#039; =&gt; &#039;EN&#039;,
		&#039;category_id&#039; =&gt; (int) 16,
		&#039;tag_keyword&#039; =&gt; &#039;&#039;,
		&#039;seo_url&#039; =&gt; &#039;national-forest-policy-draft-2018-takes-one-step-forward-two-steps-back-sushant-agarwal-4684288&#039;,
		&#039;meta_title&#039; =&gt; null,
		&#039;meta_keywords&#039; =&gt; null,
		&#039;meta_description&#039; =&gt; null,
		&#039;noindex&#039; =&gt; (int) 0,
		&#039;publish_date&#039; =&gt; object(Cake\I18n\FrozenDate) {},
		&#039;most_visit_section_id&#039; =&gt; null,
		&#039;article_big_img&#039; =&gt; null,
		&#039;liveid&#039; =&gt; (int) 4684288,
		&#039;created&#039; =&gt; object(Cake\I18n\FrozenTime) {},
		&#039;modified&#039; =&gt; object(Cake\I18n\FrozenTime) {},
		&#039;edate&#039; =&gt; &#039;&#039;,
		&#039;tags&#039; =&gt; [
			[maximum depth reached]
		],
		&#039;category&#039; =&gt; object(App\Model\Entity\Category) {},
		&#039;[new]&#039; =&gt; false,
		&#039;[accessible]&#039; =&gt; [
			[maximum depth reached]
		],
		&#039;[dirty]&#039; =&gt; [[maximum depth reached]],
		&#039;[original]&#039; =&gt; [[maximum depth reached]],
		&#039;[virtual]&#039; =&gt; [[maximum depth reached]],
		&#039;[hasErrors]&#039; =&gt; false,
		&#039;[errors]&#039; =&gt; [[maximum depth reached]],
		&#039;[invalid]&#039; =&gt; [[maximum depth reached]],
		&#039;[repository]&#039; =&gt; &#039;Articles&#039;
	
	},
	&#039;articleid&#039; =&gt; (int) 36180,
	&#039;metaTitle&#039; =&gt; &#039;LATEST NEWS UPDATES | National Forest Policy Draft 2018 Takes One Step Forward, Two Steps Back -Sushant Agarwal&#039;,
	&#039;metaKeywords&#039; =&gt; &#039;new National Forest Policy (NFP),Compensatory Afforestation Fund Act 2016 (CAF),Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority (CAMPA)&#039;,
	&#039;metaDesc&#039; =&gt; &#039;
-TheWire.in

Unless consumer preferences shift to climate resistant crops, goals associated with the policy won&amp;rsquo;t materialize.

On March 14, the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) uploaded a draft of the National Forest Policy 2018, three decades years after the...&#039;,
	&#039;disp&#039; =&gt; &#039;&lt;div align=&quot;justify&quot;&gt;-TheWire.in&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;em&gt;Unless consumer preferences shift to climate resistant crops, goals associated with the policy won&amp;rsquo;t materialize.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br /&gt;On March 14, the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) uploaded a draft of the National Forest Policy 2018, three decades years after the last such policy. The draft appears to be an attempt to shift the approach towards forestry in India &amp;ndash; specifically, from a local community- and ecology-centric approach emphasised in the 1988 policy to focusing on timber and forest-based industries.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;This is not the first time that the 1988 policy has been revisited to open the doors for forest-based industries. In 2016, a draft policy was published on the MoEFCC website only to be taken down after it was panned for excluding the Forest Rights Act and encouraging the entry of private industries in forest management. Even though the MoEFCC distanced itself from the draft, major chunks in the current draft have been copied from the 2016 document.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;While there is merit in new concepts being introduced &amp;ndash; economic valuation of ecosystem services, forest certification, national forest ecosystem management information system, etc. &amp;ndash; these do not necessitate a complete shift in policy focus.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;em&gt;From tribal to timber&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The shift in approach to forestry proposed by the 2018 draft contrasts the guidelines specified in the 1988 policy. The significance attributed to requirements and rights of local, forest-dependent communities is being substituted by the demand for raw material from forest-based industries. The 1988 policy had sections called &amp;lsquo;Rights and Concessions&amp;rsquo; and &amp;lsquo;Tribal People and Forests&amp;rsquo;, both of which have been replaced by &amp;lsquo;Production Forestry&amp;rsquo;, &amp;lsquo;Increase (sic) the productivity of forest plantations&amp;rsquo; and &amp;lsquo;Facilitate forest industry interface&amp;rsquo;, all of which focus on increasing the timber yield. The draft stresses the &amp;ldquo;need to stimulate growth in the forest based industry sector&amp;rdquo; and encourages forest corporations and industrial units to &amp;ldquo;step up growing of industrial plantations&amp;rdquo;.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The 1988 policy had specified that forest-based industry should &amp;ldquo;raise the raw material needed for meeting its own requirements&amp;rdquo; and that &amp;ldquo;no forest-based enterprise, except that at the village or cottage level, should be permitted in the future&amp;rdquo;. It had reiterated that the requirements of the local communities &amp;ldquo;should not be sacrificed for this purpose&amp;rdquo;.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;On the other hand, the livelihoods of local communities finds mention in the current draft only thrice: as passive recipients of benefits accruing from wildlife tourism, as labour for forest-based industries and in relation to non-timber forest produce (NTFP). On the last count, the draft policy mentions that business plans for NTFP will be developed based on &amp;ldquo;climate-smart value chains&amp;rdquo; but does not specify how any such initiative will be owned or its benefits shared.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Second: the 1988 policy had articulated the need for a massive afforestation programme with particular emphasis on &amp;ldquo;fuelwood and fodder development&amp;rdquo; on all degraded and denuded lands in the country, including land available with forest corporations. The 2018 draft aims to use degraded land available with forest corporations to produce &amp;ldquo;quality timber&amp;rdquo; and proposes a public-private partnership model for afforestation in &amp;ldquo;degraded forest areas and forest areas available with Forest Development Corporations and outside forests&amp;rdquo;.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Worse, the document also recommends &amp;ldquo;commercially important species like poplar and eucalyptus&amp;rdquo;, both known to be water-demanding species with deep root systems that deplete groundwater. In 2016, the Karnataka government had blamed eucalyptus trees for depleting groundwater in the Arkavathi basin, which led to a fall in water supply to Bengaluru. Both poplar and eucalyptus also have negative allelopathic properties &amp;ndash; i.e. they don&amp;rsquo;t encourage vegetative growth under their cover.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Over the years, numerous instances of gaur entering Kodaikanal in search of food have been attributed to the destruction of grasslands in shola forests by eucalyptus trees. In fact, a Parliamentary Standing Committee report on the Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority (CAMPA) Bill, 2015, highlighted this concern, recommending the clause&amp;nbsp; &amp;ldquo;particularly native species&amp;rdquo; be added after the word &amp;lsquo;plantation&amp;rsquo; in two instances. However, this was not incorporated in the Act that was finally passed.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Pushing non-indigenous plantation species to meet afforestation targets and timber requirements will damage groundwater recharge and be counterproductive to public investments in such initiatives.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Please &lt;a href=&quot;https://thewire.in/environment/national-forest-policy-draft-2018-takes-one-step-forward-two-steps-back&quot; title=&quot;https://thewire.in/environment/national-forest-policy-draft-2018-takes-one-step-forward-two-steps-back&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to read more. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&#039;,
	&#039;lang&#039; =&gt; &#039;English&#039;,
	&#039;SITE_URL&#039; =&gt; &#039;https://im4change.in/&#039;,
	&#039;site_title&#039; =&gt; &#039;im4change&#039;,
	&#039;adminprix&#039; =&gt; &#039;admin&#039;
]
$article_current = object(App\Model\Entity\Article) {

	&#039;id&#039; =&gt; (int) 36180,
	&#039;title&#039; =&gt; &#039;National Forest Policy Draft 2018 Takes One Step Forward, Two Steps Back -Sushant Agarwal&#039;,
	&#039;subheading&#039; =&gt; &#039;&#039;,
	&#039;description&#039; =&gt; &#039;&lt;div align=&quot;justify&quot;&gt;
-TheWire.in&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;em&gt;Unless consumer preferences shift to climate resistant crops, goals associated with the policy won&amp;rsquo;t materialize.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
On March 14, the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) uploaded a draft of the National Forest Policy 2018, three decades years after the last such policy. The draft appears to be an attempt to shift the approach towards forestry in India &amp;ndash; specifically, from a local community- and ecology-centric approach emphasised in the 1988 policy to focusing on timber and forest-based industries.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
This is not the first time that the 1988 policy has been revisited to open the doors for forest-based industries. In 2016, a draft policy was published on the MoEFCC website only to be taken down after it was panned for excluding the Forest Rights Act and encouraging the entry of private industries in forest management. Even though the MoEFCC distanced itself from the draft, major chunks in the current draft have been copied from the 2016 document.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
While there is merit in new concepts being introduced &amp;ndash; economic valuation of ecosystem services, forest certification, national forest ecosystem management information system, etc. &amp;ndash; these do not necessitate a complete shift in policy focus.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;em&gt;From tribal to timber&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
The shift in approach to forestry proposed by the 2018 draft contrasts the guidelines specified in the 1988 policy. The significance attributed to requirements and rights of local, forest-dependent communities is being substituted by the demand for raw material from forest-based industries. The 1988 policy had sections called &amp;lsquo;Rights and Concessions&amp;rsquo; and &amp;lsquo;Tribal People and Forests&amp;rsquo;, both of which have been replaced by &amp;lsquo;Production Forestry&amp;rsquo;, &amp;lsquo;Increase (sic) the productivity of forest plantations&amp;rsquo; and &amp;lsquo;Facilitate forest industry interface&amp;rsquo;, all of which focus on increasing the timber yield. The draft stresses the &amp;ldquo;need to stimulate growth in the forest based industry sector&amp;rdquo; and encourages forest corporations and industrial units to &amp;ldquo;step up growing of industrial plantations&amp;rdquo;.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The 1988 policy had specified that forest-based industry should &amp;ldquo;raise the raw material needed for meeting its own requirements&amp;rdquo; and that &amp;ldquo;no forest-based enterprise, except that at the village or cottage level, should be permitted in the future&amp;rdquo;. It had reiterated that the requirements of the local communities &amp;ldquo;should not be sacrificed for this purpose&amp;rdquo;.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
On the other hand, the livelihoods of local communities finds mention in the current draft only thrice: as passive recipients of benefits accruing from wildlife tourism, as labour for forest-based industries and in relation to non-timber forest produce (NTFP). On the last count, the draft policy mentions that business plans for NTFP will be developed based on &amp;ldquo;climate-smart value chains&amp;rdquo; but does not specify how any such initiative will be owned or its benefits shared.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Second: the 1988 policy had articulated the need for a massive afforestation programme with particular emphasis on &amp;ldquo;fuelwood and fodder development&amp;rdquo; on all degraded and denuded lands in the country, including land available with forest corporations. The 2018 draft aims to use degraded land available with forest corporations to produce &amp;ldquo;quality timber&amp;rdquo; and proposes a public-private partnership model for afforestation in &amp;ldquo;degraded forest areas and forest areas available with Forest Development Corporations and outside forests&amp;rdquo;.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Worse, the document also recommends &amp;ldquo;commercially important species like poplar and eucalyptus&amp;rdquo;, both known to be water-demanding species with deep root systems that deplete groundwater. In 2016, the Karnataka government had blamed eucalyptus trees for depleting groundwater in the Arkavathi basin, which led to a fall in water supply to Bengaluru. Both poplar and eucalyptus also have negative allelopathic properties &amp;ndash; i.e. they don&amp;rsquo;t encourage vegetative growth under their cover.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Over the years, numerous instances of gaur entering Kodaikanal in search of food have been attributed to the destruction of grasslands in shola forests by eucalyptus trees. In fact, a Parliamentary Standing Committee report on the Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority (CAMPA) Bill, 2015, highlighted this concern, recommending the clause&amp;nbsp; &amp;ldquo;particularly native species&amp;rdquo; be added after the word &amp;lsquo;plantation&amp;rsquo; in two instances. However, this was not incorporated in the Act that was finally passed.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Pushing non-indigenous plantation species to meet afforestation targets and timber requirements will damage groundwater recharge and be counterproductive to public investments in such initiatives.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Please &lt;a href=&quot;https://thewire.in/environment/national-forest-policy-draft-2018-takes-one-step-forward-two-steps-back&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to read more. &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;/div&gt;&#039;,
	&#039;credit_writer&#039; =&gt; &#039;TheWire.in, 2 April, 2018, https://thewire.in/environment/national-forest-policy-draft-2018-takes-one-step-forward-two-steps-back&#039;,
	&#039;article_img&#039; =&gt; &#039;&#039;,
	&#039;article_img_thumb&#039; =&gt; &#039;&#039;,
	&#039;status&#039; =&gt; (int) 1,
	&#039;show_on_home&#039; =&gt; (int) 1,
	&#039;lang&#039; =&gt; &#039;EN&#039;,
	&#039;category_id&#039; =&gt; (int) 16,
	&#039;tag_keyword&#039; =&gt; &#039;&#039;,
	&#039;seo_url&#039; =&gt; &#039;national-forest-policy-draft-2018-takes-one-step-forward-two-steps-back-sushant-agarwal-4684288&#039;,
	&#039;meta_title&#039; =&gt; null,
	&#039;meta_keywords&#039; =&gt; null,
	&#039;meta_description&#039; =&gt; null,
	&#039;noindex&#039; =&gt; (int) 0,
	&#039;publish_date&#039; =&gt; object(Cake\I18n\FrozenDate) {},
	&#039;most_visit_section_id&#039; =&gt; null,
	&#039;article_big_img&#039; =&gt; null,
	&#039;liveid&#039; =&gt; (int) 4684288,
	&#039;created&#039; =&gt; object(Cake\I18n\FrozenTime) {},
	&#039;modified&#039; =&gt; object(Cake\I18n\FrozenTime) {},
	&#039;edate&#039; =&gt; &#039;&#039;,
	&#039;tags&#039; =&gt; [
		(int) 0 =&gt; object(Cake\ORM\Entity) {},
		(int) 1 =&gt; object(Cake\ORM\Entity) {},
		(int) 2 =&gt; object(Cake\ORM\Entity) {}
	],
	&#039;category&#039; =&gt; object(App\Model\Entity\Category) {},
	&#039;[new]&#039; =&gt; false,
	&#039;[accessible]&#039; =&gt; [
		&#039;*&#039; =&gt; true,
		&#039;id&#039; =&gt; false
	],
	&#039;[dirty]&#039; =&gt; [],
	&#039;[original]&#039; =&gt; [],
	&#039;[virtual]&#039; =&gt; [],
	&#039;[hasErrors]&#039; =&gt; false,
	&#039;[errors]&#039; =&gt; [],
	&#039;[invalid]&#039; =&gt; [],
	&#039;[repository]&#039; =&gt; &#039;Articles&#039;

}
$articleid = (int) 36180
$metaTitle = &#039;LATEST NEWS UPDATES | National Forest Policy Draft 2018 Takes One Step Forward, Two Steps Back -Sushant Agarwal&#039;
$metaKeywords = &#039;new National Forest Policy (NFP),Compensatory Afforestation Fund Act 2016 (CAF),Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority (CAMPA)&#039;
$metaDesc = &#039;
-TheWire.in

Unless consumer preferences shift to climate resistant crops, goals associated with the policy won&amp;rsquo;t materialize.

On March 14, the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) uploaded a draft of the National Forest Policy 2018, three decades years after the...&#039;
$disp = &#039;&lt;div align=&quot;justify&quot;&gt;-TheWire.in&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;em&gt;Unless consumer preferences shift to climate resistant crops, goals associated with the policy won&amp;rsquo;t materialize.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br /&gt;On March 14, the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) uploaded a draft of the National Forest Policy 2018, three decades years after the last such policy. The draft appears to be an attempt to shift the approach towards forestry in India &amp;ndash; specifically, from a local community- and ecology-centric approach emphasised in the 1988 policy to focusing on timber and forest-based industries.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;This is not the first time that the 1988 policy has been revisited to open the doors for forest-based industries. In 2016, a draft policy was published on the MoEFCC website only to be taken down after it was panned for excluding the Forest Rights Act and encouraging the entry of private industries in forest management. Even though the MoEFCC distanced itself from the draft, major chunks in the current draft have been copied from the 2016 document.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;While there is merit in new concepts being introduced &amp;ndash; economic valuation of ecosystem services, forest certification, national forest ecosystem management information system, etc. &amp;ndash; these do not necessitate a complete shift in policy focus.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;em&gt;From tribal to timber&lt;br /&gt;&lt;/em&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The shift in approach to forestry proposed by the 2018 draft contrasts the guidelines specified in the 1988 policy. The significance attributed to requirements and rights of local, forest-dependent communities is being substituted by the demand for raw material from forest-based industries. The 1988 policy had sections called &amp;lsquo;Rights and Concessions&amp;rsquo; and &amp;lsquo;Tribal People and Forests&amp;rsquo;, both of which have been replaced by &amp;lsquo;Production Forestry&amp;rsquo;, &amp;lsquo;Increase (sic) the productivity of forest plantations&amp;rsquo; and &amp;lsquo;Facilitate forest industry interface&amp;rsquo;, all of which focus on increasing the timber yield. The draft stresses the &amp;ldquo;need to stimulate growth in the forest based industry sector&amp;rdquo; and encourages forest corporations and industrial units to &amp;ldquo;step up growing of industrial plantations&amp;rdquo;.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;The 1988 policy had specified that forest-based industry should &amp;ldquo;raise the raw material needed for meeting its own requirements&amp;rdquo; and that &amp;ldquo;no forest-based enterprise, except that at the village or cottage level, should be permitted in the future&amp;rdquo;. It had reiterated that the requirements of the local communities &amp;ldquo;should not be sacrificed for this purpose&amp;rdquo;.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;On the other hand, the livelihoods of local communities finds mention in the current draft only thrice: as passive recipients of benefits accruing from wildlife tourism, as labour for forest-based industries and in relation to non-timber forest produce (NTFP). On the last count, the draft policy mentions that business plans for NTFP will be developed based on &amp;ldquo;climate-smart value chains&amp;rdquo; but does not specify how any such initiative will be owned or its benefits shared.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Second: the 1988 policy had articulated the need for a massive afforestation programme with particular emphasis on &amp;ldquo;fuelwood and fodder development&amp;rdquo; on all degraded and denuded lands in the country, including land available with forest corporations. The 2018 draft aims to use degraded land available with forest corporations to produce &amp;ldquo;quality timber&amp;rdquo; and proposes a public-private partnership model for afforestation in &amp;ldquo;degraded forest areas and forest areas available with Forest Development Corporations and outside forests&amp;rdquo;.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Worse, the document also recommends &amp;ldquo;commercially important species like poplar and eucalyptus&amp;rdquo;, both known to be water-demanding species with deep root systems that deplete groundwater. In 2016, the Karnataka government had blamed eucalyptus trees for depleting groundwater in the Arkavathi basin, which led to a fall in water supply to Bengaluru. Both poplar and eucalyptus also have negative allelopathic properties &amp;ndash; i.e. they don&amp;rsquo;t encourage vegetative growth under their cover.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Over the years, numerous instances of gaur entering Kodaikanal in search of food have been attributed to the destruction of grasslands in shola forests by eucalyptus trees. In fact, a Parliamentary Standing Committee report on the Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority (CAMPA) Bill, 2015, highlighted this concern, recommending the clause&amp;nbsp; &amp;ldquo;particularly native species&amp;rdquo; be added after the word &amp;lsquo;plantation&amp;rsquo; in two instances. However, this was not incorporated in the Act that was finally passed.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Pushing non-indigenous plantation species to meet afforestation targets and timber requirements will damage groundwater recharge and be counterproductive to public investments in such initiatives.&lt;br /&gt;&lt;br /&gt;Please &lt;a href=&quot;https://thewire.in/environment/national-forest-policy-draft-2018-takes-one-step-forward-two-steps-back&quot; title=&quot;https://thewire.in/environment/national-forest-policy-draft-2018-takes-one-step-forward-two-steps-back&quot;&gt;click here&lt;/a&gt; to read more. &lt;br /&gt;&lt;/div&gt;&#039;
$lang = &#039;English&#039;
$SITE_URL = &#039;https://im4change.in/&#039;
$site_title = &#039;im4change&#039;
$adminprix = &#039;admin&#039;</pre><pre class="stack-trace">include - APP/Template/Layout/printlayout.ctp, line 8
Cake\View\View::_evaluate() - CORE/src/View/View.php, line 1413
Cake\View\View::_render() - CORE/src/View/View.php, line 1374
Cake\View\View::renderLayout() - CORE/src/View/View.php, line 927
Cake\View\View::render() - CORE/src/View/View.php, line 885
Cake\Controller\Controller::render() - CORE/src/Controller/Controller.php, line 791
Cake\Http\ActionDispatcher::_invoke() - CORE/src/Http/ActionDispatcher.php, line 126
Cake\Http\ActionDispatcher::dispatch() - CORE/src/Http/ActionDispatcher.php, line 94
Cake\Http\BaseApplication::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/BaseApplication.php, line 235
Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
Cake\Routing\Middleware\RoutingMiddleware::__invoke() - CORE/src/Routing/Middleware/RoutingMiddleware.php, line 162
Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
Cake\Routing\Middleware\AssetMiddleware::__invoke() - CORE/src/Routing/Middleware/AssetMiddleware.php, line 88
Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
Cake\Error\Middleware\ErrorHandlerMiddleware::__invoke() - CORE/src/Error/Middleware/ErrorHandlerMiddleware.php, line 96
Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
Cake\Http\Runner::run() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 51</pre></div></pre>latest-news-updates/national-forest-policy-draft-2018-takes-one-step-forward-two-steps-back-sushant-agarwal-4684288.html"/>
    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"/>
    <link href="https://im4change.in/css/control.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"
          media="all"/>
    <title>LATEST NEWS UPDATES | National Forest Policy Draft 2018 Takes One Step Forward, Two Steps Back -Sushant Agarwal | Im4change.org</title>
    <meta name="description" content="
-TheWire.in

Unless consumer preferences shift to climate resistant crops, goals associated with the policy won&rsquo;t materialize.

On March 14, the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) uploaded a draft of the National Forest Policy 2018, three decades years after the..."/>
    <script src="https://im4change.in/js/jquery-1.10.2.js"></script>
    <script type="text/javascript" src="https://im4change.in/js/jquery-migrate.min.js"></script>
    <script language="javascript" type="text/javascript">

        $(document).ready(function () {
            var img = $("img")[0]; // Get my img elem
            var pic_real_width, pic_real_height;
            $("<img/>") // Make in memory copy of image to avoid css issues
                .attr("src", $(img).attr("src"))
                .load(function () {
                    pic_real_width = this.width;   // Note: $(this).width() will not
                    pic_real_height = this.height; // work for in memory images.
                });
        });
    </script>
    <style type="text/css">
        @media screen {
            div.divFooter {
                display: block;
            }
        }

        @media print {
            .printbutton {
                display: none !important;
            }
        }
    </style>
</head>
<body>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" border="0" width="98%" align="center">
    <tr>
        <td class="top_bg">
            <div class="divFooter">
                <img src="https://im4change.in/images/logo1.jpg" height="59" border="0"
                     alt="Resource centre on India's rural distress" style="padding-top:14px;"/>
            </div>

        </td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
        <td id="topspace">&nbsp;</td>
    </tr>

    <tr id="topspace">
        <td>&nbsp;</td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
        <td height="50" style="border-bottom:1px solid #000; padding-top:10px;" class="printbutton">
            <form><input type="button" value=" Print this page "
                         onclick="window.print();return false;"/></form>
        </td>
    </tr>

    <tr>
        <td width="100%">
            <h1 class="news_headlines" style="font-style:normal">
                <strong>National Forest Policy Draft 2018 Takes One Step Forward, Two Steps Back -Sushant Agarwal</strong></h1>
        </td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
        <td width="100%" style="font-family:Arial, 'Segoe Script', 'Segoe UI', sans-serif, serif"><font size="3">
                <div align="justify">-TheWire.in<br /><br /><em>Unless consumer preferences shift to climate resistant crops, goals associated with the policy won&rsquo;t materialize.<br /></em><br />On March 14, the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) uploaded a draft of the National Forest Policy 2018, three decades years after the last such policy. The draft appears to be an attempt to shift the approach towards forestry in India &ndash; specifically, from a local community- and ecology-centric approach emphasised in the 1988 policy to focusing on timber and forest-based industries.<br /><br />This is not the first time that the 1988 policy has been revisited to open the doors for forest-based industries. In 2016, a draft policy was published on the MoEFCC website only to be taken down after it was panned for excluding the Forest Rights Act and encouraging the entry of private industries in forest management. Even though the MoEFCC distanced itself from the draft, major chunks in the current draft have been copied from the 2016 document.<br /><br />While there is merit in new concepts being introduced &ndash; economic valuation of ecosystem services, forest certification, national forest ecosystem management information system, etc. &ndash; these do not necessitate a complete shift in policy focus.<br /><br /><em>From tribal to timber<br /></em><br />The shift in approach to forestry proposed by the 2018 draft contrasts the guidelines specified in the 1988 policy. The significance attributed to requirements and rights of local, forest-dependent communities is being substituted by the demand for raw material from forest-based industries. The 1988 policy had sections called &lsquo;Rights and Concessions&rsquo; and &lsquo;Tribal People and Forests&rsquo;, both of which have been replaced by &lsquo;Production Forestry&rsquo;, &lsquo;Increase (sic) the productivity of forest plantations&rsquo; and &lsquo;Facilitate forest industry interface&rsquo;, all of which focus on increasing the timber yield. The draft stresses the &ldquo;need to stimulate growth in the forest based industry sector&rdquo; and encourages forest corporations and industrial units to &ldquo;step up growing of industrial plantations&rdquo;.<br /><br />The 1988 policy had specified that forest-based industry should &ldquo;raise the raw material needed for meeting its own requirements&rdquo; and that &ldquo;no forest-based enterprise, except that at the village or cottage level, should be permitted in the future&rdquo;. It had reiterated that the requirements of the local communities &ldquo;should not be sacrificed for this purpose&rdquo;.<br /><br />On the other hand, the livelihoods of local communities finds mention in the current draft only thrice: as passive recipients of benefits accruing from wildlife tourism, as labour for forest-based industries and in relation to non-timber forest produce (NTFP). On the last count, the draft policy mentions that business plans for NTFP will be developed based on &ldquo;climate-smart value chains&rdquo; but does not specify how any such initiative will be owned or its benefits shared.<br /><br />Second: the 1988 policy had articulated the need for a massive afforestation programme with particular emphasis on &ldquo;fuelwood and fodder development&rdquo; on all degraded and denuded lands in the country, including land available with forest corporations. The 2018 draft aims to use degraded land available with forest corporations to produce &ldquo;quality timber&rdquo; and proposes a public-private partnership model for afforestation in &ldquo;degraded forest areas and forest areas available with Forest Development Corporations and outside forests&rdquo;.<br /><br />Worse, the document also recommends &ldquo;commercially important species like poplar and eucalyptus&rdquo;, both known to be water-demanding species with deep root systems that deplete groundwater. In 2016, the Karnataka government had blamed eucalyptus trees for depleting groundwater in the Arkavathi basin, which led to a fall in water supply to Bengaluru. Both poplar and eucalyptus also have negative allelopathic properties &ndash; i.e. they don&rsquo;t encourage vegetative growth under their cover.<br /><br />Over the years, numerous instances of gaur entering Kodaikanal in search of food have been attributed to the destruction of grasslands in shola forests by eucalyptus trees. In fact, a Parliamentary Standing Committee report on the Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority (CAMPA) Bill, 2015, highlighted this concern, recommending the clause&nbsp; &ldquo;particularly native species&rdquo; be added after the word &lsquo;plantation&rsquo; in two instances. However, this was not incorporated in the Act that was finally passed.<br /><br />Pushing non-indigenous plantation species to meet afforestation targets and timber requirements will damage groundwater recharge and be counterproductive to public investments in such initiatives.<br /><br />Please <a href="https://thewire.in/environment/national-forest-policy-draft-2018-takes-one-step-forward-two-steps-back" title="https://thewire.in/environment/national-forest-policy-draft-2018-takes-one-step-forward-two-steps-back">click here</a> to read more. <br /></div>               </font>
        </td>
    </tr>
    <tr>
        <td>&nbsp;</td>
    </tr>

    <tr>
        <td height="50" style="border-top:1px solid #000; border-bottom:1px solid #000;padding-top:10px;">
            <form><input type="button" value=" Print this page "
                         onclick="window.print();return false;"/></form>
        </td>
    </tr>
</table></body>
</html>'

}
$cookies = []
$values = [
	(int) 0 => 'text/html; charset=UTF-8'
]
$name = 'Content-Type'
$first = true
$value = 'text/html; charset=UTF-8'
header - [internal], line ??
Cake\Http\ResponseEmitter::emitHeaders() - CORE/src/Http/ResponseEmitter.php, line 181
Cake\Http\ResponseEmitter::emit() - CORE/src/Http/ResponseEmitter.php, line 55
Cake\Http\Server::emit() - CORE/src/Http/Server.php, line 141
[main] - ROOT/webroot/index.php, line 39

<head>

    <link rel="canonical" href="<?php echo Configure::read('SITE_URL'); ?><?php echo $urlPrefix;?><?php echo $article_current->category->slug; ?>/<?php echo $article_current->seo_url; ?>.html"/>

    <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"/>

$viewFile = '/home/brlfuser/public_html/src/Template/Layout/printlayout.ctp'
$dataForView = [
	'article_current' => object(App\Model\Entity\Article) {

		'id' => (int) 36180,
		'title' => 'National Forest Policy Draft 2018 Takes One Step Forward, Two Steps Back -Sushant Agarwal',
		'subheading' => '',
		'description' => '<div align="justify">
-TheWire.in<br />
<br />
<em>Unless consumer preferences shift to climate resistant crops, goals associated with the policy won&rsquo;t materialize.<br />
</em><br />
On March 14, the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) uploaded a draft of the National Forest Policy 2018, three decades years after the last such policy. The draft appears to be an attempt to shift the approach towards forestry in India &ndash; specifically, from a local community- and ecology-centric approach emphasised in the 1988 policy to focusing on timber and forest-based industries.<br />
<br />
This is not the first time that the 1988 policy has been revisited to open the doors for forest-based industries. In 2016, a draft policy was published on the MoEFCC website only to be taken down after it was panned for excluding the Forest Rights Act and encouraging the entry of private industries in forest management. Even though the MoEFCC distanced itself from the draft, major chunks in the current draft have been copied from the 2016 document.<br />
<br />
While there is merit in new concepts being introduced &ndash; economic valuation of ecosystem services, forest certification, national forest ecosystem management information system, etc. &ndash; these do not necessitate a complete shift in policy focus.<br />
<br />
<em>From tribal to timber<br />
</em><br />
The shift in approach to forestry proposed by the 2018 draft contrasts the guidelines specified in the 1988 policy. The significance attributed to requirements and rights of local, forest-dependent communities is being substituted by the demand for raw material from forest-based industries. The 1988 policy had sections called &lsquo;Rights and Concessions&rsquo; and &lsquo;Tribal People and Forests&rsquo;, both of which have been replaced by &lsquo;Production Forestry&rsquo;, &lsquo;Increase (sic) the productivity of forest plantations&rsquo; and &lsquo;Facilitate forest industry interface&rsquo;, all of which focus on increasing the timber yield. The draft stresses the &ldquo;need to stimulate growth in the forest based industry sector&rdquo; and encourages forest corporations and industrial units to &ldquo;step up growing of industrial plantations&rdquo;.<br />
<br />
The 1988 policy had specified that forest-based industry should &ldquo;raise the raw material needed for meeting its own requirements&rdquo; and that &ldquo;no forest-based enterprise, except that at the village or cottage level, should be permitted in the future&rdquo;. It had reiterated that the requirements of the local communities &ldquo;should not be sacrificed for this purpose&rdquo;.<br />
<br />
On the other hand, the livelihoods of local communities finds mention in the current draft only thrice: as passive recipients of benefits accruing from wildlife tourism, as labour for forest-based industries and in relation to non-timber forest produce (NTFP). On the last count, the draft policy mentions that business plans for NTFP will be developed based on &ldquo;climate-smart value chains&rdquo; but does not specify how any such initiative will be owned or its benefits shared.<br />
<br />
Second: the 1988 policy had articulated the need for a massive afforestation programme with particular emphasis on &ldquo;fuelwood and fodder development&rdquo; on all degraded and denuded lands in the country, including land available with forest corporations. The 2018 draft aims to use degraded land available with forest corporations to produce &ldquo;quality timber&rdquo; and proposes a public-private partnership model for afforestation in &ldquo;degraded forest areas and forest areas available with Forest Development Corporations and outside forests&rdquo;.<br />
<br />
Worse, the document also recommends &ldquo;commercially important species like poplar and eucalyptus&rdquo;, both known to be water-demanding species with deep root systems that deplete groundwater. In 2016, the Karnataka government had blamed eucalyptus trees for depleting groundwater in the Arkavathi basin, which led to a fall in water supply to Bengaluru. Both poplar and eucalyptus also have negative allelopathic properties &ndash; i.e. they don&rsquo;t encourage vegetative growth under their cover.<br />
<br />
Over the years, numerous instances of gaur entering Kodaikanal in search of food have been attributed to the destruction of grasslands in shola forests by eucalyptus trees. In fact, a Parliamentary Standing Committee report on the Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority (CAMPA) Bill, 2015, highlighted this concern, recommending the clause&nbsp; &ldquo;particularly native species&rdquo; be added after the word &lsquo;plantation&rsquo; in two instances. However, this was not incorporated in the Act that was finally passed.<br />
<br />
Pushing non-indigenous plantation species to meet afforestation targets and timber requirements will damage groundwater recharge and be counterproductive to public investments in such initiatives.<br />
<br />
Please <a href="https://thewire.in/environment/national-forest-policy-draft-2018-takes-one-step-forward-two-steps-back">click here</a> to read more. <br />
</div>',
		'credit_writer' => 'TheWire.in, 2 April, 2018, https://thewire.in/environment/national-forest-policy-draft-2018-takes-one-step-forward-two-steps-back',
		'article_img' => '',
		'article_img_thumb' => '',
		'status' => (int) 1,
		'show_on_home' => (int) 1,
		'lang' => 'EN',
		'category_id' => (int) 16,
		'tag_keyword' => '',
		'seo_url' => 'national-forest-policy-draft-2018-takes-one-step-forward-two-steps-back-sushant-agarwal-4684288',
		'meta_title' => null,
		'meta_keywords' => null,
		'meta_description' => null,
		'noindex' => (int) 0,
		'publish_date' => object(Cake\I18n\FrozenDate) {},
		'most_visit_section_id' => null,
		'article_big_img' => null,
		'liveid' => (int) 4684288,
		'created' => object(Cake\I18n\FrozenTime) {},
		'modified' => object(Cake\I18n\FrozenTime) {},
		'edate' => '',
		'tags' => [
			[maximum depth reached]
		],
		'category' => object(App\Model\Entity\Category) {},
		'[new]' => false,
		'[accessible]' => [
			[maximum depth reached]
		],
		'[dirty]' => [[maximum depth reached]],
		'[original]' => [[maximum depth reached]],
		'[virtual]' => [[maximum depth reached]],
		'[hasErrors]' => false,
		'[errors]' => [[maximum depth reached]],
		'[invalid]' => [[maximum depth reached]],
		'[repository]' => 'Articles'
	
	},
	'articleid' => (int) 36180,
	'metaTitle' => 'LATEST NEWS UPDATES | National Forest Policy Draft 2018 Takes One Step Forward, Two Steps Back -Sushant Agarwal',
	'metaKeywords' => 'new National Forest Policy (NFP),Compensatory Afforestation Fund Act 2016 (CAF),Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority (CAMPA)',
	'metaDesc' => '
-TheWire.in

Unless consumer preferences shift to climate resistant crops, goals associated with the policy won&rsquo;t materialize.

On March 14, the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) uploaded a draft of the National Forest Policy 2018, three decades years after the...',
	'disp' => '<div align="justify">-TheWire.in<br /><br /><em>Unless consumer preferences shift to climate resistant crops, goals associated with the policy won&rsquo;t materialize.<br /></em><br />On March 14, the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) uploaded a draft of the National Forest Policy 2018, three decades years after the last such policy. The draft appears to be an attempt to shift the approach towards forestry in India &ndash; specifically, from a local community- and ecology-centric approach emphasised in the 1988 policy to focusing on timber and forest-based industries.<br /><br />This is not the first time that the 1988 policy has been revisited to open the doors for forest-based industries. In 2016, a draft policy was published on the MoEFCC website only to be taken down after it was panned for excluding the Forest Rights Act and encouraging the entry of private industries in forest management. Even though the MoEFCC distanced itself from the draft, major chunks in the current draft have been copied from the 2016 document.<br /><br />While there is merit in new concepts being introduced &ndash; economic valuation of ecosystem services, forest certification, national forest ecosystem management information system, etc. &ndash; these do not necessitate a complete shift in policy focus.<br /><br /><em>From tribal to timber<br /></em><br />The shift in approach to forestry proposed by the 2018 draft contrasts the guidelines specified in the 1988 policy. The significance attributed to requirements and rights of local, forest-dependent communities is being substituted by the demand for raw material from forest-based industries. The 1988 policy had sections called &lsquo;Rights and Concessions&rsquo; and &lsquo;Tribal People and Forests&rsquo;, both of which have been replaced by &lsquo;Production Forestry&rsquo;, &lsquo;Increase (sic) the productivity of forest plantations&rsquo; and &lsquo;Facilitate forest industry interface&rsquo;, all of which focus on increasing the timber yield. The draft stresses the &ldquo;need to stimulate growth in the forest based industry sector&rdquo; and encourages forest corporations and industrial units to &ldquo;step up growing of industrial plantations&rdquo;.<br /><br />The 1988 policy had specified that forest-based industry should &ldquo;raise the raw material needed for meeting its own requirements&rdquo; and that &ldquo;no forest-based enterprise, except that at the village or cottage level, should be permitted in the future&rdquo;. It had reiterated that the requirements of the local communities &ldquo;should not be sacrificed for this purpose&rdquo;.<br /><br />On the other hand, the livelihoods of local communities finds mention in the current draft only thrice: as passive recipients of benefits accruing from wildlife tourism, as labour for forest-based industries and in relation to non-timber forest produce (NTFP). On the last count, the draft policy mentions that business plans for NTFP will be developed based on &ldquo;climate-smart value chains&rdquo; but does not specify how any such initiative will be owned or its benefits shared.<br /><br />Second: the 1988 policy had articulated the need for a massive afforestation programme with particular emphasis on &ldquo;fuelwood and fodder development&rdquo; on all degraded and denuded lands in the country, including land available with forest corporations. The 2018 draft aims to use degraded land available with forest corporations to produce &ldquo;quality timber&rdquo; and proposes a public-private partnership model for afforestation in &ldquo;degraded forest areas and forest areas available with Forest Development Corporations and outside forests&rdquo;.<br /><br />Worse, the document also recommends &ldquo;commercially important species like poplar and eucalyptus&rdquo;, both known to be water-demanding species with deep root systems that deplete groundwater. In 2016, the Karnataka government had blamed eucalyptus trees for depleting groundwater in the Arkavathi basin, which led to a fall in water supply to Bengaluru. Both poplar and eucalyptus also have negative allelopathic properties &ndash; i.e. they don&rsquo;t encourage vegetative growth under their cover.<br /><br />Over the years, numerous instances of gaur entering Kodaikanal in search of food have been attributed to the destruction of grasslands in shola forests by eucalyptus trees. In fact, a Parliamentary Standing Committee report on the Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority (CAMPA) Bill, 2015, highlighted this concern, recommending the clause&nbsp; &ldquo;particularly native species&rdquo; be added after the word &lsquo;plantation&rsquo; in two instances. However, this was not incorporated in the Act that was finally passed.<br /><br />Pushing non-indigenous plantation species to meet afforestation targets and timber requirements will damage groundwater recharge and be counterproductive to public investments in such initiatives.<br /><br />Please <a href="https://thewire.in/environment/national-forest-policy-draft-2018-takes-one-step-forward-two-steps-back" title="https://thewire.in/environment/national-forest-policy-draft-2018-takes-one-step-forward-two-steps-back">click here</a> to read more. <br /></div>',
	'lang' => 'English',
	'SITE_URL' => 'https://im4change.in/',
	'site_title' => 'im4change',
	'adminprix' => 'admin'
]
$article_current = object(App\Model\Entity\Article) {

	'id' => (int) 36180,
	'title' => 'National Forest Policy Draft 2018 Takes One Step Forward, Two Steps Back -Sushant Agarwal',
	'subheading' => '',
	'description' => '<div align="justify">
-TheWire.in<br />
<br />
<em>Unless consumer preferences shift to climate resistant crops, goals associated with the policy won&rsquo;t materialize.<br />
</em><br />
On March 14, the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) uploaded a draft of the National Forest Policy 2018, three decades years after the last such policy. The draft appears to be an attempt to shift the approach towards forestry in India &ndash; specifically, from a local community- and ecology-centric approach emphasised in the 1988 policy to focusing on timber and forest-based industries.<br />
<br />
This is not the first time that the 1988 policy has been revisited to open the doors for forest-based industries. In 2016, a draft policy was published on the MoEFCC website only to be taken down after it was panned for excluding the Forest Rights Act and encouraging the entry of private industries in forest management. Even though the MoEFCC distanced itself from the draft, major chunks in the current draft have been copied from the 2016 document.<br />
<br />
While there is merit in new concepts being introduced &ndash; economic valuation of ecosystem services, forest certification, national forest ecosystem management information system, etc. &ndash; these do not necessitate a complete shift in policy focus.<br />
<br />
<em>From tribal to timber<br />
</em><br />
The shift in approach to forestry proposed by the 2018 draft contrasts the guidelines specified in the 1988 policy. The significance attributed to requirements and rights of local, forest-dependent communities is being substituted by the demand for raw material from forest-based industries. The 1988 policy had sections called &lsquo;Rights and Concessions&rsquo; and &lsquo;Tribal People and Forests&rsquo;, both of which have been replaced by &lsquo;Production Forestry&rsquo;, &lsquo;Increase (sic) the productivity of forest plantations&rsquo; and &lsquo;Facilitate forest industry interface&rsquo;, all of which focus on increasing the timber yield. The draft stresses the &ldquo;need to stimulate growth in the forest based industry sector&rdquo; and encourages forest corporations and industrial units to &ldquo;step up growing of industrial plantations&rdquo;.<br />
<br />
The 1988 policy had specified that forest-based industry should &ldquo;raise the raw material needed for meeting its own requirements&rdquo; and that &ldquo;no forest-based enterprise, except that at the village or cottage level, should be permitted in the future&rdquo;. It had reiterated that the requirements of the local communities &ldquo;should not be sacrificed for this purpose&rdquo;.<br />
<br />
On the other hand, the livelihoods of local communities finds mention in the current draft only thrice: as passive recipients of benefits accruing from wildlife tourism, as labour for forest-based industries and in relation to non-timber forest produce (NTFP). On the last count, the draft policy mentions that business plans for NTFP will be developed based on &ldquo;climate-smart value chains&rdquo; but does not specify how any such initiative will be owned or its benefits shared.<br />
<br />
Second: the 1988 policy had articulated the need for a massive afforestation programme with particular emphasis on &ldquo;fuelwood and fodder development&rdquo; on all degraded and denuded lands in the country, including land available with forest corporations. The 2018 draft aims to use degraded land available with forest corporations to produce &ldquo;quality timber&rdquo; and proposes a public-private partnership model for afforestation in &ldquo;degraded forest areas and forest areas available with Forest Development Corporations and outside forests&rdquo;.<br />
<br />
Worse, the document also recommends &ldquo;commercially important species like poplar and eucalyptus&rdquo;, both known to be water-demanding species with deep root systems that deplete groundwater. In 2016, the Karnataka government had blamed eucalyptus trees for depleting groundwater in the Arkavathi basin, which led to a fall in water supply to Bengaluru. Both poplar and eucalyptus also have negative allelopathic properties &ndash; i.e. they don&rsquo;t encourage vegetative growth under their cover.<br />
<br />
Over the years, numerous instances of gaur entering Kodaikanal in search of food have been attributed to the destruction of grasslands in shola forests by eucalyptus trees. In fact, a Parliamentary Standing Committee report on the Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority (CAMPA) Bill, 2015, highlighted this concern, recommending the clause&nbsp; &ldquo;particularly native species&rdquo; be added after the word &lsquo;plantation&rsquo; in two instances. However, this was not incorporated in the Act that was finally passed.<br />
<br />
Pushing non-indigenous plantation species to meet afforestation targets and timber requirements will damage groundwater recharge and be counterproductive to public investments in such initiatives.<br />
<br />
Please <a href="https://thewire.in/environment/national-forest-policy-draft-2018-takes-one-step-forward-two-steps-back">click here</a> to read more. <br />
</div>',
	'credit_writer' => 'TheWire.in, 2 April, 2018, https://thewire.in/environment/national-forest-policy-draft-2018-takes-one-step-forward-two-steps-back',
	'article_img' => '',
	'article_img_thumb' => '',
	'status' => (int) 1,
	'show_on_home' => (int) 1,
	'lang' => 'EN',
	'category_id' => (int) 16,
	'tag_keyword' => '',
	'seo_url' => 'national-forest-policy-draft-2018-takes-one-step-forward-two-steps-back-sushant-agarwal-4684288',
	'meta_title' => null,
	'meta_keywords' => null,
	'meta_description' => null,
	'noindex' => (int) 0,
	'publish_date' => object(Cake\I18n\FrozenDate) {},
	'most_visit_section_id' => null,
	'article_big_img' => null,
	'liveid' => (int) 4684288,
	'created' => object(Cake\I18n\FrozenTime) {},
	'modified' => object(Cake\I18n\FrozenTime) {},
	'edate' => '',
	'tags' => [
		(int) 0 => object(Cake\ORM\Entity) {},
		(int) 1 => object(Cake\ORM\Entity) {},
		(int) 2 => object(Cake\ORM\Entity) {}
	],
	'category' => object(App\Model\Entity\Category) {},
	'[new]' => false,
	'[accessible]' => [
		'*' => true,
		'id' => false
	],
	'[dirty]' => [],
	'[original]' => [],
	'[virtual]' => [],
	'[hasErrors]' => false,
	'[errors]' => [],
	'[invalid]' => [],
	'[repository]' => 'Articles'

}
$articleid = (int) 36180
$metaTitle = 'LATEST NEWS UPDATES | National Forest Policy Draft 2018 Takes One Step Forward, Two Steps Back -Sushant Agarwal'
$metaKeywords = 'new National Forest Policy (NFP),Compensatory Afforestation Fund Act 2016 (CAF),Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority (CAMPA)'
$metaDesc = '
-TheWire.in

Unless consumer preferences shift to climate resistant crops, goals associated with the policy won&rsquo;t materialize.

On March 14, the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) uploaded a draft of the National Forest Policy 2018, three decades years after the...'
$disp = '<div align="justify">-TheWire.in<br /><br /><em>Unless consumer preferences shift to climate resistant crops, goals associated with the policy won&rsquo;t materialize.<br /></em><br />On March 14, the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) uploaded a draft of the National Forest Policy 2018, three decades years after the last such policy. The draft appears to be an attempt to shift the approach towards forestry in India &ndash; specifically, from a local community- and ecology-centric approach emphasised in the 1988 policy to focusing on timber and forest-based industries.<br /><br />This is not the first time that the 1988 policy has been revisited to open the doors for forest-based industries. In 2016, a draft policy was published on the MoEFCC website only to be taken down after it was panned for excluding the Forest Rights Act and encouraging the entry of private industries in forest management. Even though the MoEFCC distanced itself from the draft, major chunks in the current draft have been copied from the 2016 document.<br /><br />While there is merit in new concepts being introduced &ndash; economic valuation of ecosystem services, forest certification, national forest ecosystem management information system, etc. &ndash; these do not necessitate a complete shift in policy focus.<br /><br /><em>From tribal to timber<br /></em><br />The shift in approach to forestry proposed by the 2018 draft contrasts the guidelines specified in the 1988 policy. The significance attributed to requirements and rights of local, forest-dependent communities is being substituted by the demand for raw material from forest-based industries. The 1988 policy had sections called &lsquo;Rights and Concessions&rsquo; and &lsquo;Tribal People and Forests&rsquo;, both of which have been replaced by &lsquo;Production Forestry&rsquo;, &lsquo;Increase (sic) the productivity of forest plantations&rsquo; and &lsquo;Facilitate forest industry interface&rsquo;, all of which focus on increasing the timber yield. The draft stresses the &ldquo;need to stimulate growth in the forest based industry sector&rdquo; and encourages forest corporations and industrial units to &ldquo;step up growing of industrial plantations&rdquo;.<br /><br />The 1988 policy had specified that forest-based industry should &ldquo;raise the raw material needed for meeting its own requirements&rdquo; and that &ldquo;no forest-based enterprise, except that at the village or cottage level, should be permitted in the future&rdquo;. It had reiterated that the requirements of the local communities &ldquo;should not be sacrificed for this purpose&rdquo;.<br /><br />On the other hand, the livelihoods of local communities finds mention in the current draft only thrice: as passive recipients of benefits accruing from wildlife tourism, as labour for forest-based industries and in relation to non-timber forest produce (NTFP). On the last count, the draft policy mentions that business plans for NTFP will be developed based on &ldquo;climate-smart value chains&rdquo; but does not specify how any such initiative will be owned or its benefits shared.<br /><br />Second: the 1988 policy had articulated the need for a massive afforestation programme with particular emphasis on &ldquo;fuelwood and fodder development&rdquo; on all degraded and denuded lands in the country, including land available with forest corporations. The 2018 draft aims to use degraded land available with forest corporations to produce &ldquo;quality timber&rdquo; and proposes a public-private partnership model for afforestation in &ldquo;degraded forest areas and forest areas available with Forest Development Corporations and outside forests&rdquo;.<br /><br />Worse, the document also recommends &ldquo;commercially important species like poplar and eucalyptus&rdquo;, both known to be water-demanding species with deep root systems that deplete groundwater. In 2016, the Karnataka government had blamed eucalyptus trees for depleting groundwater in the Arkavathi basin, which led to a fall in water supply to Bengaluru. Both poplar and eucalyptus also have negative allelopathic properties &ndash; i.e. they don&rsquo;t encourage vegetative growth under their cover.<br /><br />Over the years, numerous instances of gaur entering Kodaikanal in search of food have been attributed to the destruction of grasslands in shola forests by eucalyptus trees. In fact, a Parliamentary Standing Committee report on the Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority (CAMPA) Bill, 2015, highlighted this concern, recommending the clause&nbsp; &ldquo;particularly native species&rdquo; be added after the word &lsquo;plantation&rsquo; in two instances. However, this was not incorporated in the Act that was finally passed.<br /><br />Pushing non-indigenous plantation species to meet afforestation targets and timber requirements will damage groundwater recharge and be counterproductive to public investments in such initiatives.<br /><br />Please <a href="https://thewire.in/environment/national-forest-policy-draft-2018-takes-one-step-forward-two-steps-back" title="https://thewire.in/environment/national-forest-policy-draft-2018-takes-one-step-forward-two-steps-back">click here</a> to read more. <br /></div>'
$lang = 'English'
$SITE_URL = 'https://im4change.in/'
$site_title = 'im4change'
$adminprix = 'admin'

include - APP/Template/Layout/printlayout.ctp, line 8
Cake\View\View::_evaluate() - CORE/src/View/View.php, line 1413
Cake\View\View::_render() - CORE/src/View/View.php, line 1374
Cake\View\View::renderLayout() - CORE/src/View/View.php, line 927
Cake\View\View::render() - CORE/src/View/View.php, line 885
Cake\Controller\Controller::render() - CORE/src/Controller/Controller.php, line 791
Cake\Http\ActionDispatcher::_invoke() - CORE/src/Http/ActionDispatcher.php, line 126
Cake\Http\ActionDispatcher::dispatch() - CORE/src/Http/ActionDispatcher.php, line 94
Cake\Http\BaseApplication::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/BaseApplication.php, line 235
Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
Cake\Routing\Middleware\RoutingMiddleware::__invoke() - CORE/src/Routing/Middleware/RoutingMiddleware.php, line 162
Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
Cake\Routing\Middleware\AssetMiddleware::__invoke() - CORE/src/Routing/Middleware/AssetMiddleware.php, line 88
Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
Cake\Error\Middleware\ErrorHandlerMiddleware::__invoke() - CORE/src/Error/Middleware/ErrorHandlerMiddleware.php, line 96
Cake\Http\Runner::__invoke() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 65
Cake\Http\Runner::run() - CORE/src/Http/Runner.php, line 51

National Forest Policy Draft 2018 Takes One Step Forward, Two Steps Back -Sushant Agarwal

-TheWire.in Unless consumer preferences shift to climate resistant crops, goals associated with the policy won’t materialize. On March 14, the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) uploaded a draft of the National Forest Policy 2018, three decades years after the last such policy. The draft appears to be an attempt to shift the approach towards forestry in India – specifically, from a local community- and ecology-centric approach emphasised in the 1988 policy to focusing on timber and forest-based industries. This is not the first time that the 1988 policy has been revisited to open the doors for forest-based industries. In 2016, a draft policy was published on the MoEFCC website only to be taken down after it was panned for excluding the Forest Rights Act and encouraging the entry of private industries in forest management. Even though the MoEFCC distanced itself from the draft, major chunks in the current draft have been copied from the 2016 document. While there is merit in new concepts being introduced – economic valuation of ecosystem services, forest certification, national forest ecosystem management information system, etc. – these do not necessitate a complete shift in policy focus. From tribal to timber The shift in approach to forestry proposed by the 2018 draft contrasts the guidelines specified in the 1988 policy. The significance attributed to requirements and rights of local, forest-dependent communities is being substituted by the demand for raw material from forest-based industries. The 1988 policy had sections called ‘Rights and Concessions’ and ‘Tribal People and Forests’, both of which have been replaced by ‘Production Forestry’, ‘Increase (sic) the productivity of forest plantations’ and ‘Facilitate forest industry interface’, all of which focus on increasing the timber yield. The draft stresses the “need to stimulate growth in the forest based industry sector” and encourages forest corporations and industrial units to “step up growing of industrial plantations”. The 1988 policy had specified that forest-based industry should “raise the raw material needed for meeting its own requirements” and that “no forest-based enterprise, except that at the village or cottage level, should be permitted in the future”. It had reiterated that the requirements of the local communities “should not be sacrificed for this purpose”. On the other hand, the livelihoods of local communities finds mention in the current draft only thrice: as passive recipients of benefits accruing from wildlife tourism, as labour for forest-based industries and in relation to non-timber forest produce (NTFP). On the last count, the draft policy mentions that business plans for NTFP will be developed based on “climate-smart value chains” but does not specify how any such initiative will be owned or its benefits shared. Second: the 1988 policy had articulated the need for a massive afforestation programme with particular emphasis on “fuelwood and fodder development” on all degraded and denuded lands in the country, including land available with forest corporations. The 2018 draft aims to use degraded land available with forest corporations to produce “quality timber” and proposes a public-private partnership model for afforestation in “degraded forest areas and forest areas available with Forest Development Corporations and outside forests”. Worse, the document also recommends “commercially important species like poplar and eucalyptus”, both known to be water-demanding species with deep root systems that deplete groundwater. In 2016, the Karnataka government had blamed eucalyptus trees for depleting groundwater in the Arkavathi basin, which led to a fall in water supply to Bengaluru. Both poplar and eucalyptus also have negative allelopathic properties – i.e. they don’t encourage vegetative growth under their cover. Over the years, numerous instances of gaur entering Kodaikanal in search of food have been attributed to the destruction of grasslands in shola forests by eucalyptus trees. In fact, a Parliamentary Standing Committee report on the Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority (CAMPA) Bill, 2015, highlighted this concern, recommending the clause  “particularly native species” be added after the word ‘plantation’ in two instances. However, this was not incorporated in the Act that was finally passed. Pushing non-indigenous plantation species to meet afforestation targets and timber requirements will damage groundwater recharge and be counterproductive to public investments in such initiatives. Please click here to read more.