PANJIM: The Supreme Court rejected the NGO Goa Foundation’s appeal to revisit the Goa government’s criteria to identify private forests, stating that the existing criteria for identification of private forests in the State are adequate and valid, and hence require no alteration.
While referring to the Ministry of Environment, Forest & Climate Change (MoEF&CC) guidelines, as well as the Scheduled Tribes & other Traditional Forest Dwellers(Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006, the three-member Bench stated that if the criteria i.e., the canopy density of 0.4 and minimum area of 5 ha is reduced to 0.1 and 1 ha as contended, respectively, then it will result in the plantations of coconut, orchards, bamboo, palm, supari, cashew, etc, grown by farmers on their private lands into the category of ‘private forest’.
The effect would be that even for a minor development on the concerned land, the permission of the government under the FCA 1980, for the landholders would become indispensable. It would be necessary to note that none of the States have adopted the criteria proposed by the appellant, namely the 0.1 density criteria, as it would result in opening a Pandora’s box, and it would result in all the States undertaking the task of reassessing the forest area all over again which has since been settled based on existing criteria, the Court said while dismissing the appeal.
The Court observed that the appellant was attempting to take a contrary stand on the issue of criteria for the identification of forests, namely, suggesting a change in criteria for the identification of deemed forests under private ownership. On the one hand, the appellant is challenging the criteria adopted by the Sawant and Karapurkar Committees for the identification of among other things private forests and on the other hand has relied on the same criteria adopted by these two committees for the identification of forests, including private forests, before the National Green Tribunal (NGT). Thus, the appellant cannot be permitted to approbate and reprobate.
The Court also recalled that vide its order dated December 12, 1996 had delegated the task of identifying forest areas to Expert Committees to be constituted by State governments, thereby recognising that there can be no uniform criteria for such identification across the country.
The Goa Foundation had challenged the criteria issued by the Goa government and others for the identification of ‘forests’ in the State.
The State counsel said that all open forest areas (10% to 40 % canopy density)under private ownership shall be identified as deemed forest in the State whereas most of this open forest area is a habitation area having trees planted traditionally by the people around their houses for meeting their daily needs of food, fruits, firewood, small timber, agriculture implements etc; if a person wants to plant 10 trees preferred by him like mango, tamarind, teak, jackfruit, chickoo, kathal, etc, in his land of one hectare for the above-mentioned needs it will cross the threshold of 0.1 canopy density and be declared as private forests; it will be a huge disincentive for the small land owners.
