Context: Conservation laws rooted in colonial legacy, often exclude and criminalise Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities (IPLCs), despite their proven role in biodiversity protection. India’s Forest Rights Act (FRA) 2006 is a shift towards rights-based, community-led conservation framework for truly sustainable and just environmental governance.
Relevance of the Topic: Prelims: Key facts related to FRA, Biological Diversity Act, CBD, KMGBF, OECMs
Fortress Conservation Model
- Conservation laws and policies across the world, often rooted in colonial legacy, viewed nature as something to be preserved in its pristine form, free from human presence.
- This has led to the "fortress conservation" model, where large tracts of land are designated as Protected Areas with centralised state control.
- Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities (IPLCs) despite their historical and cultural ties to these landscapes are frequently displaced, disenfranchised, and criminalised as encroachers.
- Impact of Fortress Conservation Model: The Fortress model has displaced 10 to 20 million people globally. In India, >6 lakh people are estimated to have been displaced from protected areas under laws such as the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972, and initiatives like Project Tiger.
Presently, many international legislative institutions are recognising the crucial role of indigenous people and local communities in biodiversity conservation. This shift is visible in international conventions like the Convention on Biological Diversity and domestic legislations such as India’s Forest Rights Act, 2006.
Legal Frameworks Supporting Inclusive Conservation
1. Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD):
- Adopted at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, and came into force in 1993.
- Members: 196 countries including India have ratified CBD, making it a universal treaty.
- CBD’s main objectives: conservation, sustainable use, and fair and equitable sharing of the benefits of biodiversity, including landscapes, species, and genetic resources.
- CBD has urged countries to respect, preserve and maintain knowledge, innovations and practices of indigenous and local communities embodying traditional lifestyles relevant for the conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity.
- CBD’s COP-16 summit established a permanent subsidiary body for IPLCs. This body made the CBD the only UN Convention with a dedicated platform to implement the rights of IPLCs.
2. UN Declaration on Rights of Indigenous People:
- In 2007, the UN passed its Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People to address the discrimination IPLCs face throughout the world and to emphasise their right to maintain and strengthen their own institutions, cultures and traditions.
- India voted in favour of UNDRIP but does not use the term “indigenous peoples” domestically. Instead, it offers constitutional safeguards to Scheduled Tribes through: Article 244 & 244A (Schedule V and VI), Panchayats (Extension to the Scheduled Areas) Act 1996 and Forest Rights Act (FRA) 2006.
3. Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KMGBF):
- CBD signatories adopted this at their COP-15 summit in 2022 in Canada. It seeks to integrate and ensure equitable representation of IPLCs and their traditional knowledge in the implementation of the framework.
- It envisions a world living in harmony with nature with a list of 23 targets to achieve it. An important one is titled ‘30 by 30,’ i.e. countries committing to bring 30% of the world’s land and marine areas under their protection by 2030.
- The targets also mention consultation and inclusion of IPLCs, their cultural practices, and their traditional knowledge.
India’s Domestic Frameworks to support Inclusive Conservation:
As per 2011 Census, India hosts around 104 million tribals, 8.6% of the then Indian population - effectively the world’s largest population of indigenous people in a single country.
1. Biological Diversity Act, 2002:
- India enacted the Act in 2002 to implement the objectives of the CBD.
- The Act provides for a three-tier institutional system to promote the conservation of local plants, animals, and habitats including documenting biodiversity-related traditional knowledge.
- National Biodiversity Authority at the Centre.
- State Biodiversity Boards in the States.
- Biodiversity Management Committees operate at the local level.
2. India’s Forest Rights Act, 2006:
- Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, or The FRA recognises historical injustices suffered by Adivasis and forest dwellers.
- It recognises and secures the rights of forest dwelling tribal communities and other traditional forest dwellers to forest resources.
- It recognises 13 kinds of rights, including the right of access to biodiversity and community, right to intellectual property and traditional knowledge related to biodiversity, and cultural diversity, and right to protect, regenerate, or conserve or manage any community forest resource that they have been traditionally protecting and conserving for sustainable use.
- Research estimates that FRA has the potential to protect at least 4 crore hectares of forest land, including existing protected areas. To enable it to do so without also dispossessing the stewards of this land, other laws and policies must comply with the FRA.
3. National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan:
- India came up with a list of 23 targets under its updated National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan (NBSAPs) that it aims to achieve by 2030.
Challenges to Inclusive Conservation in India:
- Even though updated NBSAPs emphasise a paradigm shift towards a bottoms-up governance approach (as in the FRA), it excessively favours State forest departments and State-led conservation measures over decentralised approaches.
- India’s conservation efforts often overlook forest dwellers’ legal rights by creating new biodiversity mechanisms without settling claims under the FRA or securing Gram Sabha consent, undermining inclusive and participatory conservation.
- Traditional access to forests is still treated as encroachment in many laws.
Thus, for all these international victories, the struggle for the rights of IPLCs in conservation approaches is far from over. The premise of the ‘30 by 30’ agenda itself jeopardises these rights because it promotes the idea that simply expanding protected areas will arrest biodiversity loss.
OECMs: New Models for Conservation
- The KMGBF makes provisions to move beyond protected areas through its Other Effective Area-based Conservation Measures (OECMs).
- Each OECM is to be identified by four features: should not already be a protected area; is already governed and managed by governments, private entities or IPLCs; makes sustainable efforts to conserve biodiversity; and protects ecosystem functions as well as cultural, socio-economic, etc. values.
- India plans to notify the OECM guidelines soon. Some experts have expressed optimism that this is an opportunity to involve communities in conservation.
However, without proper checks and legal recognition of rights, OECMs can become tools of exploitation.