Forest rights and wrongs

In 2014, TERI cautioned that the wrong recognition of rights under the Scheduled Tribe and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights Act, 2006 (FRA) would leave forest-dependent people vulnerable to adverse impacts of greenhouse gas emissions. Indeed, the wrong recognition of individual forest rights (IFR) under the FRA has made a large chunk of the country's tribal population participants in a climate change disaster. Forests conserve and provide water for humans, cattle, agriculture and industry. The loss of forest cover to encroachment is also a lost opportunity for carbon sequestration. TERI's report provided satellite images of land patches where forest cover existed before 2005 but was flattened later - the report covered claims made up to 2011 on 14,668 hectares (ha). The analysis was based on a scrutiny of 66,300 FRA rights on 10,7897 ha spread across 19 Maharashtra districts.