. Plantation in the Name of Afforestation
In Section 3 entitled Essential Principles of Forest Management, Clause 3.2 states "Productivity of forest plantations will be increased through scientific and technological interventions so as to encourage the use of timber so that the dependency on other High carbon footprints wood substitutes is reduced."
In Clause 3.5 it is stated" Afforestation with suitable species will be intensified. "The 1988 policy on this issue had specifically a clause which stated" no exotic species should be introduced through public or private sources unless long term scientific trials ..have established that they are suitable and have no adverse impact on native vegetation and environment." Historically we have examples such as when the British planted pine trees for commercial use across Himachal Pradesh destroying native vegetation and much else. But this Policy draft has no such concerns.
In the Section on Strategy 4.(d) titled Increase the Productivity of Forest Plantations, the kind of "suitable species" is stated as "commercially important species" like "teak, sal, sisham, poplar, gmelina, eucalyptus .." can be introduced and then the key sentence "Private participation models will be developed for undertaking afforestation."
Taking this further in the Section 4.2 titled New Thrust Areas in Forest and Tree Management it is stated "the demand for timber and other forest produce is showing an increasing trend and is likely to continue as the economy
grows. ..States would be encouraged to further develop their plantation programmes. Clause 4.4 states "there is a need to stimulate growth in the forest based industry sector. Forest corporations and industrial units need to step up growing of industrial plantations for meeting the demand of raw materials."
These formulations show that the Draft policy is to meet the expectations of corporate interests to harness natural resources for their private gain and profit.
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