ESTIMATING AND MAPPING CFR POTENTIAL

The Community Forest Resource (CFR) rights provisions of the Forest Rights Act 2006 (FRA) have the potential to transform forest governance in India, as they decentralize the authority of forest management to Gram Sabhas. However, their implementation has been quite poor. One of the reasons is the lack of information regarding how much forest land might be eligible for CFR claims and in which villages. As a result, there is no pressure on the implementing agency to make progress towards a clear target.

This study estimates (a lower bound for) the potential area that could come under CFR rights and the locations of the villages with this CFR potential in four important central Indian states: Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, and Maharashtra. This is done using a combination of Census of India data, maps, and Geographic Information System (GIS) techniques.

Given the differences in the manner in which forests have been demarcated in the region, the villages and the area of CFR potential were estimated in two parts. First, all the villages that, as per Census 2011, have more than 10 hectares of forest area within their revenue boundaries were identified. These villages form one part of the estimate. The second part consists of identifying villages that are in or adjacent to Reserve Forests located outside village revenue boundaries. For such villages, it is assumed (based on field observations) that their customary boundary would extend to at least 2 kilometers into the forest; this area is estimated using GIS.

Several challenges were encountered while implementing the methodology. It was difficult to obtain good quality, error-free Census village boundary maps. In many cases, the latest Census maps incorrectly allocated large areas of Reserve Forest to erstwhile tiny Forest Villages.

There are also peculiarities and errors in Census data, such as the presence of villages with both zero area and zero population, or cases of under-reporting of forest area. While some of these errors could be rectified, the estimates are nevertheless subject to uncertainties, especially in the case of Madhya Pradesh.