Says CSE’s Director Anil Agarwal "Any Proposal to give state forest lands as captive plantation to the industry will mean that our national goal proposed first in 1952, and later reiterated by the National Forest Policy (NFP) adopted in 1988, of bringing one third of India’s land under tree cover will remain a distant dream". Says the joint letter "At present only 23% of India’s land is under state forests. So even if India’s entire degraded state owned forest land is afforested we will still not meet the national target. At least 10% of the country’s private and revenue lands will have to be brought under tree cover to reach the national target". This means a promotion of farm forestry, that is encouraging the farmers to grow trees on their degraded private lands on a wide scale.

The Joint letter cautions "any revision of NFP to open the state owned forest lands for captive plantations by the industry will act as a major setback to achieve this national goal since it would definitely have a discouraging impact on the farm forestry". Farmers would stop growing trees, as with their raw material needs being met from captive plantations, industry will not buy pulpwood grown by the farmers or would force prices down to levels that it would be unremunerative to the farmers". This would also put the Joint forest Management Programme taken up on around 2.5-3 million hectares in jeopardy since the market for this wood would also crash.

Asserting that the industry’s raw material needs should be met, the letter suggests that the industry source its raw materials from farm forestry which would not only lead to ecological benefits in terms of increase in tree cover and greening of degraded private lands but also social benefits such as increased incomes of the farmers and increased employment. The joint letter recalls that Industry has made innovative efforts to involve the farmers to grow industrial raw materials in farm lands. The industry would give up such efforts if they get captive raw materials. Says the letter "We definitely see a vibrant role for the corporate sector....... but not in the form as demanded by the industry" but by creating a market for the wood grown by the farmers. 

On the other hand the Captive Plantations would impoverish the millions of poor people and tribals dependent upon the state forest lands for their livelihood and fuel, fodder and other needs. Instead the joint letter calls for rejuvenating the state forest lands by involvement of the communities by giving them proper economic stakes and technological inputs.  

The joint letters makes an appeal to the Prime Minister to not to revise the present National Forest Policy but to implement it. It says that if afforestation efforts are continued in the way in the direction as the present NFP suggests, then it would meet the country’s ecological, social and industrial needs.  

Background to the Captive plantations debate :

The proposal to give state forest lands as captive plantations to the paper and pulp industry is not a new one. Time and again every government which has come to power, has put it forward over the last ten years. It was proposed for the first time, by the Wastelands Development Board in 1986. However it could not go through, due to the wide spread opposition from the grassroots and certain sections of the forest bureaucracy. Further the then Prime Minister the late Rajiv Gandhi himself was not in favour of such a proposal.  

It came up again during the tenure of Kamalnath who put forward the proposal again in 1995. A cabinet committee was set up to look into the proposal. Although the committee did not give its final report, the then senior ministers in the committee, including Sitaram Kesri has opposed the proposal, which had to be shelved finally.

A Social Audit Panel set up by the Ministry of Environment and Forests, early this year and headed by Justice R S Pathak, former Chief Justice of India had also recommended strongly against captive plantations on state forest lands. Further a committee was set up in June under the Chairmanship of Dr N C Saxena, Secretary Rural Development, to look into this issue. This committee has yet to give its report.