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The Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006, is a key piece of forest legislation passed in India on 18 December 2006. It has also been called the Forest Rights Act, the Tribal Rights Act, the Tribal Bill, and the Tribal Land Act. The law concerns the rights of forest-dwelling communities to land and other resources, denied to them over decades as a result of the continuance of colonial forest laws in India. Supporters of the Act claim that it will redress the "historical injustice" committed against forest dwellers, while including provisions for making conservation more effective and more transparent. The demand for the law has seen massive national demonstrations involving hundreds of thousands of people.〔(Press releases on the Forest Rights Act by the Campaign for Survival and Dignity )〕 However, the law has also been the subject of considerable controversy in the English press in India. Opponents of the law claim it will lead to massive forest destruction and should be repealed (see below). A little over one year after it was passed, the Act was notified into force on 31 December 2007. On 1 January 2008, this was followed by the notification of the (Rules ) framed by the Ministry of Tribal Affairs to supplement the procedural aspects of the Act.〔(Ministry of Tribal Affairs )〕 == Background == India's forests are home to crores of people, including many Scheduled Tribes, who live in or near the forest areas of the country. Nearly 250 million people live in and around forests in India, of which the estimated indigenous ''Adivasi'' or tribal population stands at about 100 million. To put these numbers in perspective, if considered a nation by themselves, they would form the 13th largest country in the world, even though they cannot be depicted as representing any singular, monolithic culture.〔http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/article7358626.ece?m=dtp〕 Forests provide sustenance in the form of minor forest produce, water, grazing grounds and habitat for shifting cultivation. Moreover, vast areas of land that may or may not be forests are classified as "forest" under India's forest laws, and those cultivating these lands are technically cultivating "forest land". Since times immemorial, the tribal communities of India have had an integral and close knit relationship with the forests and have been dependent on the forests for livelihoods and existence. The relationship was mutually beneficial and not one sided. However, rights were rarely recognized by the authorities and in the absence of real ownership of the land, the already marginalized local dwellers suffered.〔http://greencleanguide.com/2012/12/16/forest-rights-act-part-1-2/〕 The reason for this latter phenomenon is India's forest laws. India's forests are governed by two main laws, the Indian Forest Act, 1927 and the Wild Life (Protection) Act, 1972. The former empowers the government to declare any area to be a reserved forest, protected forest or village forest. The latter allows any area to be constituted as a "protected area", namely a national park, wildlife sanctuary, tiger reserve or community conservation area.〔(Legislations on Environment, Forests and Wildlife, from Ministry of Environment and Forests )〕 Under these laws, the rights of people living in or depending on the area to be declared as a forest or protected area are to be "settled" by a "forest settlement officer." This basically requires that officer to enquire into the claims of people to land, minor forest produce, etc., and, in the case of claims found to be valid, to allow them to continue or to extinguish them by paying compensation. Studies have shown that in many areas this process either did not take place at all or took place in a highly faulty manner. Thus 82.9% of the forest blocks in undivided Madhya Pradesh had not been settled as of December 2003, while all the hilly tracts of Odhissa were declared government forests without any survey.〔("Bad in Law", Madhu Sarin, World Bank website )〕 In Odhissa, around 40% of the government forests are "deemed reserved forests" which have not been surveyed.〔("Dispossessed and displaced: A brief paper on tribal issues in Orissa", Kundan Kumar, Vasundhara )〕 Those whose rights are not recorded during the settlement process are susceptible to eviction at any time. This "legal twilight zone" leads to harassment, evictions, extortion of money and sexual molestation of forest dwellers by forest officials, who wield absolute authority over forest dwellers' livelihoods and daily lives. The Statement of Objects and Reasons of the Forest Rights Act describes it as a law intended to correct the "historical injustice" done to forest dwellers by the failure to recognise their rights.〔(The Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers Act, 2006 )〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「The Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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