Govt urged to avoid foreign funds to manage forests

mysore: a day's seminar on joint forest planning and management (jfpm) organised jointly by various ngos here on tuesday strongly urged the government not to borrow foreign funds for the management forests in the country and bring out a white paper on the money spent on jfpm in karnataka. in a resolution passed by the participating ngo leaders, they urged the government to discontinue the "bankrupt" policies of jfpm and involve the secondary interested groups to make the programme a success and result-oriented.the leaders even suggested the government to impose a small amount of "forest tax" on the people living in cities, towns and the other urban agglomerations, who are directly or indirectly dependent on the forest produce. expressing concern over the lack of transparency in the programmes connected with jfpm, which is being implemented in the state from 1993, with an aid of rs 690 crore from british and various other foreign agencies, the meet said, the government instead of treating afforestation and forest conservation activities as "fringe" activity, it should consider them as main development aspect. strongly advocating the right of the people of the concerned area on respective forest areas and national parks, the ngo leaders said, the people should have freedom to grow trees of their liking. they demanded that the government should also bring all government lands under single forest policy and amend the laws related to use of forest produces by the people involved in their production. besides these rights, various government departments should have a convergence of views and opinions, they said, adding that the aborigines and tribals living in forest areas should have their control and right over the forest under their jurisdiction. the leaders said, the government should involve the people to the fullest capacity to make this programme a success. later briefing reporters about the deliberations, ngo leader m.k. bhat of development support initiative said, "though the forest department has constituted more than 2,700 village forest committees under the jfpm and has spent more than rs 690 crore, the government has neither evaluated the scheme nor found out the lacunae in implementing this scheme." "it is a fact that in some villages and areas, the vfcs have succeeded in checking the deforestation and smuggling of wood from their areas, but majority of the vfcs have become defunct," he noted, adding that the target-oriented approach of the state government and forest department officials is responsible for the failure of this scheme. srikanth of deed and joint convenor of national front for tribal joint action, who welcomed the "tree patta scheme for tribals" (ownership rights of trees for tribals) urged the government to extend this scheme to the tribals living inside the national park areas too. "as large number of tribals of mysore, chamarajnagar, kodagu and chikamaglur district live in national park areas, the scheme will serve no purpose, if they are excluded from the ambit of this new order," he said, adding that the problems of the tribal in these national parks will continue to exist if the order is not amended. najundaiah of federation of voluntary organisations for rural development, p.k. ramu of nagarhole budakattu hakku sthapana samiti, malleshappa of tribal action committee, and vithal nanchi of state tribals forum attended and presented their views in the seminar.