India:
World Bank forestry project goes from bad to
worse
Indian NGO Samata and the UK's Forest
Peoples Programme have found that the resettlement action plan
(RAP) of the World Bank-funded Andhra Pradesh Community Forest
Management Project (APCFMP) undermines customary rights and livelihoods
and is in multiple breach of Bank safeguard policies on Indigenous
Peoples and Involuntary Resettlement. The participatory evaluation,
which was undertaken in seven villages in NE Andhra Pradesh in
November 2006, has discovered that many problems identified in
an earlier Samata-FPP study (see end notes) of this Bank forestry
project, which started in 2002 and is due to close at the end
of 2007, have not been resolved and in some cases have even worsened.
The study finds that affected Adivasi
communities have not been able to participate meaningfully in
the design of the Resettlement Action Plan (RAP), which under
the APCFMP is supposed to offset hardships suffered by Adivasi
families after losing shifting cultivation fields in forest land
under the previous Bank-assisted Joint Forest Management Project
(1994-2000).
Villagers have simply been told that
the Forest Department has money for Forest Protection Committee
members to do "land improvement" and "income generation"
activities under something called the "RAP". Many affected
communities do not understand what the RAP is about and why it
is part of the so-called “Community Forest Management” (CFM) project.
In two cases, NGOs contracted to implement the RAP have incorrectly
told villagers that the RAP support is a loan that must be wholly
or partly repaid by the villagers. In Chapariguda Village, Shrikakulam
District, for example, one RAP implementation NGO has allegedly
unjustly collected money from 18 Sávara families promising them
that through such payment they would get benefits under the RAP
scheme. The villagers have not seen the NGO staff person for 11
months and have no information since then about whether or not
their village has been included in the compensation scheme by
the Andhra Pradesh Forest Department (APFD).
Indigenous Adivasi villagers have not
been properly informed about their rights and entitlements. In
several villages visited by Samata and the FPP, people advise
that NGOs have pressed them to sign consent letters in order to
receive the "sanctioned" 25,000 R per family:
The NGO man took signatures and thumb
prints from all the people. He said: ‘Sign here to receive the
25,000 R benefit. There are no wages from the Village Forest Protection
Committee (VSS) now, so you should sign the document to get the
RAP benefit’. He told us that women will get saris and men will
receive cloth. He took 200 R from each family which he said was
necessary to receive RAP support. 18 families paid this man this
money! [Savara families in a meeting in Chapariguda village, November
2006]
We asked the NGO man why are you taking
our signatures? He replied: ‘The Forest Department has sanctioned
25,000 R per family. You will get that in materials. You just
need to sign for it. He did not explain anything about any legal
commitments to give up our forest land…If we had understood that
we were making legal commitments not to return to podu (shifting)
cultivation, we would have never signed.” [Adivasi villagers,
Narseepatnam Division,Vishakhapatnam District, Andhra Pradesh]
Contrary to the project loan agreement,
in all the villages visited there have been no detailed impact
assessments conducted for each family to assess what monetary
and non-monetary costs or hardship they have endured over the
last 10 years after losing their shifting cultivation lands. Local
NGOs have complained that flat-rate of compensation under the
RAP is unfair and inaccurate, but these complaints have been dismissed
by the Forest Department.
There are worrying signs that in some
villages families who became landless under the previous Bank
forestry project are being excluded from compensation under the
RAP altogether – in direct contravention of the loan agreement.
In Sagara village in Vishakhapatnam District 5th Scheduled Area,
for example, families who became landless after being obliged
to leave their shifting cultivation (podu) lands in the forest
under the World Bank-financed JFM project in the 1990s claim that
they have been excluded from RAP assistance. According to village
leaders, these families were not invited to the RAP meetings and
local APFD officials have dictated that compensation for damages
caused by the previous Bank project is only available for those
families who already have patta lands (permanent fields).
Community leaders and support NGOs point
out that the whole CFM project is out-of-date because it undermines
current governmental moves to go some way towards recognising
customary forest rights under the newly enacted Scheduled Tribes
and other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights)
Act (2006)). Given the inadequacy of the RAP and the serious flaws
in its design (not least arbitrary level of (flat rate) compensation),
a growing number of villages have refused to take part in the
RAP. Many local NGOs are also refusing to implement the resettlement
plan.
As the project nears closure (at the
end of 2007) villagers like those of Gorapadu village in Srikakulam
District protest that the World Bank-financed APCFM Project still
lacks transparency and has less community participation than the
previous Bank project! Village authorities have had to use
the Freedom of Information Law to obtain information on the Forest
Department’s use of project funds, and uncovered information that
has confirmed their fears of corruption. Local NGOs who have long
since withdrawn from the CFM project, say they will not be duped
next time by Bank promises of a new participatory approach to
forest management:
When we first heard of the CFM project,
we thought that the “community” would be central, and that communities
would gain control of forest land. We believed that the CFM project
would be nourishing, like the ghee-bottle gourd: full of rich
clarified butter oil. But when we drank from this gourd we found
its contents tasteless. There is no richness there. There is no
“community” in CFM. The goodness has been taken out [Sanjeeva
Rao, Velugu Association, November 2006]
Village authorities and support NGOs
are now taking their grievances about the RAP and the APCFM project
in general to implementing agencies and “independent” monitoring
bodies. However, at this stage, the communities hold out little
hope that they will secure genuine redress for the hardships caused
by existing and previous Bank forestry interventions. The early
signs are that the APFD will once again deny any problems with
the project and dismiss legitimate community grievances as unfounded
or “misinformed”.
By Tom Griffiths, FPP, e-mail: tom@forestpeoples.org.
Further Information:
Contact Ravi Rebbapragada and Bhanu
Kalluri at samatha@satyam.net.in
and Tom Griffiths at tom@forestpeoples.org
For a more detailed article, see Griffiths, T (2006) Going from
bad to Worse: World Bank forestry project in Andhra Pradesh fails
Adivasi communities,
http://www.forestpeoples.org/documents/ifi_igo/wb_andhra_pradesh_dec06_eng.shtml
For earlier studies of this same World
Bank project, see: Griffiths, T, Rebbapragada, R and Kalluri,
B (2005) “The Great Community Forest Management Swindle: a critical
evaluation of an ongoing World Bank project in Andhra Pradesh
(India)” WRM Bulletin No. 93 (April 2005). See also, FPP and Samata
(2005) Andhra Pradesh Community Forest Management Project – A
preliminary independent evaluation of a World Bank forestry project
http://www.forestpeoples.org/documents/ifi_igo/wb_
andhra_pradesh_cfm_proj_may_05_eng.pdf
