KARACHI: Giving an insight into how Sindh was robbed of its forests over the decades, a report recently submitted by the forest and wildlife secretary to the Supreme Court and the chief minister says that there has been an 80 per cent decline in the actual forest cover since 1971 and the present forest size of 100,000 acres — less than 0.3pc of the entire surface area — can’t even be seen on a province-wide map.

Titled ‘Fading forest of Sindh’, the report describes “illegal encroachment of forests” as the biggest problem being faced by the department as it estimates that an alarming 145,245 acres of forestland is under illegal possession and “this trend is increasing day by day”.

It also points to irregularities on part of the government and states that “the revenue department has also been making illegal allotments of land owned by the forest department and putting it to other institutional uses without any consent from the forest department.

‘64,500 acres of land has been transferred from the forest department’

“There are also instances where the forestland has been permanently transferred to private parties, in violation of state policy and neglecting clear-cut instructions of the superior courts issued from time to time. The extent of such land is also quite huge. According to the chief conservator of forests, 64,500 acres of land has been transferred away from the forest department,” it says.

The old records, according to the report, show that the total forest cover in Sindh was around 489,000 acres in the 1970s.

Excluding the present forest cover, the forests either illegally occupied or allotted, the remaining ‘forests’ have no vegetation today.

Massive ‘encroachment’

According to the report, forests in Sindh saw a steady decline over the past 47 years. The reasons leading to this situation, it says, were both internal and external. The department started decaying due to corruption, poor governance, favouritism, politicisation and weak control as well as due to external interventions in the shape of faulty policies and lack of political will to reform the department. All these factors acted as a catalyst for deforestation.

“Tens of thousands of trees were brought down and sold commercially to generate revenue under the so-called utilisation policy. While generating financial gains, the department completely closed its eyes to the environmental loss (that would occur) due to chopping of standing trees. The policy was to cut the trees and sell with utter disregard to regenerating the forests,” it says.

Another gruesome outcome of this policy, the report says, emerged in the shape of illegal encroachment. Since there was no effective regeneration policy, most of the land which had tree cover on it was left vacant and devoid of any plantation, leaving it at the mercy of nearby landowners to gradually take over the land for agriculture purpose.

“The department, due to various reasons known to all, remained indifferent at best. The mode of taking over state land gradually changed from surreptitious to blatant; whereas the use of forestland in most cases remained agriculture barring few instances where forest land is being used for residential and commercial purpose in connivance with local revenue authorities. The extent of such encroachments is massive,” it says.

The report also provides a district-wise breakup of forest land under illegal possession that includes area illegally allotted by the revenue department.

Lease policy

On the lease policy introduced in 2004-05 by the government in an attempt to get back forests through agro-forestry, the report says that it was never implemented in true spirit owing to political interference and incompetence of department’s field staff.

Leases, it says, have so far been granted to around 3,500 lessees, allowing them to use nearly 72,000 acres of forestland (the land granted on lease was often without standing trees) made available for agro-forestry by the cabinet.

There have been at least two issues with leases, according to the report. In many cases leases have been granted to benefit the potential lessee as land with standing green trees was given away for agro-forestry. Second, the more important problem is violation of lease terms and insensitivity of the field staff towards such violations.

“The divisional forest officer has the authority to cancel the lease grant on his own. But, regrettably it is submitted that the department is lagging behind on this aspect as well. In many cases, if a lease has been cancelled, the spirit of authority was often not to secure a forest but to save individual’s interests.”

Recommendations

On illegally encroached land, the report talks of difficulties in recovering the encroached forestland and post-recovery issues as has been indicated by recent efforts.

“The outcome was not more than 7 to 10pc retrieval of the encroached land. Most of which is still devoid of forests due to lack of resources and eventually its environmental value is zero,” the report says.

The report suggests that illegally encroached land should be recovered and put for agro-forestry auction for five years, with stricter and more effective lease terms of growing at least 50pc of forest on the land granted on lease.

“If the department is able to implement this on entire encroached land, it means in five years’ time this will fetch about Rs2 billion to Rs2.5bn (at the existing rate) apart from a forest cover of 72,000 acres. The land, which is not auctioned, will be retrieved from encroachers using state machinery and law enforcement agencies,” the report suggests.

It also recommends GIS mapping of all forests with periodical monitoring, community participation in forest management as well as revision of lease policy.

“No tree shall be allowed to be cut down in any ordinary situation. In case it is extremely expedient due to development activity then the executing department shall be responsible to plant and raise 100 new trees for one tree removed, at a spot identified by the respective district forest officer,” it says.

Published in Dawn, November 29th, 2017