How India’s Green Credit Programme has Reopened Old Wounds for Adivasis in Gujarat’s Dang
As you leave behind the burgeoning Vansda city in the swiftly urbanising Valsad district, you cross over to The Dangs, Gujarat’s most forested region. The next 60 km are strikingly silent. Winding roads lead you through thick vegetation until you reach the district’s headquarters, Ahwa. After a brief two-kilometre (km) urban interruption, the forests return for another serene 50 km.
However, the peaceful facade of these forests—rich with resources such as medicinal plants used in most Ayurvedic medicine, high-quality finger millet, and the finest teak, amongst others—hides a history of conflict between the government and Dangi Adivasi groups such as the Bhils, Konkanis, Warlis, Kolchas, and Kathodis over forest land. For these communities, who have farmed and protected these lands for generations, the stakes are not just legal, but existential.
Dang district in Gujarat, with a population of approximately 2.2 lakh—nearly 94 per cent Adivasi—has been a hotbed of conflict over forest land. Recently, compensatory afforestation drives, under older legislations such as the Compensatory Afforestation Fund Act (CAFA) 2016 and the newly notified Green Credit Programme (GCP) 2023, are being sanctioned on land that Adivasi communities have been dependent on for their livelihood: they collect firewood for cooking and non-timber forest produce (NTFP). Once earmarked for a plantation, the land is fenced off with barbed wire, and communities are barred from entering it for at least three to four years till the saplings mature.
Also Read | Green approach
Having endured a history of violence from the forest department over plantations undertaken without the consent of Gram Sabhas or in compliance with the Forest Rights Act (FRA), 2006, the notification of GCP 2023 and its compensatory afforestation rules—rooted in the same contentious CAFA framework—has reignited anxieties in Dang.
Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority (CAMPA) was established in 2004, and operationalised after CAFA 2016, ostensibly to manage funds collected from industries diverting forest land, and allocate them for afforestation projects as an offset. But it soon became clear that the scheme was a vehicle for land grab and displacement. The Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MOEFCC) notified GCP in 2023 to incentivise corporations and individuals for voluntary environmental initiatives such as afforestation, water conservation, and waste management through a “market-based mechanism” where verified environmental activities earn tradable Green Credits. The same compensatory afforestation model, which has come under fire for displacing forest-dependent Adivasis, has been adopted by GCP.
‘They broke our legs’
Shimgya Malvis and Hansa Malvis, an elderly Adivasi couple, from Karadia village in Dang’s Ahwa Block, recount how the forest department tried to usurp, by force, their finger millet farm for a CAMPA plantation project in 2019. “The beat officers came down to our farm and broke our legs to threaten us not to use our land. I had to be hospitalised. We had to file an appeal with the DFO to be allowed to farm there again,” recalls Hansa, 58.
Nimpada villagers recount similar clashes over plantation projects. “Forest officials also discriminate against us because of our Adivasi identity and don’t consider us worthy of rights,” says Vamanbhai, a farmer from Nimpada village in Dang’s Ahwa Block.
Land that is clearly being farmed is being diverted into plantations without consent well into 2024. Just this May, in Chankhal, a farmer intercepted forest officials mapping his land for a plantation and could only halt the process by filing an appeal before the fence was constructed. Another farmer in Gadadwasn’t as fortunate: he intervened after barbed wires were erected. His appeal is still pending resolution, leaving him without access or income for a year—a significant blow for a community where 73.4 per cent are below the poverty line with an annual household incomes ranging from Rs.70,000 to Rs.1,00,000.
“Currently, temporary informal permissions for grazing have been hard-won through persistent resistance. Though Adivasis are legally entitled to collect NTFP from forests, a critical income stream, they are immediately met with violence from forest officials,” observes Mitesh Gayakvad, a Dangi lawyer and FRA activist associated with the Adivasi Mahasabha, Dang.
Also Read | Subverting FRA
Today, mapping of land where plantations could be raised for Green Credits is underway across 25 Indian States: Over 150 ha have been identified in Dang: And Dangis fear a repeat of past injustices.
On a 14 ha land parcel close to Chankhal, Ghubita, and Dhavalidod, it was found that land was earmarked for plantation by the forest department without consulting Gram Sabhas or Van Adhikar Samitis. The people of Chankhal now travel nearly 1 km longer, on foot, to collect firewood for cooking, or to graze cattle. The MoEFCC guidelines for the GCP also include provisions for fencing to protect “against anthropogenic pressure.”
Displacement over Development
The plantation model’s failures are compounded by mismanagement. Without care and maintenance, saplings are scorched in Dang’s harsh summers. “The success rate of government plantations is merely 30-35 per cent,” points out R.K. Nair, environmentalist and founder of reforestation-focused nonprofit Forest Creators. “The department has vested interests: to monetise the limited lands each division has under its jurisdiction; they pitch and pick up funds for the same land parcel several times over.” The 14-ha of thriving forest land fenced off between Chankhal and Ghubita for further plantation are a prime example of this tactic.
“The forest department has a commercial mindset, and insists on planting teak here, which is a government-regulated resource that civilians have no rights to use,” Gayakvad adds. Similar patterns are seen in States such as Chhattisgarh, where government schemes, including the CM Vriksh Sampada Yojana and Vruksharopan Protsahan Yojana, intended to encourage tree plantations on community or individual forest lands, are highly top-down, ordering the plantation of species such as eucalyptus and acacia that have drained the area’s groundwater.
The forest department remains India’s largest de jure and de facto zamindaar (landowner). “Forest land ownership should be democratised. Transferring conditional ownership to us under FRA for land we have historically farmed and conserved will not only improve the success of afforestation but also our livelihoods,” Gayakvad explains. “With Community Forest Rights (CFR), we can retain 100 per cent of NTFP revenue, a significant improvement over the current system where the forest department takes 80 per cent of the share.”
Species that grow faster should be planted, so valuable NTFP can be harvested and sold, Gayakvad adds. In Dangi villages where CFR was granted and Van Adhikar Samitis were activated, communities have voluntarily regulated bamboo cutting until it reaches a certain maturity, and have revived degraded forests. It shows we’re more capable of forest management when given a chance.”
An Adivasi woman builds a hut before the monsoon at Anjankund near Linga in The Dangs, Gujarat.
| Photo Credit:
VIJAY SONEJI
Unfulfilled Promises
FRA implementation in India has a murky underbelly: Dang district officials have illegally declined to accept any new FRA claims since 2010. And of the 7,341 FRA claims submitted across Ahwa, Subir, and Waghai blocks, nearly 4,110 were rejected, Gayakvad found, through an RTI filed in 2019, pointing to “an inherent lack of political will to part with land, and all the revenue potential it holds for them,” he believes.
FRA’s provisions state that communities can even file claims over “protected” or “reserved” forests, but this right is seldom recognised. While Dang has not accepted new applications, in States such as Chhattisgarh, if a plantation falls within the boundaries of lands communities have won CFRs over, that portion is excluded from the title.
Moreover, the first draft of GCP notified for public consultation in June 2023 even included a provision where private tree plantations can be treated as readymade afforested areas that can be in the credit market. This would have ensured communities with CFR are rewarded for reviving and conserving forests, but the provision disappeared from the final notified rules.
A Just Transition
Communities need support in three critical areas to manage forests effectively: technical skills, funding, and a robust conflict resolution mechanism. “Communities are eligible to receive wages, funding for fencing, saplings, water supply, etc. under schemes such as MGNREGS but are not granted that support,” says Anubhav Shori, who leads a programme with Ashoka Trust For Research In Ecology And The Environment (ATREE) modelled to plug systemic capacity, financial and institutional barriers Adivasi communities face in managing their forests in Bastar, Chhattisgarh.
Apart from the convergence of schemes that Adivasi communities are entitled to after gaining CFR, ATREE and the Tata Institute of Social Sciences have also developed a practical guide for policymakers to mitigate these challenges through a ‘Community Forest Resource Management Plan Template’. “The capacity building of Gram Sabhas for building their 10-year forest management plans after gaining CFR should be institutionalised. Rather than the forest department or State-controlled community bodies such as Joint Forest Management Committees, Gram Sabhas should be made eligible for receiving afforestation funds. Livelihood programmes for value addition and marketing of NTFP will lead to much more ecologically and socially just outcomes,” says Shori. The template also calls for setting up a conflict resolution framework for disputes stemming from interpersonal rivalries.
Plantations in Dang are a classic example of technocratic environmental policy. Adivasi communities, who have historically conserved India’s forests, must be placed at the centre of any solution. Supporting sustainable, community-driven forestry is not just a legal obligation but a moral responsibility.
Binjal Shah is a gender and social inclusion focused policy researcher and independent journalist working in the development sector in India. This story was produced with the help of the Thomson Reuters Foundation. The content is the sole responsibility of the author.
As you leave behind the burgeoning Vansda city in the swiftly urbanising Valsad district, you cross over to The Dangs, Gujarat’s most forested region. The next 60 km are strikingly silent. Winding roads lead you through thick vegetation until you reach the district’s headquarters, Ahwa. After a brief two-kilometre (km) urban interruption, the forests return for another serene 50 km.
However, the peaceful facade of these forests—rich with resources such as medicinal plants used in most Ayurvedic medicine, high-quality finger millet, and the finest teak, amongst others—hides a history of conflict between the government and Dangi Adivasi groups such as the Bhils, Konkanis, Warlis, Kolchas, and Kathodis over forest land. For these communities, who have farmed and protected these lands for generations, the stakes are not just legal, but existential.
Dang district in Gujarat, with a population of approximately 2.2 lakh—nearly 94 per cent Adivasi—has been a hotbed of conflict over forest land. Recently, compensatory afforestation drives, under older legislations such as the Compensatory Afforestation Fund Act (CAFA) 2016 and the newly notified Green Credit Programme (GCP) 2023, are being sanctioned on land that Adivasi communities have been dependent on for their livelihood: they collect firewood for cooking and non-timber forest produce (NTFP). Once earmarked for a plantation, the land is fenced off with barbed wire, and communities are barred from entering it for at least three to four years till the saplings mature.
Also Read | Green approach
Having endured a history of violence from the forest department over plantations undertaken without the consent of Gram Sabhas or in compliance with the Forest Rights Act (FRA), 2006, the notification of GCP 2023 and its compensatory afforestation rules—rooted in the same contentious CAFA framework—has reignited anxieties in Dang.
Compensatory Afforestation Fund Management and Planning Authority (CAMPA) was established in 2004, and operationalised after CAFA 2016, ostensibly to manage funds collected from industries diverting forest land, and allocate them for afforestation projects as an offset. But it soon became clear that the scheme was a vehicle for land grab and displacement. The Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MOEFCC) notified GCP in 2023 to incentivise corporations and individuals for voluntary environmental initiatives such as afforestation, water conservation, and waste management through a “market-based mechanism” where verified environmental activities earn tradable Green Credits. The same compensatory afforestation model, which has come under fire for displacing forest-dependent Adivasis, has been adopted by GCP.
‘They broke our legs’
Shimgya Malvis and Hansa Malvis, an elderly Adivasi couple, from Karadia village in Dang’s Ahwa Block, recount how the forest department tried to usurp, by force, their finger millet farm for a CAMPA plantation project in 2019. “The beat officers came down to our farm and broke our legs to threaten us not to use our land. I had to be hospitalised. We had to file an appeal with the DFO to be allowed to farm there again,” recalls Hansa, 58.
Nimpada villagers recount similar clashes over plantation projects. “Forest officials also discriminate against us because of our Adivasi identity and don’t consider us worthy of rights,” says Vamanbhai, a farmer from Nimpada village in Dang’s Ahwa Block.
Land that is clearly being farmed is being diverted into plantations without consent well into 2024. Just this May, in Chankhal, a farmer intercepted forest officials mapping his land for a plantation and could only halt the process by filing an appeal before the fence was constructed. Another farmer in Gadadwasn’t as fortunate: he intervened after barbed wires were erected. His appeal is still pending resolution, leaving him without access or income for a year—a significant blow for a community where 73.4 per cent are below the poverty line with an annual household incomes ranging from Rs.70,000 to Rs.1,00,000.
“Currently, temporary informal permissions for grazing have been hard-won through persistent resistance. Though Adivasis are legally entitled to collect NTFP from forests, a critical income stream, they are immediately met with violence from forest officials,” observes Mitesh Gayakvad, a Dangi lawyer and FRA activist associated with the Adivasi Mahasabha, Dang.
Also Read | Subverting FRA
Today, mapping of land where plantations could be raised for Green Credits is underway across 25 Indian States: Over 150 ha have been identified in Dang: And Dangis fear a repeat of past injustices.
On a 14 ha land parcel close to Chankhal, Ghubita, and Dhavalidod, it was found that land was earmarked for plantation by the forest department without consulting Gram Sabhas or Van Adhikar Samitis. The people of Chankhal now travel nearly 1 km longer, on foot, to collect firewood for cooking, or to graze cattle. The MoEFCC guidelines for the GCP also include provisions for fencing to protect “against anthropogenic pressure.”
Displacement over Development
The plantation model’s failures are compounded by mismanagement. Without care and maintenance, saplings are scorched in Dang’s harsh summers. “The success rate of government plantations is merely 30-35 per cent,” points out R.K. Nair, environmentalist and founder of reforestation-focused nonprofit Forest Creators. “The department has vested interests: to monetise the limited lands each division has under its jurisdiction; they pitch and pick up funds for the same land parcel several times over.” The 14-ha of thriving forest land fenced off between Chankhal and Ghubita for further plantation are a prime example of this tactic.
“The forest department has a commercial mindset, and insists on planting teak here, which is a government-regulated resource that civilians have no rights to use,” Gayakvad adds. Similar patterns are seen in States such as Chhattisgarh, where government schemes, including the CM Vriksh Sampada Yojana and Vruksharopan Protsahan Yojana, intended to encourage tree plantations on community or individual forest lands, are highly top-down, ordering the plantation of species such as eucalyptus and acacia that have drained the area’s groundwater.
The forest department remains India’s largest de jure and de facto zamindaar (landowner). “Forest land ownership should be democratised. Transferring conditional ownership to us under FRA for land we have historically farmed and conserved will not only improve the success of afforestation but also our livelihoods,” Gayakvad explains. “With Community Forest Rights (CFR), we can retain 100 per cent of NTFP revenue, a significant improvement over the current system where the forest department takes 80 per cent of the share.”
Species that grow faster should be planted, so valuable NTFP can be harvested and sold, Gayakvad adds. In Dangi villages where CFR was granted and Van Adhikar Samitis were activated, communities have voluntarily regulated bamboo cutting until it reaches a certain maturity, and have revived degraded forests. It shows we’re more capable of forest management when given a chance.”
An Adivasi woman builds a hut before the monsoon at Anjankund near Linga in The Dangs, Gujarat.
| Photo Credit:
VIJAY SONEJI
Unfulfilled Promises
FRA implementation in India has a murky underbelly: Dang district officials have illegally declined to accept any new FRA claims since 2010. And of the 7,341 FRA claims submitted across Ahwa, Subir, and Waghai blocks, nearly 4,110 were rejected, Gayakvad found, through an RTI filed in 2019, pointing to “an inherent lack of political will to part with land, and all the revenue potential it holds for them,” he believes.
FRA’s provisions state that communities can even file claims over “protected” or “reserved” forests, but this right is seldom recognised. While Dang has not accepted new applications, in States such as Chhattisgarh, if a plantation falls within the boundaries of lands communities have won CFRs over, that portion is excluded from the title.
Moreover, the first draft of GCP notified for public consultation in June 2023 even included a provision where private tree plantations can be treated as readymade afforested areas that can be in the credit market. This would have ensured communities with CFR are rewarded for reviving and conserving forests, but the provision disappeared from the final notified rules.
A Just Transition
Communities need support in three critical areas to manage forests effectively: technical skills, funding, and a robust conflict resolution mechanism. “Communities are eligible to receive wages, funding for fencing, saplings, water supply, etc. under schemes such as MGNREGS but are not granted that support,” says Anubhav Shori, who leads a programme with Ashoka Trust For Research In Ecology And The Environment (ATREE) modelled to plug systemic capacity, financial and institutional barriers Adivasi communities face in managing their forests in Bastar, Chhattisgarh.
Apart from the convergence of schemes that Adivasi communities are entitled to after gaining CFR, ATREE and the Tata Institute of Social Sciences have also developed a practical guide for policymakers to mitigate these challenges through a ‘Community Forest Resource Management Plan Template’. “The capacity building of Gram Sabhas for building their 10-year forest management plans after gaining CFR should be institutionalised. Rather than the forest department or State-controlled community bodies such as Joint Forest Management Committees, Gram Sabhas should be made eligible for receiving afforestation funds. Livelihood programmes for value addition and marketing of NTFP will lead to much more ecologically and socially just outcomes,” says Shori. The template also calls for setting up a conflict resolution framework for disputes stemming from interpersonal rivalries.
Plantations in Dang are a classic example of technocratic environmental policy. Adivasi communities, who have historically conserved India’s forests, must be placed at the centre of any solution. Supporting sustainable, community-driven forestry is not just a legal obligation but a moral responsibility.
Binjal Shah is a gender and social inclusion focused policy researcher and independent journalist working in the development sector in India. This story was produced with the help of the Thomson Reuters Foundation. The content is the sole responsibility of the author.
