Privatising the Common Property Resources in the Name of Redistributive Justice - Challenges Posed by FRA

Abstract

The FRA 2006 basically provides for the legal framework for claiming the "forest land" by individual and community and is considered by many groups to be major pro-poor institutional reform in the governance of the forests. It also expects communities to play an important role in sustaining such forest ecosystems by expecting them to do "conservation" activities as a matter of "right" and in theory gives an opportunity not only to secure local communities' right to access forests by conferring them a rights-based framework for conservation and natural resource governance. But there are some incongruity and ambiguities in the FRA which may lead to mass scale privatization of the most useful common property resource i.e. the forest and the consequent threat of ecological losses - with grave economic and social consequences, both for current and future. The paper attempted to highlight the various debatable aspects of the FRA, particularly those related to ensuring the "sustainability" etc.