SPECIAL ARTICLE Economic & Political Weekly EPW JANUARY 23, 2016 vol lI no 4 49 Continuing the Forest Conservation Debate Rhetoric and Reality of Green India Mission Sumana Datta This research was supported by the funding from the Sustainable Consumption Institute, Manchester University (UK). I am grateful to Dan Brockington and Philip Woodhouse for providing critical feedback during the research. Sumana Datta (datta.sumana@gmail.com) currently works on environmental governance, especially common pool resource management. She has worked with TERI and Winrock International India, New Delhi, and was also a member of the Centre for Doctoral Training in Manchester University. The National Mission for a Green India proposal, released under the aegis of the National Action Plan on Climate Change, is a significant attempt to integrate the mechanism of ecosystem services in the overall framework of forest conservation in India. It suggests a series of strategies for improving the quality of forests and proposes reforms for strengthening joint forest management. This paper discusses the likely impact of these reforms on current forest use practice. It does so by analysing the various provisions of the mission and how they support or contradict ongoing forest uses. It also explores whether the institutional reforms proposed in the Green India Mission have adequately addressed the current limitations of JFM. 1 Introduction T he approach to forest conservation in India has taken several twists and turns in the past three decades. The National Forest Policy (1988) signified the first critical transition from the traditional exclusionist paradigm to com- munity-oriented conservation practices (Jodha 2000; Gadgil and Guha 1995). In 1990, joint forest management ( JFM) guidelines (1990) were drafted for managing degraded forest areas and the next year, an integrated conservation and devel- opment plan for the management of protected areas was drawn up. The following decades saw several policy initiatives and legislation, both inside and outside the forest department, to devolve forest rights at the grass roots and link such rights with conservation. The guidelines of the National Afforestation and Eco-development Board (2002), the Biological Diversity Conservation Act (2002) and the Panchayats (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act ( PESA) of 1996 are some examples. Such policies and legislation did achieve some success in regulating livelihood-oriented forest uses (Springate-Baginski and Blaikie 2007) and brought visible changes to the state– people relationship (Jodha 2000; Gadgil and Guha 1995). But the role of communities remains inequitable in matters related to ownership, enforcement and benefit-sharing. Sundar (2000) argues that JFM failed to bring about structural equities to forest governance because communities were not involved in decision-making capacity. Banerjee (2007) lists lack of pro- gressive reforms—empowering people to manage forests— and the absence of a bottom-up approach in the preparation of working plans as JFM’ s important constraints. Springate- Baginski and Blaikie (2007) identify insecure community tenure and lack of a legal anchor as the programme’s other shortcom- ings. Through empirical analysis, Bose (2009), Mansuri and Rao (2004), and Kumar (2002) illustrate that the JFM regime reflects the social preference of the rural non-poor; they argue that the poor are the net losers in this programme. After such disappointments with the performance of com- munity conservation policies, the Government of India passed the Forest Rights Act (2006). The act is seen as the first legislation to recognise the rights of indigenous and forest- fringe communities in India over forests (Gadgil 2007). In spite of uneven implementation across regions and negligible progress in recognising community ownership ( GoI 2014), the act generated optimism amongst stakeholders. Gadgil (2007: 2067) believes the act would “put our forests and biodiversity resource management on a sounder footing to