Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: The Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006 (FRA) sought to democratize India's forest governance by recognizing traditional rights of marginalized communities. However, this paper critically examines the Act through the lens of contemporary commons governance theory and ecological science. It argues that the FRA’s atomistic structure, static rights framework, ecological blind spots, and elite capture tendencies create conditions ideal for the systematic degradation of India's public forests. By fragmenting landscapes, ignoring adaptive management needs, and severing forests from global ecological roles, FRA risks transforming India's commons into irreversible ecological ruins. Unless reimagined, FRA will be a historical case of how rights-based policy, absent ecological scaffolding, can doom natural resource systems.
Source: Biophilia Insights
Author: Hari Shanker Gupta
Institution: Indian Council of Forestry Research and Education
Language: English
Subfield: Global and Planetary Change
Field: Environmental Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W7162627868