Inversion of Custodianship: How Rights-Based Forest Governance Undermines Conservation under Weak Institutions in India
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: The Forest Rights Act (FRA) of 2006 was conceived as a dual-mandate statute: to remedy historical injustice through the recognition of forest rights, and to secure long-term ecological stewardship of India’s forest commons. By linking tenure security with custodial obligations under Sections 3 and 5, the Act sought to transform forest dwellers into collective custodians. Yet growing evidence indicates a widening gap between statutory intent and ecological outcomes. This paper develops the concept of custodianship inversion to explain how rights-based forest governance, when implemented without procedural integrity, can systematically undermine both conservation and justice. Using Giridih district in Jharkhand as a critical case, the study combines field-based legal and procedural audits of Individual Forest Rights (IFRs) with satellitebased canopy analysis (MODIS VCF, 2005–2021). The analysis reveals pervasive bypassing of Gram Sabha verification, absence of GPS-based demarcation, and complete non-enforcement of custodial duties under Section 5. These failures are associated with systematic forest fragmentation and localized canopy loss of 8.7–13.6 per cent within 50–150 m buffers around IFR clusters. These micro-level findings align with recent national-scale evidence from Chhattisgarh (Agarwal et al., 2026), which shows that Panchayat Extension to Scheduled Areas (PESA)—India’s strongest village-level rights regime—does not improve forest outcomes, while political regimes associated with greater bureaucratic capacity exhibit significantly higher canopy gains. Together, the results demonstrate that rights-based forest governance, when operationally weak, functions primarily as a justice institution rather than a conservation institution, rendering ecological stewardship institutionally untenable.
Source: Biophilia Insights
Author: Hari Shanker Gupta
Language: English
Subfield: Global and Planetary Change
Field: Environmental Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W7220426424