The Northeast, environmentally speaking, is singular in a number of ways. The richness of biodiversity is high, and the percentage of endemism - at 33 per cent - is quite high as well. The region, on the whole, merits high priority for conservation. This may not sound good enough in what would merit the region to have its own forest policy, but there is more to it here than meets the eye. The forests and the biodiversity are the life support systems for local communities here much more than elsewhere in the country.
Forests and forest products are the main sources of livelihood and income. Even agriculture - be it the jhumming mode or any other - is forest-based as well. Markets thrive on plant and animal products round the year. A death knell for the forests would be a death knel for the people of the region. If that is not all, forests in the Northeast, in any case, differ from those elsewhere. Here, the forests belong to the communities, and not to the government. If you leave out the people, you would be missing the trees for the forest.
In other words, a separate forest policy for the Northeast region is both desirable and indispensible. But then, such a guiding principle should look both at the interests of the ecosystem as well as that of the people. It would, perhaps, would be more pragmatic and pracical for the country to have one framework policy, there should be detailed micro-level sub-regional policies for different regions - the Northeast makes an excellent case for one such.
Formulating a policy is fine - scores have been made and wished away over the years. How effective a sub-regional policy will be, would depend on its execution both by the government and the people, even nongovernmental organisations (NGOs). It should not only consider the interests of the communities and also the conservation of forests and biodiversity, but in fact build on the knowledge and institutional structures already existing, such as tribal councils, community holdings of common lands.
These traditional management practices and customary laws that hold good should be comprehended and lessons should be derived from them. Interference by officialdom should be minimal when it comes to community management. Community-managed systems will prove more efficient and effective, will have more belonging and responsibility, will address to the issue of conservation better. The role of the government should be limited to providing techinical expertise and resolution of conflicts as and when they arise.
A Northeast sub-regional forest policy would have to help the local people to create, or even strengthen, livelihood options which are based on forests but do not lead to their destruction. The plundering of the forests by the timber mafia in a many of states has been arrested by virtue of the Supreme Court ban. What now needs to be encouraged are the options for using non-timber forest produce (medicinal plants, orchids, cane/bamboo, among others) and other livelihood opportunities (for instance, employment in wildlife conservation, documentation and utilising knowledge of genetic/biodiversity resources) with appropriate benefit-sharing arrangements, and sensitive wildlife and eco-tourism.
The depleted forest cover, for starters, needs to be replenished. Awareness and education is necessary about the value of the forests and their judicious utilisation. The soil, by and large, is fertile and the climate excellent for forest growth. Forests should be systematically and scientifically harvested so that it remains an important source of income. It is here that traditional wisdom has to blend with contemporary technology. More often than not, the selling price of forest wood is nowhere near the inputs required. The logic is that since the forests have grown naturally, selling them at throwaway prices is no big deal. The supply creates its own demand, and the supply in turn needs more depletion of forests.
All said and done, such a policy would come no good unless adequately backed up by appropriate legislations and administrative measures. Knowing the state of affairs in the Northeast, at the end of the day sustainability of forest utilisation might not just be an environmental quagmire, but a political one.
