India
India
* Mha = million hectares
In India, Indigenous Peoples and local communities have secure legal ownership rights to 1.1 million hectares of forestland as of 2017 under the Forest Rights Act, all of which was recognized after 2002. However, this is significantly less than the over 40 million hectares to which communities have customary rights. [Source: RRI 2018 (At a Crossroads)]
Only 130,000 hectares of land were formally recognized as owned by Indigenous Peoples and local communities in India as of 2015—or 0.04% of total country area—despite the fact that communities have customary rights to at least 40 million hectares. [Source: RRI 2015 (A Global Baseline)]
Secure community land rights are an intrinsic component of poverty alleviation goals and the achievement of national and global economic development goals.
Almost a third of the world’s population manages and depends on community-held lands. Land use by rural communities is more sustainable, benefits more people, and generates better environmental outcomes than large-scale plantations and extractive projects. Secure community rights are therefore vital to poverty reduction and sustainable development. [Source: RRI 2017 (Securing Community Land Rights)]
Where Indigenous Peoples and local communities have secure rights, climate outcomes improve: deforestation rates are lower and carbon storage higher.
Globally, Indigenous Peoples and local communities manage at least 17 percent (nearly 300 billion metric tons) of the total carbon stored in the forestlands of assessed countries—a global estimate that is 5 times greater than shown in a previous analysis of aboveground tropical forest carbon, and equivalent to 33 times the global energy emissions of 2017. [Source: RRI et al. 2018 (A Global Baseline of Carbon Storage in Collective Lands)]
In India, 0.2 billion metric tons of aboveground, belowground, and soil carbon is stored in forestlands that are legally owned or designated for Indigenous Peoples and local communities. An additional 7.5 billion metric tons of aboveground, belowground, and soil carbon is stored in forestlands that are collectively held by Indigenous Peoples and local communities but not legally recognized. [Source: RRI et al. 2018 (A Global Baseline of Carbon Storage in Collective Lands)]
Indigenous and community women’s land and forest rights are crucial for the achievement of global development goals.
According to a legal analysis of 30 low- and middle-income countries, governments are not respecting indigenous and rural women’s tenure rights and are failing to meet international obligations to do so. Of the three regions, legal regimes in the 10 Asian countries provide the highest level of protection for women’s community-level inheritance, voting, and leadership rights. [Source: RRI 2017 (Power and Potential)]
Although India’s Forest Rights Act does recognize the inheritability of Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers' Land, the specific rights of women to community-level inheritance and dispute resolution are not explicitly acknowledged. [Source: RRI 2017 (Power and Potential)]
India does not have laws recognizing the inheritance rights of women in consensual unions; inheritance in India may be regulated by civil, religious or personal laws, some of which fail to explicitly guarantee equal inheritance rights for wives and daughters. [Source: RRI 2017 (Power and Potential)]
Because of provisions in the Forest Rights Act (FRA), Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers’ Land in India are one of only 2 legal frameworks identified (out of 80) in the report in which women's community-level voting and leadership rights are guaranteed through a quorum requirement. (NOTE: The Act’s strong community-level governance provisions are tempered by the fact that that the Forest Rights Act has barely been implemented). [Source: RRI 2017 (Power and Potential)]
Insecure land rights can result in conflicts that threaten sustainable + inclusive economic development as well as corporate profits.
Previous analyses have seriously underestimated the role that land-related conflicts play in stalling investment projects in India, and the magnitude of the cost imposed by these conflicts on the Indian economy and society. Out of 80 high-value stalled projects examined in a study by RRI and the Bharti Institute of Public Policy, more than a quarter (21 projects) are stalled due to land disputes. [Source: RRI and Bharti Institute of Public Policy 2016 (Land Disputes and Stalled Investments in India)]
The total investment at risk in these 21 projects is Rs.1,92,620 crores (Rs.1,926.2 billion), or 300% more than previous estimates. [Source: RRI and Bharti Institute of Public Policy 2016 (Land Disputes and Stalled Investments in India)]
Land acquisition of both common and private lands is a major cause of stalling of projects: contrary to the common perception of disputes being limited to privately-held lands, at least 15% of the stalled projects were on common lands. The total investment value of stalled common-lands projects was Rs.118,800 crores (Rs.1,188 billion), or US $17 billion. [Source: RRI and Bharti Institute of Public Policy 2016 (Land Disputes and Stalled Investments in India)]
14 of the 21 stalled projects examined by RRI and the Bharti Institute of Public Policy cite acquisition of private land as the root of the dispute. [Source: RRI and Bharti Institute of Public Policy 2016 (Land Disputes and Stalled Investments in India)]
Insecure land rights are driving conflict, insecurity, and a human rights crisis.
In 2018, 13 people were killed in the largest massacre documented that year by Global Witness, related to a protest of a copper mine in Tamil Nadu. [Source: Global Witness 2020 (Enemies of the State)]
A 2017 BBC report found that authorities in India’s Kaziranga National Park were responsible for 106 extrajudicial killings—including of elderly people and children—across 20 years. [Source: Cornered by Protected Areas 2018]
In India, around 2 million households, or 10 about million people in indigenous and tribal communities, currently face the threat of eviction from their traditional forests, following a contentious Supreme Court order that is currently on hold until July 2019. [Source: Arun Agrawal 2019]