Environmental Ethics

Author(s): S M Jain
Publisher: Prakrit Bharti Academy

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and reserve forests. The burden of meeting timber, fuel and fodder needs increased on protected and even on reserved forests. In spite of stringent laws to prevent encroachments on forest lands under Forest Conservation Act of 1980 in India and interventions, injunctions by apex court encroachments are continuing and being encouraged by politicians by regularising the illegal encroachments. If the population continues exploding it is impossible to control encroachments by any law howsoever stringent. In Rajasthan (India) a high level committee was formed in 1959 to advise about stopping the practice of shifting cultivation. Accordingly the tribals were allotted plain forest areas for their agricultural needs. By 1980 the population of tribals increased so much that they started shifting cultivation again in these tribal regions and other districts and when action was taken by law enforcing agencies of forest and police departments, there was lot of hue and cry in legislature. This is the story all over the developing countries of Africa, South America and Asia. The few remnant rain forests of Amazon, Sunderbans etc. which are the storehouse and gene pools of vast variety of species of flora and fauna and with maximum bio-mass productivity and are an ideal example of symbiotic interactions between animate and inanimate constituent, are also under considerable threat of total extinction because of increasing biotic pressure of humans and their domestic animals. Recently Naxalite terrorists in India have started playing Robinhoods by opposing and retaliating against anti-encroachment actions of forest and police department to gain sympathies of exploding masses which continue to encroach more and more forest land. All laws, rules and even directions of Apex court are consigned to dustbins. This will continue if population continues to explode.
Tribals and Forests :
Inspite of glaring stark facts on record many voluntary agencies, self styled intellectuals and socialists surprisingly assert that tribals do not destroy forests. The fact is that the
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