Minor forest produce: Reconciling forest rights with conservation

The system governing minor forest produce collection and trade is caught between overlapping laws, unclear institutional responsibilities, weak regulation and growing commercial pressure. Unless forest rights are balanced with ecological responsibility, India risks degrading the very resource on which millions of forest communities depend

India has traditionally maintained a powerful presence in global natural ingredient supply chains, exporting processed lac, natural gums and herbal extracts to international pharmaceutical, food and cosmetic markets. India’s trade in Non-Timber Forest Produce (Minor Forest Produce, or MFP, in legal parlance) and bio-based commodities reveals two distinct structural dynamics: agricultural/cultivated natural commodities, such as guar gum and herbal extracts, maintain large export volumes, whereas commodities of wild origin harvested from forests, such as tendu leaves, myrobalans, khair and tree gums, are trapped in stagnant or declining domestic yields and business.

Over the recent five-year period, natural medicinal extracts generated Rs 4,500 crore to Rs 6,500 crore annually due to expanding global demand for nutraceuticals and phytoconstituents. Guar gum and resins yielded around Rs 3,300 crore to Rs 5,200 crore, while processed lac gave export earnings of Rs 280 crore to Rs 400 crore per year. Conversely, traditional wild/forest-origin commodities faced severe structural decline: tendu leaves, earning under Rs 160 crore, followed a downward trajectory, while the value of myrobalans exported was Rs 40 crore to Rs 80 crore and that of khair (katha/cutch) under Rs 40 crore.

Driven by expanding global demand and the value of natural products, monetary values may sometimes appear to climb, but in the heart of India’s ancient woodlands, a silent legal, economic and ecological tragedy is brewing. While global procurement standards strictly mandate product traceability, organic certification and consistent quality, India’s forest produce trade is plunging into chaos due to unorganised and fragmented extraction of MFPs under a puzzling criss-cross of legal instruments, poor implementation of laws and weak local management, habitat depletion-led unsustainability in yields, adulteration and poor post-harvest handling, with a lack of functional primary processing units. In fact, the sustainability of MFPs, ranging from gums and bamboos to lac, resins and medicinal plants, which forms the economic backbone for over 100 million forest-dependent individuals across the country, is under threat.

A serious danger to India’s minor forest produce (MFP) stems from a chaotic clash and, quite often, an executive misinterpretation of overlapping statutes - including the Panchayat (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act, 1996 (PESA); the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006 (FRA); the Biological Diversity Act, 2002; and amendments to the Indian Forest Act, 1927, along with the decriminalisation of some forest and forest-land-related offences by the Jan Vishwas Act, 2023. They collectively result in a de facto severance of economic extraction rights from ecological responsibility on the ground. Although PESA uses the phrase ‘Gram Sabhas are endowed with the ownership of Minor Forest Produce’, the prevalent perception of people’s relationship with MFP does not go beyond viewing selected MFPs as money-yielding resources simply to be exploited for financial gain. The overstretching of the term ‘ownership’ used in PESA and FRA to include ‘management’ as well as ownership of unsevered, standing minor forest produce (which is essentially an immovable property belonging to the state), coupled with the non-formalisation of the duties of FRA beneficiaries, local-level institutions (such as Joint Forest Management committees) and Gram Sabhas, although mandated by the FRA, has been disastrous. The poorly integrated Biological Diversity Act’s access and benefit-sharing (ABS) mechanism, for want of a clearly determined chain of custody, has affected the erstwhile unified oversight, leaving regulatory boundaries blurred.

Non-realisation of the dangers of sidelining experienced Forest Departments to leave today’s unequipped and overburdened Gram Sabhas in sole charge of complex forest ecosystems is dreadful. Any unregulated commercial extraction without management plans destroys natural regeneration, severely compromises critical ecosystem services and collapses tribal livelihood safety nets. The conundrum is compounded by the 2023 Community Forest Rights guidelines issued by the Ministry of Tribal Affairs, local-level attempts to edge out the enforcement machinery in the name of democratisation, and institutional abdication exhibited by the forestry sector.

The ground-level situation created due to the above leaves the Gram Sabhas vulnerable to capture by commercial trade syndicates. The examples of the working of bamboo and tendu leaves in states such as Maharashtra are worth studying in this regard. On the silvicultural front, abandonment of scientific working plans and carrying-capacity limits, combined with market forces, is directly leading to destructive tapping, ring-barking and over-harvesting, destroying the natural regeneration of species such as bamboo, khair, tendu and gum karaya. Driven by powerful global and domestic market forces demanding cheap raw botanicals, the institutional vacuum provides easy ground for commercial intermediaries to maximise short-term profits, threatening the irreversible ecological collapse of forest canopies and the ultimate destruction of the very resource on which tribal livelihoods depend.

A prominent concern is the selective projection of isolated success stories driven by exceptional civil society support or rare administrative leadership. Such examples can mask the gap between statutory intent and ground implementation elsewhere. As a result, scalability suffers, site-specific needs remain unaddressed, and many tribal and forest-dweller communities remain disempowered. Protecting ecological capital while respecting forest dwellers’ rights requires an urgent course correction.

Sustaining forest rights to MFPs while ensuring ecological sustainability requires a clear statutory distinction between ownership of harvested produce and responsibility for overall forest management. The Forest Department must maintain forest health and sustained MFP supply through scientific working plans, while rights holders must respect carrying-capacity limits. This balance should involve Joint Forest Management committees on public forest lands. In ‘Community Forest Resource’ areas, formal management plans should be implemented within the statutory framework of the FRA, as mandated.

As regards governance, commercial movement of minor forest produce requires robust digital traceability and transit controls, including integration with the National Transit Pass System (NTPS) and harvest declarations. Geo-tagging harvest origins can prevent illegal removals and curb laundering of illicit forest produce. State procurement bodies such as TRIFED, the Girijan Cooperative Corporation and state MFP federations should move from passive buyers to active stewardship partners, linking Minimum Support Price disbursements to sustainably harvested and certified MFPs while supporting biodiversity conservation and natural regeneration.  At the village level, institutional mechanisms should be rationalised, with tribal self-help group hubs for primary processing and capacity-building to ensure greater local economic benefits.

Finally, the escalation of pressure on forest resources, gradual reduction in MFP production and expansion of local stakeholder populations make it imperative to enact policy decisions that reduce reliance on minor forest produce of wild origin. As a concomitant measure, national policy must shift towards promoting high-value species cultivation on private farmlands while simultaneously strengthening protection measures in forest areas to curb illicit removals. Focus should be given to skill training in ecotourism and green technologies that move local youth into higher-paying, off-forest jobs. Simultaneously, systems for rewarding conservation, utilisation of carbon markets and creating allied livelihoods with predictable incomes must be established to make, especially for forest dwellers, our living forests far more valuable than harvested MFPs. It’s high time the policymakers took a call on this!

As regards governance, the commercial movement of minor forest produce requires robust digital traceability and transit controls, such as integration with the National Transit Pass System (NTPS) tied to harvest declarations. Geo-tagging of harvest origins must be insisted upon to prevent illegal removals and curb the laundering of illicit forest produce under the pretext of exercising forest rights

BKP Sinha and Arvind Kumar Jha are Former Principal Chief Conservators of Forests (PCCFs), Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra; Views presented are personal.