Role of Forest Departments in the Conservation of Biological Resources: An Empirical Study from the Forests of Kamrup District, Assam

Abstract

Forests Departments in India were legally established to commercialize the forests' resources by the British Imperial Rule. Later on, after witnessing a massive degradation of the Biodiversity and due to the worldwide pressures, the same forest departments were made the custodian of the forests. Those forest departments treated local inhabitants as encroachers and tried to isolate the forests from the human population. But such initiatives could not protect the forests from illegal Bio-trading rather made the local communities, which were dependent on forest resources, to struggle for maintaining their livelihood. However, the world fraternity realized the need for active participation of local communities in the conservation of Biodiversity, and accordingly the jurisprudence was shaped for enacting laws and policies to give effect to such initiatives. In India, initiatives like Joint Forest Management, Access and Benefit Sharing, Forests Rights Act, the establishment of Biodiversity Authorities, etc. were adopted. But still, the rates of green crimes are not decreasing. The paper, therefore, tries to study the legislative and the institutional framework regulating and administering conservation of biological resources in the forests to have an understanding of the reasons for non-realization of the objectives of conservation of Biological Resources.