Forest Fire Management in India: An Overview

The lungs of the world were raging with intense fires in 2019, with the Amazon burning away vast tracts of biodiverse forests, raising global concern and attention towards the lack of care for the Environment. Since then, wildfires have burned away more than 100,000 hectares of forest covers in Canada, the United States, and Australia in 2020, destroying vulnerable plant species and wildlife in the process. These uncontrolled fires burn natural areas such as forests and grasslands and spread rapidly, destroying vegetation and wildlife in the region and emitting tonnes of toxic smoke into the atmosphere.

The Forest Survey of India, in 2018, reported that close to 21 per cent of the forest cover in the countryis extremely fire-prone prone and highly vulnerable to uncontrolled fires, especially in Mizoram, Chhattisgarh, Manipur, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, and Himachal Pradesh, where wildfires burned more than 4500 hectares of trees in the State alone. Although forest fires are a common phenomenon in the country due to various factors such as heatwaves and temperature shifts, negligent human activities in the forests cause most of them. Common, but avoidable activities of humans include the casual lighting of fires to keep themselves warm and the careless use of fire torches without adopting the required safety measures. The Wire reported that the illegal and unregulated burning away of forest cover for the sake of agriculture highly increases the probability of a wildfire as they can spread at any moment. The forest department officials have been complacent in regulating human activities and have not enforced or implemented guidelines, which often results in the unnecessary destruction of the country’s forests.

Obligations to Forest Cover

Forest fires destroy large tracts of forest cover that includes both natural and planted trees. This results in a degraded landscape that is often desertified and inhabitable to the growth of vegetation. While India has committed to the Bonn Challenge, which aims to restore 150 million hectares of degraded land by 2020 and 350 million by 2030, forest fires are a significant roadblock to the challenge as the reforestation efforts are undercut by the loss of forest cover in a different region. Thus, forest cover can increase only if the country both protects and increases the forest cover.

The Indian Constitution places an obligation on the State through Article 48A, where it must endeavour to protect and safeguard its forests and wildlife.

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Article 51(g) regards the protection and responsibility to improve the Environment, a fundamental duty on citizens to participate in pro-environmental actions. Although these Articles are non-justiciable, their presence within the Constitution shows the values that the State must intend to preserve the forests and its wildlife. The Constitution regards protecting the Environment as a priority where forest fires should not burn down thousands of acres of forests due to administrative or human negligence.

Current Laws

The National Plan for Forest Fire Management requires the Forest Survey of India to disseminate a satellite-based forest fire alert system and a ground-based detection mechanism toforest departments of all states. The plan aims to prevent fires from taking place and ensure that forests are resilient against fire hazards through relevant policies and strategies such as fire risk zoning, interventions of fire-prone activities, mass communication, and a fire suppression strategy. The Forest Conservation Act, 1980 only requires fire lines maintenance, and the National Forest Policy, 2018 recommends special precautions and modern technology adoption to combat fires. Neither the legislation nor the policy prescribes any guidelines or standards that the departments should comply with to combat forest fires comprehensively.

Lacunae

Despite the Centre’s commitment to combat wildfires, the number of reported incidents were over 30,000 in 2019 alone, with 95 per cent of these fires are induced by humans, which would not have occurred if the forest departments of the respective states extended upon the requirements of the National Plan to implement strategies that would uniquely suppress fires in their State.

The most considerable concern of the National Forest Fire Management Plan’s mechanisms is that it offers discretion to the departments to adopt measures according to the Plan’s goals. The department’s actions then are limited to achieving the bare minimum, which is the creation of wildfire lines and watch-towers. This discretion level is harmful as most forest officials are not trained to deal with forest fire or have undergone the requisite preventive training programs. Furthermore, it does not require the authorities to adopt additional measures such as routine checks or restricting individuals from possessing inflammable substances when they enter the forest. These measures would play a crucial part in controlling unnecessary fires. Similarly, the forest departments are underfunded and have loads of responsibilities, such as dealing with poachers, hunters, and wildlife conservation efforts, with wildfire management taking a backseat.

Policy Suggestions

After implementing stricter guidelines in California in 2019, the State saw a decrease in forest fires that resulted from human negligence. Similar actions could serve as a model for forest departments in India. For instance, the forest authorities could ban fire prone activities and substances such as unsafe campground fires where explicit permission from the department is required for its use. Such items should be banned entirely during wildfire season and in protected forests.

The departments should strengthen detection programmes on past trends and declare wildfire-prone seasons where the officials should be extra cautious and conduct stricter monitoring in the forests.

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 They should also routinely clear out vegetation that might serve as a potential fuel for the fires.The existing measures in the country only extend to maintaining fire breaks in hilly areas, and the protection of commercial plantation of trees should be extended uniformly across all forests.

Industries

Infrastructure existing within forests should comply with wildfire safe activities, and a separate Forest Fire Board could issue certification. A model similar to the Central Pollution Control Board could be adopted to oversee all the protected and non-protected forests in the State. They would be tasked with the regulation and to issue directions to the industries and the power to shut down and suspend fire prone activities by the industries in the forests.

Forest Towns

California places a Special Responsibility Area so that people’s properties comply with the State’s fire codes and compliance mechanisms. They are required to clear out inflammable materials in their property and avoid activities that would cause a fire without complying with the requisite standards. The existing community building plan should be strengthened by increasing awareness of forest fire-prone activities and enforcing anti-fire standards that are intrinsic to one’s community where the compliance to this code would be a part of their day-to-day life.

Penalties

A penal provision on their actions would act as a deterrence as they directly impact these fires’ ignition. It should be extended to any act of negligence or inaction that may result in a generation of fire or running the industry without a forest fire certification. Currently, one may only be charged for arson or for starting a forest fire, but neither provision in either the Indian Penal Code or Forest Conservation Actholds individuals accountable for the violation of forest fire guidelines.

Despite various concerns, India has adopted a robust detection and response mechanism to immediately notify and dispatch disaster relief groups. The National Disaster Relief Authority’s joint Plan of action on combating forest fires undertakes a comprehensive approach to contain and suppress the fires post ignition.

An acceptable forest fire policy can function only with both parts of the forest fire mechanism working at their best. At the national and state level, the government should invest more funds in ensuring that the forest authorities adequately perfect their prevention strategy. In the absence of the authorities enforcing a primary obligation on prevention,the presence of a post-disaster relief mechanism may supress the fires, but it would in bring in significant damages to the wildlife and private property, severely constraining both the Forest and Disaster Relief Authorities’ resources.