India

"People need to consider what they truly want; they shouldn’t rely solely on schemes or incentives. Here, we do not depend on electricity or solar power for irrigation. Since the time of our ancestors, we have relied on rain and rivers, and we must rekindle that connection”, explains Sunita Paharia, a villager from the Rajmahal Hills. In this part of India, communities with a long history of resistance against the expropriation of their ancestral territory are rebuilding their autonomy and future.

The All India Conference of Forest Movements was held in Nagpur, India, from 5-7 April, 2025, bringing together over 400 representatives of Adivasi - Indigenous Peoples - and forest-dwelling communities from 14 states across India to share experiences, challenges and strategies. With a powerful presence of women, participants reported the systemic violations and threats they are facing, including harassment, forced evictions to create protected areas, the commodification of forests along with the advance of extractive projects.

Behind every tree plantation developed for carbon offsets, there are external agents seeking to profit from increased control over the land. And while they all have the same colonial approach, these plantations can vary widely: they can be large-scale monocultures or schemes with smallholder farmers; they can include exotic species or native species; and some of them may even exist on paper only.

In the past two years, tree plantation initiatives aimed at generating carbon credits have doubled. Whether as large monocultures or as nicely sounding projects with grassroots communities, tree plantations for carbon offsetting are neither a solution to the climate chaos nor beneficial to rural communities in the Global South.

Land related struggles in India’s Northeast states might worsen with the push to expand oil palm plantations on small-farmers and Indigenous land, threatening their food sovereignty and the ancestral practice of Jhum (shifting cultivation). On top of this, a new Forest Amendment Law will facilitate this expansion, jeopardizing further the region’s forests and Indigenous Peoples.

The ‘conservation’ model in India continues to enclose forests and evict communities in a deliberate attempt to undermine and scuttle the Forest Rights Act (FRA) - a landmark legislation that strengthens the authority of communities over their forests. Meanwhile, companies are allowed to destroy forests, even inside the conservation areas.

On 15 March, over 360 organisations launched a statement exposing that "Nature Based Solutions" will cause huge new land grabs and promote harmful practices like monoculture tree plantations and industrial agriculture.

New publication calls attention to the devastating impacts of Protected Areas in India.

WRM spoke with close allies from Brazil, Gabon, India, Mexico and Mozambique, to hear from them and learn about their understandings of development.

Funds from the Compensatory Afforestation scheme have been allocated for Covid-19 relief measures. The scheme has funded plantations that invade community land and has led to illegal evictions where “Protected Areas” have been declared. This has not stopped during the lockdown.

In a series of articles, forest communities talk about the violation of their forest rights as a result of government approvals for forest destruction in connection with hydropower and coal projects that were passed or accelerated during the pandemic. During the lockdown, the Ministry of Environment and Forests approved large-scale industrial, mining, hydropower, roads and highway construction projects without the required due diligence and in disregard to environmental laws and the Forest Rights Act (FRA).

The inter-dependencies in and among communities with their life spaces and practices sheds light to the conservation practices of forest communities. And within these interdependencies lie the stories of women.