Odisha recently became one of three states in the country to grant Habitat Rights under the Forest Rights Act, 2006 to Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups. The state recognised Habitat Rights for seven of its 13 Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups and other traditional communities.
India’s Forest Rights Act, enacted to undo historical injustices to tribal and other forest-dwelling communities in India, recognises a range of rights for these communities. The different rights ensure that indigenous and forest-dwelling communities can access their ancestral land and resources, carry on their traditional livelihood practices and utilise, protect and conserve the forests.
What are habitat rights
Habitat Rights are classified under Community Forest Rights in the Forest Rights Act. They recognise traditional and customary rights over “demographic and geographic spread out, socio-cultural, economic, and livelihood systems, as well as traditional knowledge to ecological systems and biodiversity”, says a report by the UN Development Programme and the Tribal and Scheduled Caste Development Department of the Chhattisgarh government.
In the context of forest dwelling people or indigenous communities, the term, “habitat” is defined under Section 2 (h) of the Forest Rights Act, 2006, as “the area comprising the customary habitat and such other habitats in reserved forests and protected forests of primitive tribal groups and pre-agricultural communities and other forest dwelling Scheduled Tribes.”
A habitat for Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups may refer to an area where they have both spiritual and material connections, notes a study undertaken by the Ministry of Tribal Affairs in 2014 in collaboration with Vasundhara, a nonprofit working for tribal rights in Odisha. Spiritual connection implies an area essential to fulfill the socio-cultural needs of the community and includes burial grounds, birthplaces, temples, deities, ancestral lands, or areas used for other socio-cultural purposes, such as festivals and processions. These areas also include places of customary land use for livelihood generation, such as forest produce collection, fishing sources, cultivation areas, and seasonal migratory lands.
Habitat Rights, thus, are more than just the right to a piece of land but also a “bundle of rights” that comprises the connection of the tribal communities to their livelihood, social, and cultural practices, notes the tribal affairs ministry and Vasundhara study.
The Habitat Rights guarantee all right holders to perform customary religious or cultural practices, related to their clans, that intend to protect and conserve places necessary for religious and spiritual purposes. This right, however, excludes hunting which is banned under India’s Wildlife Protection Act.
“Habitat Rights are bio-cultural rights, especially for Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups and other such communities who have a distinct culture and are found in a particular geographical area,” said Tushar Dash, an independent researcher on forest rights. “They have lived in these areas and protected their forests under traditional and customary practices like having sacred areas and forests.”
Madhya Pradesh was first state in the country to grant Habitat Rights to seven Baiga villages in 2015, followed by Chhattisgarh, which granted the rights to Kamars and Baigas in August 2023. Odisha followed suit in 2024.
Habitat Rights were developed to particularly preserve and conserve the habitat of the 75 PVTGs of India, whose populations were dwindling because of past social injustices and the destruction and diversion of their ancestral lands for development projects and mining activities. However, they may also apply to a broader population of tribal groups that may follow traditional living practices and use forest resources.
“These rights apply to anyone who shares the concept of habitats – a traditional way of living and using resources,” said Y Giri Rao, Chief Executive Officer of Vasundhra. He added that the Habitat Rights are inclusive and applicable to groups such Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers, which are government categories for indigenous and long-term forest-dwelling communities.
Section 3(e) of the Forest Rights Act states that the Habitat Rights includes primitive tribal groups and pre-agricultural communities, he explained, and Section 5(c) also empowers forest right holders and their institutions to ensure that the habitat of forest-dwelling Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers is preserved from any destructive practices affecting their cultural and natural heritage.
“In Odisha, the Habitat Rights titles have been awarded with the condition that they do not violate the traditional rights of other communities as justice under FRA cannot be one-sided. You cannot protect one group’s rights by infringing on another’s,” Rao added.
Umbrella of rights
There are a number of rights under the Forest Rights Act. These include Individual Forest Rights, where a family claims a piece of land for its private use and traditional occupation practices like farming; Community Forest Rights, where a village applies as a collective for land rights for the village and its resources. Then there are Community Forest Resource Rights which are much broader than the other two as they comprise the right to live and use the village and forest land as well as the right to design plans to manage and conserve them.
Habitat Rights fall under Community Forest Rights and are applied to the Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups, Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers to help conserve their habitat. They differ from other rights in the scope and approach to filing claims. Habitat Rights focus on the broader identity and territory of Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups and other communities, with their traditional institutions filing for claims. Unlike other rights, these rights extend beyond village or hamlet boundaries for Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups and nomadic communities whose settlements may be temporary.
“Habitat rights regime is mediated by the traditional institutions and leadership base of the PVTGs who are crucial in the affairs of the PVTGs/ scheduled tribes. Many of these rights are not necessarily exclusive to one community and may be shared with other communities living in the habitat area based on age-old traditions of mutuality and reciprocity,” reads the 2022 report titled Mapping of Potential Habitat Rights of Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups under the Forest Rights Act in Odisha.
In the case of individual forest rights and community forest rights, the Forest Rights Committee, a village-level body that assists in processing claims, initiates the process and pertains to rights within these boundaries. For Community Forest Resource Rights, too, a village’s gram sabha files a claim for the whole village. Unlike individual forest rights and community forest rights, Community Forest Resource Rights also gives the village broader rights to use, manage, and conserve the forest under their title.
Challenges in recognising
Despite habitat being a concept in the Forest Rights Act since 2006 and a provision for Habitat Rights made in the subsequent amendment in 2012, recognising these rights has been a slow process.
Several challenges and operational difficulties hinder the approval of Habitat Rights claims. Some of these concerns include unclear procedures, lack of guidelines accommodating diverse tribal practices, low literacy, nomadic lifestyles and overlapping rights.
The diverse tribal groups also make it difficult for the Ministry of Tribal Affairs to make written guidelines for Habitat Rights as there are over 700 tribal groups in India and each is unique, said Rao. “If the MoTA [tribal affairs ministry] enlists certain traditional practices and customs in a common guideline, it will mean that the practices that haven’t been listed do not fall under the scope of HR, excluding several communities from making HR claims,” he added.
Additionally, he added, as many Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups are nomadic, the officials do not find records of these communities in their gazetteers, anthropological studies, or princely state records, which creates problems during verification. Often Habitat Rights offered to Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups overlap with the rights of other communities. For example, traditional land boundaries of the indigenous or forest-dwelling communities clash with district and state boundaries which makes it hard for the officials to address the issue.
The misinterpretation and mistranslation of the definition of “habitat” is another problem. Citing the case of Madhya Pradesh, Rao. said that during translation from English to Hindi, the English word “habitat” under Section 3 (1) (e) the Forest Rights Act was translated (in Hindi) as “aawas” meaning “home” or “house” instead of habitat.
Dash, said that another challenge that emerges is that many of the areas where Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups live and can claim the Habitat Rights, overlap with mining projects or areas diverted for industries, with protected areas, like tiger reserves, or with land that forest department has earmarked for Compensatory Afforestation. This makes it harder to recognise Habitat Rights in these areas.
As per Vasundhara’s mapping, Odisha has the potential to recognise Habitat Rights in over 2.27 million hectares of land, of which 1.12 million hectares are under forest areas. “Many of these rights given in forest land can be diverted for mining in the future. However, with the granting of these rights, it will be difficult to divert these areas for mining or any other development project without the consent of their traditional institutions and Gram Sabhas. This way, habitat rights will help protect biodiversity and state forests,” added Rao.
Ecologist Pia Sethi highlights the challenges faced by indigenous communities in accessing their lands and sacred sites due to strict policing by the forest department and restrictive laws. This has disrupted traditional practices, many of which are being forgotten. Recognising habitat rights under the Forest Rights Act can help revive and sustain the traditions and cultural heritage of the PVTGs.
“Granting legal rights to protect these forests can also incentivise younger generations to engage in conservation. Such protection will not only preserve their cultural and ecological links but also contribute to reducing carbon emissions by safeguarding forests. While some monitoring might be necessary, this recognition is long overdue. Globally, wilderness areas and natural ecosystems are often managed by local communities, and India must align with this practice,” she said to Mongabay India.
This article was first published on Mongabay.
