Uttarakhand's Van Panchayat Amendments Weaken Community Forest Governance

Uttarakhand enacted token amendments to 15 rules of the Panchayati Van Niyamawali 2005 in March 2024, setting aside a comprehensive 2023 draft that had incorporated 58 progressive reforms including electoral accountability, departmental transparency and ecosystem-service-based rural economic frameworks. The regression threatens the governance of 4,526.44 square kilometres of community forests managed by 11,217 van panchayats supporting over one million rural families.

Van panchayats are democratic community institutions unique to Uttarakhand since 1931, managing local forests contiguous with reserve forests and protected areas. A 2018 Indian Institute of Forest Management study pegs the ecosystem service value of Uttarakhand's forested landscape at Rs 95,000 crore per year. The state has 45.5 per cent of its land under forest cover — 24,305 sq km — according to the India State of Forest Report 2021. Between 2020 and 2022, the Revenue Department corrected land record anomalies, revived van panchayat elections raising compliance from 6 per cent to 69 per cent, and developed modern management plan frameworks aligned with ecosystem services and green-market mechanisms.

The comprehensive Panchayati Van Niyamawali 2023 draft, prepared after three years of consultation incorporating 58 amendments, would have modernised governance, enhanced transparency, clarified departmental accountability and laid groundwork for ecosystem-service-based rural economic upliftment. Instead, the state cabinet in March 2024 notified only 15 token amendments to the 2005 rules. The article characterises this as an unprecedented policy regression that jeopardises local governance, ecological resilience and emerging green-economy opportunities for over a million rural households.

The author argues that van panchayats are at risk from forest fires, natural disasters and human-wildlife conflicts that are intensifying with climate change, making strengthened community governance more urgent rather than less. Weakening these institutions reduces the resilience of ecosystems that underpin water security and livelihoods for millions downstream of Himalayan watersheds. Mountain states like Uttarakhand function as ecological security providers for the broader Indian subcontinent, and the article calls on the state to reverse course and implement the evidence-based 2023 reforms that had been years in preparation.

Key figure — Rs 95,000 crore per year — estimated ecosystem service value of Uttarakhand's forests, per 2018 IIFM study